Off with their heads ;)

A couple of weeks ago, during the heat wave, I had a lot of trouble sleeping. On one of those nights I decided to get out of bed to watch some TV. Bad idea, nighttime television is quite similar to daytime television…. a lot of rubbish. I ended up watching one of the Dr.Phil episodes about cheating/infidelity. Big mistake! During the show I got more and more annoyed by the guests (mostly women) and their definition of cheating. Their definition differed completely from my views, it was actually a bit scary, and after watching for a while I wasn’t even sure what cheating meant anymore. So I looked it up.

According to the dictionary:
1. cheating - not faithful to a spouse or lover;
2. unfaithful - having sexual relations with someone other than your husband or wife, or your boyfriend or girlfriend;
3. infidelity
a. Unfaithfulness to a sexual partner, especially a spouse.
b. An act of sexual unfaithfulness.

According to Wikipedia:
Adultery is generally defined as consensual sexual intercourse by a married person with someone other than his or her lawful spouse. In many jurisdictions, an unmarried person who is sexually involved with a married person is also considered an adulterer. The common synonym for adultery is infidelity as well as unfaithfulness or in colloquial speech, cheating. It was also known in earlier times by the legalistic term "alienation of affection".

After reading this I felt quite relieved. Cheating was still cheating *sigh of relieve* IMHO cheating occurs when bodily fluids are exchanged. Quite simple, and easy to remember :) The women on the show however had the most amazing list of things they considered to be cheating. I don’t want to bore you to death, so here is the shortlist:

• - looking at a female,
• - talking with a woman,
• - flirting with another woman,
• - having a female friend,
• - having coffee/lunch with a female,
• - touching/stroking/petting/hugging a different female,
• - kissing another woman on the cheek,
• - calling a woman on the phone,
• - sending emails to another woman,
• - talking about personal stuff with a woman.

Really, if all of this is considered to be cheating I can honestly say, in hindsight, that all my b-friends cheated on me in one way or another. What’s wrong with having a female friends or talking with other women? In my opinion every man needs at least one female friend and every woman needs one or more male friends. We can learn so much from each other. Who knows, we might even understand each other one day ;)

Of course this whole thing made me curious, so here is a little question for you *. Where do you draw the line? What’s your interpretation of the word cheating?

* [answer if you want too, skip it when you don’t feel comfortable]