by Rebecca Adele Scarlett

Created on: September 24, 2010   Last Updated: November 08, 2010

The exact meaning of "cheating" on your partner can only be defined by two people - the people in the relationship. Consider what the word "cheating" means. It means breaking the rules, usually for your benefit, and to the detriment of someone else. And who has the right to define the "rules" of any relationship except for the people in it?

Some people don't consider a kiss or a drunken fumble in a club to be cheating. Some people let their partners have "cheat days," especially if one member of the couple has a much lower sex drive than the other, but loves their partner and does not want her to go unsatisfied. Some people consider a physical fling cheating, whether emotions are involved or not, and some people consider an intense emotional fling cheating, whether sexual acts are involved or not.

For many men, seeing two girls "make out" or sexually pleasure each other is such a turn-on that they consider themselves lucky if their girlfriends have a few drinks and decide to engage in this kind of conduct. In this situation, sleeping with another woman is not considered cheating, but perhaps a form of foreplay, whether the other woman joins the couple later, or not. A straight woman (or "primarily straight," or however she identifies herself) who occasionally enjoys sexual acts with other women does not usually threaten her primary relationship by doing so, and her partner often feels no negative emotion as a result.

It is often different, however, if the girl is bisexual. In this case, her boyfriend or husband knows that she is capable of forming a deep, emotional and sexual connection with other women, which means that sleeping with another woman may threaten her primary relationship. Sleeping with another woman may therefore raise issues of inadequacy and jealousy in her partner, which can form cracks in an otherwise solid relationship. If her partner feels this way, and she persists in sleeping with other women, it is safe to say that she is cheating.

It is generally thought that if a woman in a lesbian relationship sleeps with a third woman, she is indeed cheating. Just as in a heterosexual relationship, if one partner betrays the other with her preferred choice of sexual partner, it is a potential threat to the relationship.

Couples have different ideas of what constitutes cheating, and there are even "anything goes" couples who get a thrill from watching another person seduce "their" woman, but these couples are rare. When it comes down to it, only the two people in the relationship can really define "cheating."

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