So what exactly is Cheating these days, in all honesty its more difficult than it sounds to answer. Now the average person usually jumps to the obvious sex outside of their relationship. But, if you know this blog well enough you know that average doesn’t cut it here, especially when the are other forms of cheating other than sex, some possibly more devastating and often times occurring way before the sex even becomes an issue, we just live in a sex obsessed culture.
We know that cheating is a huge part of our culture, we have an infinite amount of articles, songs, books, movies websites that utilize, encourage, touch on talk about, and depict it. We all probably know someone thats been cheated on, have done it or been apart of it ourselves, and its one of the things we most worry about for our own relationships. Its said to be estimated that 30-60 % of all married individuals will engage in infidelity at some point in their marriage, and that 2-3% of all children are the product of infidelity. And those are just marriage facts about physical cheating, I would assume its significantly higher for the dating crowd.
We’ve been talking about communication and speaking your mind and expectations, so I think that its fair and accurate to describe cheating as anything that violates or runs a foul outside of the boundaries you have set for your relationship. But its not something that can be painted with a broad stroke, the devils are in the details
Lets define these forms of cheating
Physical (sexual) - The most obvious one, and thought of one. Not just intercourse but sexual contact and inappropriate conversations or situations that could lead to a sexual mood though or opportunity. Its anything outside of what we’ve decided that we’ll do only with each other, i.e phone sex, texting, pics, touching whatever.
Emotional - Probably the most dangerous form. Its when you start looking for edification, happiness and consolement outside of the one your in a relationship. Realistically no one person is going to give you everything you need on an emotional level, but there are somethings that you should definitely share with and look to your mate for or they should be the first to know about. If your sharing intimate details of your life, problem or relationship with an outside person that you haven’t or wouldn’t share with your mate, that could be a great example of cheating. Emotional connection often seems harmless but its where most cheating starts, because people are often at first careful not to cross the physical line, but the emotional lines are where the caring and understanding and connection happen. How a lot of internet and phone relationships start, think of people incarcerated writing letters , same thing.
Psychological - I think its most often associated with abusive relationships, its when you do things to force the person to believe you are or could be cheating. Like flirting to prove a point that you not the only person I can get.
Mental - the hardest to control. You cant control what someone thinks about another person or how they think about them. Fantasizing and being attracted to other people don’t stop just because you’re in a relationship. Mental becomes a problem if they start using other thoughts to replace thoughts of you. I hate to use sex but if a person is envisioning someone else while having sex with you, that would be unacceptable to most of us. Mental is the first step towards heading down all the other avenues.
So the way that we deal with this by having these conversations before they happen. When you are establishing your relationship or transitioning to a new level in it, you have to have these uncomfortable and unconventional dialogues to avoid future trouble. Don’t assume anything is obvious, because the smallest detail you leave out will be the things that hurts you in the end. So anything your partner doing without you, doing to much of needs to be addressed. Sometimes its how they will go about interact with other. You have to tell what your comfortable with and what you will and will not tolerate in a relationship, what are you boundaries and what violates them. And be realistic a certain amount of all this happens, but how much is to much for you, when is the line crossed that starts suspicious behavior and or leads to action? Next week we’ll stick wit this subject and see what we believe are reasons for cheating, which types are worse and how we think we can avoid cheating or being cheated on
My perspective. Whats yours?
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