Defining Infidelity

Last year, we expanded onto TikTok, answering your relationship questions with practical, God honoring advice. We got questions through the comments sections on those videos as well as through Reddit, asking you to send us whatever questions you had about relationships for the WholeHeartEd relationship experts and by far, the most overwhelmingly consistent trend in your questions was on the topic of cheating. My S.O. won’t let me see their D.M.’s, are they cheating? My boyfriend has a female bestfriend at work that he calls his “work wife,” should I be worried? I found a bra that didn’t belong to me under my boyfriend's bed, but he said it was his mom’s. Is he cheating? And on and on... So, for the month of September we’re spilling the tea on cheating; defining infidelity, cheating in the workplace, cheating online and even whether you should forgive a cheater or not.

A tryst. An affair. Infidelity. A lapse in judgement. When most of us think of cheating, we are often thinking in the most clear and simple terms; when someone is engaging in sexual activity with another person who is not their committed relationship partner. This definition seems clear at first, but not everyone defines “sexual activity” in the same way. Sex? Obviously! What about kissing? Well, what kind of kiss? Hugging? What about the non-physical aspects? Is becoming emotionally entangled with a friend or coworker a form of cheating? What if you never even see the person in real life? What if you are fielding multiple relationships through online dating apps while you are already in a relationship? What if it’s not a relationship, at all? Is it cheating to watch corn? What if they’re not even a real person, at all? What about A.I. chatbots, animated or computer-generated images? Not all of us are going to define each of these categories as cheating, so we might be tempted to think that there isn’t any way to get a clear, usable definition that could be applied to every situation, but there is. And, the first step to getting there is to ask ourselves, why do we call it cheating in the first place?

Outside of relationships, the term cheating is most commonly used in games. Cheating happens when one person or team begins playing the game and making moves in a way that subverts the agreed upon rules and terms of the gameplay. Cheating involves using deception, manipulation, covering your tracks, and sometimes taking something that doesn’t belong to you. Cheating in a relationship involves all the same things: deception, manipulation, covering your tracks and taking something or someone who doesn’t belong to you. In a game, the person cheating is called a “cheater,” and the person who was cheated against is a victim. There are victims in cheating relationships, as well. Of course, the person being cheated on, but other friends and family whose trust was broken – especially in the case of children in the middle of a broken marriage relationship – and sometimes even the person the cheater is cheating with if they are unaware that they are the “other person.”  Cheating happens anytime someone goes outside of the rules of the relationship to meet a need that that relationship was intended to meet. So, what are the “rules of the relationship” and who gets to set them?

This is where everything becomes extremely practical. When you sit down to play Monopoly, for instance, it’s important to establish first if you are playing by the actual rules or “house rules.” This may come as a shock to you, but you do not have to complete a full turn around the board before you can buy property, if you choose not to buy a property that you land on for the listed price it is immediately supposed to be put up for auction with the property going to the person with the highest bid, and taxes and penalties go back to the bank, they aren’t supposed to be thrown in the pot and one person gets all of it when they land on “free parking.” Those are just a couple of examples of popular “house rules.” Now, a lot of people don’t like playing Monopoly, many saying that it’s because it takes too long, not realizing that it’s often actually the house rules that push games into multiple hours when the average gametime for a 4-person game is just 45 minutes. People think they hate the game when they’ve never even actually played it correctly. Are you doing the same thing in your relationships?

The great news is that your partner is not the one who gets to decide what the rules of your relationship are. The bad news is that neither do you. Just like it is the game maker who determines the rules of the game, designing them specifically for the most fair and fun experience while playing, it is our Creator who determines the rules of our relationships, and He has designed them for our greatest benefit and fulfillment as well as the person that we are with. Here’s a spicy take from the book of Proverbs:

Let your fountain be blessed,    and rejoice in the wife of your youth,a lovely deer, a graceful doe.Let her breasts fill you at all times with delight;    be intoxicated always in her love.

Why should you be intoxicated, my son, with a forbidden woman    and embrace the bosom of an adulteress? - Proverbs 5:18-20

Furthermore, Jesus extends the commands on adultery even further, telling us that is not just the physical action, but the looks, the thoughts and the desires of the heart which make us guilty, as well.

“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart. - Matthew 5:27-30

So, following that coworker you’ve been nursing a crush on on instagram? Cheating. Watching corn? Cheating. Lusting after an A.I. chatbot designed to be your perfect mate? Cheating. Again, cheating happens anytime someone goes outside of the rules of the relationship to meet a need that that relationship was intended to meet. Those can be sexual needs, emotional needs, or even spiritual needs. Also, you don’t have to currently be in a relationship for these boundaries to be crossed. These are needs that your SPOUSE, your husband or wife, is supposed to meet after you are married. So, having someone else meet those needs and wants before you meet your future spouse, that’s cheating? Even when you think, “this person is the one. I know I am definitely going to marry them, so it’s ok for us to skip to the ‘good part’...” You guessed it; cheating.

Jerrod – You’re probably realizing now that most of us are guilty in this area, in one way or another. None of us is perfect, but that’s not an excuse to continue sinning. Over the next few weeks, we’re going to dig deeper into a couple of the most common places where many people are being ensnared by the sin of adultery and infidelity – the workplace and online, and then we’re going to wrap up the month with forgiveness; should you forgive someone who has cheated on you? How do you forgive yourself?