What really counts as "cheating?"

There are apps and social media groups dedicated to outing a cheater. But is our paranoia about cheating actually hurting our relationships? And on top of that, definitions of "cheating" vary widely. How do you decide for yourself what really counts as cheating? And what's really fueling our fear of being cheated on?

Brittany is joined by Kathryn Jezer-Morton, writer of the Brooding column from The Cut, and Shannon Keating, freelance culture journalist, to get to the bottom of why fear of infidelity haunts our culture and our dating lives.

Episode Highlights

How do we define cheating? 

BRITTANY LUSE: I feel like emotional cheating is a newer concept, and for a lot of people, cheating includes a lot of things that don't involve kissing or sex. According to YouGov, 55% of Americans believe flirting with another person is cheating. 64% say the same about holding hands with another person, and 73% say the same about forming an intense emotional attachment to another person. Now, I am married very happily, and I'd have a problem with some of this if my husband did it, but I don't think that I would consider all of these things to necessarily be cheating. Why does cheating mean different things to different people and how has that definition broadened?

KATHRYN JEZER-MORTON: I think that the way that we define cheating is really linked to the way that we define love and romance. And I think that those are very culturally determined ideas that have changed a lot over time. Something that I've been thinking about a lot is the influence of therapy talk and therapy culture on relationships and intimacy. And there's so much good, I think, that comes from that because people, especially younger people, are learning like, "I have needs, I have expectations, I have boundaries, and here is how I express them. But it also introduces this new way of thinking about romance, which is a set of behaviors and expectations versus a set of feelings. Then it brings in this other idea of what cheating is, because [maybe] instead of cheating [being defined as] someone being swept away by desire, maybe they're doing a breach of contract.

Is cheating abuse?

BRITTANY LUSE: I want to get into another aspect of this – some people are claiming that cheating is abuse. There's actually a whole community of people that have been cheated on who call themselves Chump Nation, and some of them are really adamant about this interpretation. How did this definition gain traction, and what do you make of how it resonates with some people?

KATHRYN JEZER-MORTON: I hate to beat the same drum again, but it is a little bit related to a therapization of the self, which is like, "I've been harmed, I'm in pain, therefore I must be able to accuse them of something. I must be able to apply a label to them that characterizes them as fundamentally harmful." I don't feel comfortable equating cheating with abuse personally. I don't feel like in all cases, harm can be explained by abusive behavior.

SHANNON KEATING: "Conflict is not abuse."

BRITTANY LUSE: As Sarah Schulman said, yeah, that is something that I have been thinking about.

SHANNON KEATING: Yeah, it's like that Twitter meme, I'm like, "man, I think it depends." A relationship where there hasn't been cheating, it doesn't necessarily mean that that's a great and healthy relationship. There could be so many different negative dynamics that are going on that maybe a couple affairs weren't the worst thing that ever happened to you, you know? I mean, there's so many different ways that we as people can betray each other and let each other down.

What does it mean that cheating haunts our dating lives? 

SHANNON KEATING: I mean, I think one quite negative effect of it being so hyper-present in dating culture is that, if you think about how easy it is for someone to feel slighted and then go post about it online, there's high stakes just going into a relationship when you don't necessarily have the presumption of privacy. Or of being able to trust that you'll be able to work something out with your partner directly and give each other grace for tough stuff.