Cheating - who's at fault?
This is something I've been thinking about recently after I was out with some girlfriends one night. One of my girlfriends was there with her boyfriend, and when she went home, he started hitting on me. Not majorly hitting on me, but he shouldn't have been dancing with me how he was! Think Dirty Dancing..hip-rubbing, intertwined fingers, a bit of snuggling..you get the picture. Now, I know I should have stopped it. But I didn't. Why? Because it felt good! Rest assured I felt completely guilty for the following week, especially as we were all going out again the next week and I didn't know what to do if anything should happen again. But it got me thinking.
If we had hooked up and my friend found out - or even if she didn't - who's at fault? Am I at fault as I knew he wasn't single but still did it anyway, or is he to blame as he's the one who's in a relationship? As a single person in a bar, should we really be concerned whether the person hitting on us is taken, or as we're free to do as we want, do we just do whatever we please?
Or, if someone cheats in a relationship, but the person they're cheating with turns out to be the love of their life and they stay together 'til death do them part', does that make the cheating justified?
And what exactly constitutes cheating, anyway? This topic was highly debated the following week when we all went out again and it came out that the boy in question had been out one night by himself, and went so far as getting another girl's number! Now, he did tell my friend about it when he got home, he thought it was hilarious and it didn't go any further. But that was most likely because it was my friend who ended up deleting the number, not him.
Now in my case, it could be argued that we were just dancing. No numbers were exchanged, we went home separately, nothing indecent whatsoever actually happened, therefore it was all ok, right? Then why did I feel so damn bad afterwards? I'd like to think it's because I usually am one of the most loyal friends you could ask for...but I'm tending to think that I was feeling so bad because of what I'd been thinking when it was happening...
The general conclusion in our group of friends is that this girl really needs to be careful as her bf certainly has a wandering eye (I'm not the only one he's hit on while we've been out). But then...given that, if she knows she's with a rat, and the rat just keeps on cheating (or near enough) is she really the one at fault for not opening her eyes enough to see it?
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Random musings of a 20-something
He'd be cheating on their relationship, but I'd be cheating on our friendship, which would make me just as bad and therefore equally at fault. It's not just the romantic relationships that need to be considered but other relationships (eg: friendships) as well.
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