SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

If you are cheating ion your partner with someone . What would u describe as being physical with them ?

Whatever you consider out of bounds in your particular relationship.

Even without any physical touch, if she is doing stuff behind your back that she knows you wouldn't agree with, lying to you etc, then it's cheating. She has stepped outside of the agreed terms of your relationship.

Anything she wouldn’t do if you were standing right there.

[This message edited by BluerThanBlue at 12:48 AM, Thursday, September 19th]

"Anything she wouldn’t do if you were standing right there." - This sums it up perfectly

Anything more than a 2 second handshake. I'd even consider that mutual masturbation (phone sex or FaceTime sex would be physical for me.)

One red line is orgasm with another person in person or phone/Internet

Did they touch?

Some other good barometers:

leafields says - Anything more than a 2 second handshake.

BluerThanBlue - Anything she wouldn’t do if you were standing right there.

I've read and commented on a few of your posts Scoobymac21. Your WW affair was of the physical variety. Don't split hairs of trying to figure out where on the Range Finder it falls. And don't let your WW try to downplay the definition of "physical"

She cheated. Details are just that - not bargaining chips up for debate.

For me the gray and not too defined line between an emotional and physical affair is erotic and romantic content and intentions.
Not so much the action or the touch, but more the intentions with the action or touch.
Like... if your wife got sexually stimulated from listening to OM strum old Beach Boys tunes on his ukelele and he came over with his ukelele to play her some tunes knowing of this, then it’s a physical affair in my books. Even if they sat fully clothed in opposing corners.
Same if he got a hard-on listening to her crunch broccoli. If she knows that and starts chomping on the broccoli right beside him... It’s physical.
It’s basically when one says (or sends a message of some sort) stating "this turns me on" and the other reciprocates with the desired action. Be that strumming a string-instrument or blowing on an appendage.

Your future is what you can tolerate. Look at the intent of your SO. If it is to feel a zip and you don’t care then you don’t care. If you care and they do it anyway, usually hidden from the bs, then it is cheating. Like Bigger said, they might not be touching but their whole focus is on the other person and not on the bs. That is cheating

It has been 3 years but the pain is still with me daily .
I agree with Leafield and Survrus .
My WS had an online virtual sex ( and emotional bonding too ) with an old college friend , reconnected through the internet . It went for 5 months before I caught her text but continued for another 4 months of underground EA after Dday, before he decided to end it and went NC.

I consider any sexual act or sexual innuendo via video call/ face time as a physical affair.

Any type of physical contact, which has an erotic or romantic intent/purpose and which the Wayward Spouse realizes the Betrayed Spouse would find very disturbing if revealed, hence the secrecy and deception. Toxic secrets are what nearly destroyed my marriage.

Dont get hung up on physical. If they would not do it in front of you, its cheating. Messaging them, deleting stuff, etc. Cheating is cheating.

I'd question any kiss that wasn't a social kiss.

Oh yeah. My wife admits to dancing (grinding inappropriately) and making out with a coworker. This is physical cheating, 100%. It was done at a work party too bringing all the humiliation and betrayal of an affair with full on penetrative sex, IMO. Actually, his tongue penetrated her mouth, so there is that.

Anything that inspires a physical feeling.

[This message edited by Shiftkit at 4:47 PM, Wednesday, October 16th]

Anything she wouldn’t do if you were standing right there.

Putting my lawyer cap on for a sec - I'm not so sure I would agree with this definition...but honestly I don't think a precise definition matters or really can be obtained. The question before us is:

"Whats cheating physically?"

When I think the majority of the focus in this thread (and rightfully so) on the word cheating and not the word physical.

WS seem to really become amateur attorneys and judges when caught doing something they are not supposed to. Even though in my particular position I no longer argue on behalf of clients and do basically nothing but read the arguments of others and legal opinions/statutes all day long - so I deal primarily in the meaning of words for a living (I know, hard to believe with my typos and incomplete sentences on this board) - my WH still used to try what I refer to as "lawyering" me when we would argue. These kinds of definitions became the hyper-focus of multitudes of our arguments. And, IMO, he did that purposefully, to move us away from the real issue into some ridiculous discussion of whether the precise definition of the accusation met his actions. Bait and switch.

With that in mind, I suspect the argument frequently being presented by a WS is "it wasn't really an A as I never touched him/her" or "it wasn't so bad as nothing got physical"..... or asked by a BS "you said it wasn't physical but you have 15,000 sext-messages indicating you instructed each other what to do to the other...that's physical to me," etc.

While I would agree that cheating is anything your WS would not do if you were standing right there because they knew/believed you would not be comfortable with/approve of/or would be downright angry about...getting physical is indeed different.

The 15,000 sexts actually happened in my situation. And no, they weren't "physical" in my own definition of physical. Talking on the phone, even with all the recitals of "I love you" and what not - not physical. Physical to me requires actual physical contact. Any purposeful touching - from the almost innocent but purposeful brushing of hands under the table at work down to the full blown intercourse - all physical.

All that being said, it's total bullshit to make things somehow "worse" if they did not become physical as in physical contact. As I have said before, as an extreme example, my WH's year long sexting in lieu of actual intercourse because it somehow "was not as bad" (his precise "reason" for why they abstained from actual sex after d-day 1) was in some ways worse to me. The fact that there was no physical touch from AP to WH or vice versa made zero difference.

So I would focus on the cheating and not the physicality of it as that mental desire put into action/to want to do (or to do) anything you would not be okay with is the real problem IMO.

[This message edited by ThisIsSoLonely at 7:16 PM, Thursday, October 17th]

Perhaps the first distinction should be ea and/or sexual affair instead of ea/pa. A sexual affair covers a lot of ground that some might argue is not physical but it is still sexual.

Generally speaking, the legal definition of adultery is voluntary sexual intercourse between a married person and someone other than their spouse.

But if we're not talking about defining adultery in a court of law, then I think my definition ("Anything she wouldn’t do if you were standing right there") is perfectly valid, for both physical and emotional cheating.

For example, I wouldn't hold hands with a man who wasn't my husband. Even though holding hands isn't an explicitly sexual act, I know that it's physical contact that my husband would find unacceptable.

Further, if my husband were to see me walking hand-in-hand with another man in public, he would have good reason to suspect that other physical acts were occurring in private.

Cheating spouses like to pretend that they don't understand boundaries... and that if their BS didn't explain that x, y, z acts are forbidden, then it means they're not doing anything wrong by engaging in them. But I firmly believe that every cheater knows exactly when they crossed the line, even if they're not willing to admit it to their BS or themselves.

Venting: sometimes the legal definition of adultery is clear. Sometimes the damned legislature makes it impossible to understand without a law degree and deep research into case law. Under some laws, my W did not commit adultery, because the legislators didn't consider enough potential ways of cheating.

@BluerThanBlue Early on my wife tried arguing that the flirting and sexting she was doing with her co-worker was innocent and harmless because it was never going to go any further :/

I have read so many stories about infidelity where the cheating spouse says I have no idea how it got this out of control. I never planned for any of this to happen. Blah blah blah

I do believe that every cheating spouse knew exactly what they were doing and when they get caught they will do anything and everything to minimize and spin the narrative. If you are doing something that you are not sure is a violation of your relationship then the adult thing to do is ask but cheaters don't do that because they already know the answer.

[This message edited by WB1340 at 8:53 PM, Tuesday, October 22nd]