Is It Cheating When...?

Let's explore this scenario: Ali and Simi (they are back again) have been together for 5 years and they love each other to bits. Neither of them has ever cheated. You see Ali and Simi love the air they each breathe but you have never met any two people more different. Simi Loves Rock and Alternative pop music, music you have never heard of, she is into it. Ali on the other hand likes highlife and Jazz. Simi is a talker with a wicked sense of humour, Ali is solid, a wonderful listener. He loves to mingle too, but is partial to his own company. She is very neat, he is untidy, but they are best friends because they understand each other.

Then Simi gets posted to a new office and she has this boss that she just clicks with, he is married too, so no problems.  They have each other's numbers, one day the boss whose name is Greg realises that he is bored at home as his wife watches telemundo, he scrolls through his phone and sees Simi's name on his WhatsApp (damn that WhatsApp sef) so he pings her. First off its just work they chat about then it's Silly smelly clients to, their big oga's new car. Then one day he talks about listening to Nickleback and Simi Gets excited.  That's how they start talk about music, Art, movies everything.

He tells her his business and she tell him her business, but there is really no problem because they are both married. Their chats start extending into late night messages because they have so much to talk about. Soon she looks forward to his messages and he doesn't waste time to reply her massages unlike Ali who takes ages.

One day Simi and Ali have a huge fight, Simi stays at work a little longer just so she is sure that by the time she gets home Ali is either out with his friends or has calmed down. Naturally Greg can't leave his friend Simi alone when she is sad. He invites her out for drinks. Nothing happens but this becomes a pattern. Only Greg can calm her down when she fights with Ali and only Simi can calm him down when he has a dispute at work or with his wife. People jokingly call them work husband and wife. All in jest. The one day Ali picks up her phone after he comes in from a long trip, sees their message history and is heartbroken, he tells Simi how he betrayed he feels, but she just can't seem to get it "why are you flipping out again it's not like I slept with him." she says as she collects her phone and storms out.  

Do you think he had a right to flip out?

Technically Simi and Greg had done nothing wrong. They had neither kissed not touched inappropriately, but slowly we notice that as the relationship builds they both become less accessible to their partners. In a situation like that it begin to get harder for the involved party not to compare their partner to their new "best friend".

As a girl who is very prone to crushes I guard my heart jealously, because I cannot know when the seemingly innocent closeness will slip through my defences and take what I didn't even want to offer. Women are more susceptible to this kind of cheating because it is not glaring. Nobody is breaking their vows here outright. #Justbesties.

Being unfaithful is a very easy thing to do. Some of us in relationships may think this is a lie, excluding ourselves from the cheating circle. When older people tell us to guard the affections of our hearts, it's possible to find people especially women thinking "well its good I am such a good and honest person I will never cheat,"  but one cannot really say.

When I talk about cheating I never really mean the sex stuff. Though that's really bad and another monster on its own, I know I will be more devastated to find out that my significant other is telling his deepest darkest fears to another person who is obviously not me.

Another potential culprit of this kind of cheating are pastors. I will like to believe they are very few of these men that just sit down and think 'all these girls here I can take to bed and show "a new level of grace." It starts slowly with them too and in a moment of very serious weakness you find yourself on top and it's all downhill from there.

I read statistics from some online Cosmopolitan page that I can't remember, its claimed that when you have cheated once, the chances that you will do it again are higher than if you never crossed the line in the first place. Slowly and slowly you begin to rationalise it away.

There are guys that will never sleep with a runs girl (as in a girl who shags you and gets paid but isn't on the street), but those same guys still fall and cheat because it sneaks up on them in quite the same way as it does the pastor. Maybe she works with him, listens to him, consoles him when his girlfriend cannot be there for him, watches soccer with him, bakes him a cake because she is such a great human being and before you know it, he is running there on Friday nights or doing TNT "travel no travel" and spending time in the girl's house. Like Solomon* said "can a man scoop fire into his laps without his clothes being burned?"

All being said, like I wrote in my earlier blog post on the padlock and key  women have the same propensity to cheat as men. I just assumed for the sake of this article that some of us (boys and girls) wish to try at being faithful.

So, yes it is cheating when...

In the words of Paul* "be careful if you think you stand because you might just be sinking " (paraphrase).