"I am not married, so I am not really cheating." Is that what you are thinking?

A man that I had known for years once suggested that we should 'get together'. He had been married and divorced three times and was currently living with a woman and her two kids from a previous marriage.

He harbored a fair bit of 'ill will' toward his ex-wives because each had been unfaithful to him. Three cheating wives? That suggests to me that he wasn't really in touch with what women need in the first place, but that is another story.

Anyway, this man adamantly proclaimed that cheating was the one thing that he could not tolarate from a wife. Imagine my surprise then at his suggestion that we get together since he was already living with another woman!

When I asked him if he would not be doing the very thing that he loathed so much in his ex-wives, his answer was "no, I am not married to her so it's not cheating".

Excuse me? With or without a marriage license, if you are living with someone that you are intimately involved with, does that person not have a right to expect faithfulness from you?

The funny thing was, that although this man claimed that he was not cheating, his actions said otherwise. He did not want this woman to know that he would be meeting me and had no plans to tell her about it. My thoughts? Aha! So you do know that you are cheating after all!

It's pretty evident that today more and more couples are leaning toward cohabitation rather than marriage. Why is this?

It shouldn't, but it seems to. My thoughts on this would be to follow the Golden Rule - "Do onto others as you would have them do unto you".

If you are living with someone but seeing someone else, ask yourself this. "Would I be upset if the person I am living with was having an intimate relationship with someone else?"

If your answer is yes, then you are cheating. If your answer is no, then maybe the question should be - "Why are we together in the first place?"

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