Cheating on a Need-to-Know Basis

by Gwen Cooper — July 11, 2007

I've never been one to split technical hairs when it comes to the subject of cheating. If you're involved in a monogamous relationship with one person and you make out with someone else, that's cheating in my book. So I give myself no free passes when I admit that, when Brad leaned in to kiss me and I kissed him back (and, reader, I did kiss him), I was cheating on Robert. When your tongue's been in somebody else's mouth, you've crossed a line. And the difference between that and actually having sex with somebody else is a difference of degree, not kind.

So I can't say that I kissed Brad because I didn't really think it was wrong, or that I could slide by on some kind of technicality like, "Yeah, I kissed him, but it's not like I let him touch my boob or anything."

The only thing I can say in my own defense is that I think you can tell a lot about what it would be like to sleep with somebody by the way they kiss--and, after nearly 15 years of flirtation, I wanted to know what it would have been like to sleep with Brad. I can almost say that I needed to know. Of course, going on that kind of fact-finding expedition can start you down a dangerous road; if the kiss is awful, then you know you're not missing anything. But if the kiss is great, as this one certainly was, it can be hard to close the bag of chips after eating just one (if you catch my drift). Stopping after 10 or so minutes of intense making out isn't much easier when you're in your early 30s than it was in your late teens.

But stop I did. Brad and I haven't spoken since then, nor do I intend to. So the question really becomes: What, if anything, do I tell Robert? Putting aside as much as I can the fact that I love him and don't want to lose him, is this something he needs to know? Would sharing the information only serve to hurt him for no good reason? Or is telling myself that just a convenient way of avoiding what I definitely don't want to do in the first place?

If I do decide that I have to tell him, every day that goes by without my telling him is like a lie. So I definitely need to figure it out soon...

Gwen Cooper is the author of Diary of a South Beach Party Girl, recently published by Simon & Schuster. To read all of Gwen Cooper's posts in "The Dating Life," click here.