Is it ever *ok* to cheat?

[Hime]

Originally Posted by Dagney

For me, it's the 'appearance of evil'. If what you do, or how you act when you're not around me could lead others to believe that something untoward is going on between you and another person - that is leading down the path to being unfaithful in someway.

Because of this, we have an agreement. He has female friends he knew before he met me. (Friends of his, and of his late wife) I have male friends I knew before I met him. Those friends will always be a part of our lives - and neither of us mind if we spend time with them without the other one of us around. However, we will not have 'single' opposite sex friends outside of our marriage. Let's see if this makes sense. I go to the bookstore. I meet a person who happens to be male. Said person asks me to go do something with him. Would I go? No. Because to us - that opens the door for people to assume that something is going on outside of our marriage.

But what if one of your close male friends has a breakup/divorce? Will you stop being friends?

When Daniel and I moved here, our best friends were a couple called "Jim" and "Andrea." They had been dating for eight years. Both Daniel and I really liked Jim and got along ok with Andrea, and we did couple's stuff together. Then, shortly after we moved here, they broke up in a rather awful fashion (cheating was not involved, but really nasty things were said). Even if I had wanted to stay friends with Andrea, she sent me a polite but distant email afterwards that strongly implied that she did not want further contact with us. So now Jim is a very close friend to both of us. Sometimes the three of us hang out, sometimes he hangs out with just me, sometimes with just Daniel. If he's seeing someone at the time, the four of us might hang out together. Daniel sometimes teases me about liking him because, well, he is a very attractive man, but he trusts both of us and knows that there is nothing going on and no potential for anything to go on.

Your rules probably work for a lot of people. I don't think they would work for me, though, mostly because I don't get along as well with women as I do with men, generally. My best friends are my brother, the above-mentioned Jim, and my best friend from college, who is a gay man. For a long time I thought that guys weren't interested in me at all, until I realized that the big reason I didn't get hit on a lot was because almost every time I went out, I was with a guy!

[Dagney]

Originally Posted by Hime

But what if one of your close male friends has a breakup/divorce? Will you stop being friends?

If one of my existing friends has a life altering relationship change (breakup/divorce/death), we wouldn't change how we feel about that person. Our guidelines start from the point Charles and I started dating, and move forward - friends that existed prior to that point are 'grandfathered in'. Couples friends made after that point - aren't 'eliminated' based on relationship changes - we're just not out looking for single friends to hang out with.