Regular cheating can be difficult to define. Having sex with someone other than your boyfriend/girlfriend is one that pretty much everyone can agree on, but what about kissing someone else? What if you’re a guy and your girlfriend hooks up with another girl? Cheating, or not cheating? What if your girlfriend gets drunk and flashes another guy on a dare? I think we can all say we’ve been there at least once. What if she just gives that random guy at the bar a quick handy in the bathroom? (Not a good sign, but the cheating label is still up to you.) Like I said—it can get complicated. Add almost cheating to the list and it gets even stickier.
Almost cheating is the absolute thrill. It’s all of the sneaking around and sexy secretiveness of real cheating without the guilt and the very real possibility of STD’s. There’s nothing to feel guilty about because you never actually do anything—you just talk about it, or send sexy Snapchats about it, or stay up late texting about it. The whole point of almost cheating is that it’s not “as bad” as regular cheating. Almost cheaters can comfort themselves with that fact. And in some ways it’s not, honestly. A few Snapchats a day really are relatively harmless as long as they’re not of your genitals. And you’re not physically betraying your significant other, for the most part. The betrayal is all internal.
Maybe you find yourself texting that cute guy who gave you his number last weekend at the party your boyfriend couldn’t make it to. Maybe you only text him at work, and on the way home you look down at your phone and wonder if you should delete the messages. Here’s a tip: if you consider deleting messages and it has nothing to do with your significant other’s surprise birthday party, you’ve entered the realm of almost cheating. It’s sexy and it’s fun, and it’s worse than actual cheating.
Almost cheating is worse because it turns the person you love into a psycho. He gets all paranoid because it seems like you’re always on your phone—which you are—and you tell him he’s imagining it, that you haven’t been on it any more than usual. Then he asks about that name that popped up when you received a Snapchat, and you tell him it’s some random person from work. If it’s a gender-neutral name, like Jamie, you might even say it’s another girl from work to throw him off the track. You’re lying, and deep down he knows it, but he wants to trust you. So when the inevitable day comes that he finally blows up on you, you get to totally bust his ass on how crazy he’s been acting when absolutely nothing weird has been happening with you. He has no proof of anything, and you know it. It can all be explained away by you, the almost cheater.
I don’t blame almost cheaters. I understand the fun and sexiness and the secrets, and no relationship is perfect. At some point you very well might find yourself in an almost cheating situation. Whether it’s a text or it’s a guy sliding your hands over your ass in a club, you get no judgment from me– unless you’re the person dating me, of course. I would rather have someone actually cheat on me than almost cheat. Almost cheating means you were thinking about me, and thinking about how you’d get away with it, and you did it anyway.
Maybe it’s a girl thing, but if someone were almost cheating on me I’d rather they get the fuck out of my life already instead of leading me into the paranoia trap. Nobody wins when someone almost cheats. That’s advice my mom would be proud of..
Nice Move293
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Shannon Layne
My favorite things are tiaras, compliments, and free drinks, which are becoming harder to come by the more I tend to show up at the bar in sweat pants. The proudest moment of my life so far has been landing an actual, paying job that allows me to Facebook stalk people for a living. I tweet about my mom way too often, who is constantly trying to remind me that I'm not nearly as cool as I think I am. Please send me funny stories to read at work here: shannon.laynee@yahoo.com
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