in the name of repeating myself: boundaries of cheating

My quesitons about life didn't resolve themselves, so here i am with the very same question again which i asked about a month ago: what is the boundaries of cheating. And since my life is pretty monotous as ever, my argument will base on another movie. Going The Distance. (Important note to self here: I intend to keep my life that way).


This romantic comedy is about a long-distance relationship which of course ends in...  oops, sorry. no spoilers in this blog.


So anyway, at some point in the movie, this girl played by Drew Barrymore feels extremely frustrated in life, dissappointed in almost every aspects of it. And she has a long distance boyfriend with whom she is genuinely in love with. But yet, this is another frustration because he is never there when she really needs to feel him. And at that exact point: enters the handsome friend, who is there to listen to her.

OK, they talk, they rant (or she rants), they get drunk (or she gets), and they too intimate, and that's the point when she draws the line. well done, kudos to her. Then the real boyfriend learns about it, and he simply doesn't like it. But she defends herself: "It was nothing. Nothing happened."

Well, what was supposed to happen? I mean do you name it cheating only when they sleep together? Should it not be considered cheating if they don't sleep but share their secrets, build some sort of a very emotional relationship, yet don't have sex?

But on the other hand, if we start thinking like that and don't strictly define what is cheating and what is not, then when will we ever be able to stop? I mean, this is not a joke, women are killed in Iran or Afghanistan just because they were in a same room with a man. I remember a news story about a man in Saudi Arabia who divorced her wife because she was watching some guy on tv. And talking about tv shows, i personally know a woman whose husband forbid her to watch a very popular tv show in Turkey because she said that the star of that particular show was handsome -and i sincerely dont think this stopped her watching the re-runs in day time.