I Don’t Care What Anyone Says, Kissing Counts As Cheating

In a recent survey by the online dating site for married people Ashley Madison, 44% of people said kissing isn’t always cheating. Apparently, “it depends” on various factors such as how intimate the kiss was or what type of kiss it was. The survey, which included over 3,000 participants from the US, Australia, UK, and Canada, also found that roughly 24% of people think kissing doesn’t count as cheating (WTF?), while approximately 31% said it does. Let’s get one thing clear: kissing someone who’s not your partner makes you guilty of infidelity.

1. It’s the gateway to bigger betrayal. Bigger forms of infidelity begin with a kiss! Kissing opens people up to wanting more. It’s sort of like the bite of chocolate cake you try that makes you desire the entire thing. If a kiss is fantastic and filled with more sparks than Independence Day, who’s to say that it won’t happen again and go further next time?
2. It’s incredibly intimate. It might seem like kissing is not as big of a betrayal as sex, but think about when people have emotional affairs that don’t involve any physical behaviors: they don’t have to touch each other to be doing things that should be reserved for their relationship partners. If that’s infidelity, how can a tangible kiss not be?
3. If it’s a bad kiss, that doesn’t make it nothing. If your boyfriend comes to you and says he messed up by kissing someone else, but you shouldn’t worry because he felt nothing or the kiss was bad, that doesn’t make it less of a betrayal! What he’s really saying is that if the kiss had been electric, he would’ve done it again, and who knows where things would’ve led? Whether the kiss is good or bad, it’s still a kiss that he shouldn’t be sharing with anyone else.
4. Come on, there has to be some attraction. Would a guy kiss a woman he thought was really unattractive or unappealing? There has to be something there to make him want to kiss her, even if it’s just a spark. Kisses don’t just happen. Remember that time you were at a party chatting to someone when you turned to reach for a glass of champagne and suddenly their tongue was in your mouth? Of course you don’t because it never happens that way.
5. It doesn’t depend on the type of kiss. We’re not talking about a grandma kiss here. We’re talking about two people kissing each other on the lips, and there’s often tongue involved. In other words, romantic kissing. If the guy claims that it was just a silly little kiss, that’s a copout. Consider this: if he reached over and held another woman’s hand across the table, or held her hand while they walked together, is one worse than the other? Not really. It’s the contact and feelings surrounding it — the need to touch someone — that make it betrayal. His lips shouldn’t be touching another woman’s. Period!
6. If you wouldn’t want your partner to do it, it’s cheating. It doesn’t matter if people say you’re overreacting or being nuts because you want to dump your BF for kissing someone else. If you have clear relationship deal-breakers and kissing someone else is one of them, then you need to follow through. It doesn’t matter what the world thinks. Maybe to you kissing someone else is a complete violation of your relationship standards and values, and you’d have every right to feel that.
7. It points to a relationship problem. Why would the guy you’re dating feel the need to kiss someone else? You have to wonder why he’d even put himself in a situation where kissing someone else was an option. And no, being drunk doesn’t explain it away. There has to be something wrong with the relationship for infidelity to happen, otherwise, he wouldn’t be seeking out kissing opportunities with other people.
8. It’s enough to break trust for good. Can you really trust your partner after he kisses another person? Can you ever believe that he didn’t want to kiss her or that it “just happened”? Can you really trust that it’ll never happen again? How can you be so sure? That’s what makes kissing so bad. It’s not just that it’s betrayal, but it fills you with doubt. It makes you question the guy you’re with and if he’s trustworthy, and that’s a circle of hell.
9. It’s not always about intention. A guy who’s cheated on you by kissing another woman might say to you, “But I didn’t mean for it to happen!” or “I didn’t want to sleep with her — it was just a silly thing.” Really? That’s such BS. Intentions matter, but what matters more are actions. Someone can have the best intentions to do something, like stay faithful, but it means squat if they’re not doing it. Your boyfriend might not have seen the woman he kissed as sex partner potential or girlfriend potential, but no matter what, he still kissed her. His actions matter, not so much where he thought the kiss would go.
10. You need to draw the line somewhere. If you don’t draw the line of where faithfulness ends and betrayal begins at kissing, then where should it be? Isn’t swapping saliva and lip-locking beyond the line?
11. Besides, a kiss is not just a kiss. According to evolutionary anthropologist Helen Fisher from Rutgers University in New Jersey, kissing plays a role in three phases of evolved reproductive strategy. It sparks the libido, which makes people want to have sex with more than one partner. It’s also a way for us to keep romantic love going strong, and it’s an important part of the bonds we have with our partners. Still think kissing is just a kiss? Exactly.