Dear Joely: Does It Count as Cheating If We Haven’t Done Anything?

When every message is innocent, but the relationship isn’t.

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here?

Dear Joely,

I’m married, reasonably happily, and have been for eleven years. About six months ago I started working closely with a man in another department. Nothing has happened. We haven’t kissed, touched inappropriately, exchanged naked photographs or accidentally found ourselves sharing a hotel room at a conference.

But I think about him all the time.

We message most days, ostensibly about work, although work now seems to require an extraordinary number of observations about what we’ve had for dinner, things our partners have said, songs we like and whether either of us slept well.

I know when he’s had a bad day before his wife does. He knows things about my marriage that I haven’t told my closest friends. If something funny happens, he’s the person I want to tell. I’ve started choosing clothes for work based on whether I might see him.

Here’s the ridiculous part. We’ve never actually acknowledged that there’s anything between us. If you read our messages individually, almost every one could be defended in court.

My husband has met him. He likes him.

Last week my husband saw his name come up on my phone and said, completely innocently, “You two have become good mates.”

I felt sick.

So what exactly am I doing? Can you cheat on someone without ever doing anything that technically counts as cheating?

And if the answer is yes, what the hell do I do about it?

Yours, apparently not dead,
Married

Dear Married, But Apparently Not Dead,

The good news is that your vagina has an excellent alibi.

At all relevant times, it was elsewhere.

Unfortunately, I’m less convinced about the rest of you.

You’ve presented a meticulous case for the defence. No kissing. No inappropriate touching. No naked photographs. No hotel-room incident requiring you to explain why there was only one bathrobe.

You would particularly like entered into evidence the fact that every individual message is innocent.

I’m afraid the court is more interested in the pattern.

Because yes, something can become an affair before anybody takes their pants off.

We like physical cheating because it has lovely clear borders.

Kissed.

Touched.

Fucked.

You can point at an event and say, “There. Thursday. 9.17 pm. Infidelity commenced.”

Emotional intimacy is much less considerate.

There may be no Thursday. There may just be six months of Tuesdays.

A message after work. A private joke. A song. A bad day you tell him about before you tell your husband.

Nothing happens.

And then nothing happens again tomorrow.

Until an entirely defensible collection of nothings has become something.

And I think you already know that, because your husband saw this man’s name on your phone and said:

“You two have become good mates.”

And you felt sick.

That’s the bit I’d pay attention to.

Not because your husband caught you.

Because he didn’t.

He trusts the description he’s been given.

Good mates.

And you know it doesn’t quite describe what’s happening inside you.

People get crushes while married. They notice other people. Marriage does not cause every other sexually interesting human being on Earth to become a pot plant.

So forget, for a moment, whether a magistrate would officially declare you unfaithful.

Ask yourself instead:

What are you protecting from your husband?

The frequency of the messages? The intimacy? The anticipation? The fact that seeing this man’s name on your phone does something to you?

Because secrecy doesn’t always mean deleting messages and changing passwords.

Sometimes secrecy is simply allowing somebody to possess all the facts while withholding the meaning.

Then comes the more interesting question.

What do you actually want?

Do you want this man?

Do you want your husband?

Or do you want the version of yourself that appears when this other man is looking at you?

Funny again. Interesting again. Desired again.

Sometimes the intoxicating thing isn’t the new person.

It’s who we get to be with them.

So I’d put a little distance between you and your colleague while you work that out. Not because Joely has arrived in sensible shoes carrying a laminated sheet entitled APPROPRIATE WORKPLACE BOUNDARIES.

Because you need to look at your marriage without comparing it with a man who currently exists in beautifully edited fragments.

Your colleague doesn’t leave wet towels on your floor. You don’t know how he behaves when the boiler breaks and somebody has gastro.

Your husband is living in the full-length feature. This other man has an excellent trailer.

That doesn’t mean the attraction isn’t real.

It means you don’t yet know what it’s real for.

So no, Married But Apparently Not Dead, I’m not sentencing you to seven years for aggravated messaging.

But I am confiscating the argument that nothing is happening because nothing has happened.

Something has.

Your husband called it friendship.

Your stomach objected to the verdict.

I’d listen to your stomach.

It appears to be the only member of this arrangement who has stopped pretending not to know what’s going on.

Yours, in defence of innocent vaginas everywhere,
Joely