anything you do that you hide from your partner, because you know they won't approve, is cheating.

I'm not gay, and not between 22 and 30 years old but if your open to an opinion, here's mine.

Human's are interesting creatures when it comes to social relationships and history shows that what's completely acceptable and encouraged in one culture, geographical region, or time period may be considered a punishable offense in another.

For most of history, pair-bonding parameters haves been a problem child for societies and the practice has been around since humans were, well, not human. Pair-bonding is a fairly natural state that promotes ones self-image, community stability, and provides an environment for child bearing - gay pair-bonding aside.

The problem, and the one we're interested in here, is the bounds that define a relationship. Society dictates that it's necessary that parties in a relationship abstain from outside relationships on the theory that any relationship outside the bound pair is emotional and therefore bad.

I could go on about this but let's cut to the chase. A pair-bonding relationship should be founded in trust and honesty; a little love doesn't hurt either. But that doesn't necessarily equate to a totally non-sexual, non-emotional life outside the bounds of a relationship. And, if you look closely at life, it's impossible to be totally committed to one individual in all aspects of life. We are forced to build relationships at work, in our hobbies, in any area where one of the individuals in a pair-bound relationship is away from his/her partner.

So, lets go back to the trust and honesty issue. What that entails is communications. Not just pillow talk, but truly discussing the limits and bounds of what each partner is comfortable with and then agreeing on a set of actions. For instance, when I was about to get married, for a lot of reasons I can't expound on now but mostly lessons-learned in a first marriage, I told my future wife that I couldn't promise to be physically or emotional faithful. As I explained, I have too many friends who were female and I imagined I would make more as time passed, so cutting off over half the world population as potential friends wasn't going to work. As for the sex part, and again from past marital experience, I realize there are circumstances where an individual can be overwhelmed by desire and physical relations do happen.

The agreement part then came into existence. Firstly, she would prefer that I don't have sex with other women but she has no problems with me making female friends and spending time with them as long as it doesn't interfere with our family time. So, with her permission and on occasion her suggestion, I have traveled with women for business and pleasure and we have shared motel rooms but never a bed. As she asked, I have resisted the temptation to touch although, there have been opportunities. So, it comes down to our accepting that each other has relationships with people of the opposite sex and we're not jealous of the time or activities that make up those relationships.

In your case, apparently giving a hand job to someone besides his mate, whether it's cheating or not is up to the individuals involved. I don't see a problem with some physical contact myself, and if I were gay it would be an interesting dilemma to determine where the boundaries lie, but there is no right or wrong answer here. However, the parties involved should sit down and if necessary write out an agreement as to what the boundaries are and what the expected reactions to crossing those lines may be.

So, good luck with this one and don't be shy about talking it out. No matter what the outcome, it will be a positive step forward with the relationship.

Of course it is! Would you mind if your partner had another man in his mouth/her?

Think of all the things that you could do which would make your partner very upset when he/she finds out what you did....and which you, thus, would NOT want to tell them about and only do behind their back......


.......That's "cheating"!.....got it now?