If you kiss and tell, are you still unfaithful?

Once, weeks after a relationship ended, I was told that we had not been in a relationship. What did we have, I wondered at the time. Is there a word for what we had had? Once, after discovering that the person I was in love with had been holding hands with someone else, I was told that that was not unfaithfulness. What is it then, I wondered. Is there anything in between faithful and unfaithful? I sat down and thought, ‘how is it, that it is so clear to me that it was unfaithfulness, and it was not ‘unfaithful’ to the other person!’ Had we been taught at different schools? had we seen different things in life? had we just not interpreted the dictionary in the same way?

I think the latter. I mean, what else could it be? And I sat down to think about being unfaithful. Randomly, I checked dictionaries. What does it mean, this word? It meant too many things. In the British National Corpus, a search for ‘faithful’ came up with faithful to causes, religion, thoughts, people, and then finally, faithful in love, but a search for ‘unfaithful’ showed everything to be related to love and sex! So the BNC doesn’t help either, I thought. I would just have to sit and think it out.

Would I consider my beloved to be unfaithful if she looked at someone across the room, in that special way that said ‘I see you’? Or maybe if she dances sexily with someone? Or if she holds hands with someone secretly? Would I be unfaithful if I met someone suddenly for coffee and didn’t tell her I planned it? (‘it was just a coffee and not a date!’). If I make plans to be with someone in a different life, is that unfaithful? or is ‘unfaithful’ a term that we use only when sex is involved?

Sex with someone else. That’s it. Yes, definitely unfaithful. But no, another friend said. ‘I don’t care that he slept with someone, it would be worse if he cared for her’. ‘What?’ I said, outraged. ‘You don’t mind??’ Well, maybe it’s not just the sex then. Just maybe. Maybe its the thought that there will be sex! ‘No, no’ she said, exasperated. ‘You are too hung up on this sex thing’. So, yes, maybe I am.

When I sat and thought about it over a cup tea, I realised that even handholding was unfaithful in my eyes. Actually, handholding was worse than sex with another person! Hand holding was romance, chemistry, electricity. And the more I thought about this, I realised that I was actually mixing up faithfulness with something else.

Knowing you know everything she does, and thinks, and feels. Really. Being certain.

Yes, that terrible word that some call trust. You have to be able to know that that person will not hurt you. You have to be able to know that you are told the whole truth and not parts of the truth. You want to feel that you are so important to the other person that she will tell you everything. Everything. That even the hand holding will not be hidden from you. And that ‘knowing’ of the other person is a different ball game altogether.