[Charmaine]

Bangbangben is right - cheating involves deception. If you're not able to tell your wife (or girlfriend) whatever you have done due to guilt, ignorance or indifference, that amounts to cheating.

If you decided to go for a commercial handjob, and just when she was about to touch your dick you chicken out, are you still "clean"? If she has only started to jerk you off for a couple of seconds before you pulled the plug, are you considered a cheater already? But if you went for the full course, then proceeded to go home and tell your wife about it, would that be alright? For a possessive freak of a man, if his girlfriend went out clubbing with her friends and ended up laying her head on a male friend's shoulder for a couple of seconds in a drunken state before she came to, she may well be the biggest cheater of all time in his eyes.

It's all relative, and varies from person to person. The very definition of a cheat and its boundaries can only be defined between 2 parties and its lines distinctively drawn. That's why it's important to lay the ground rules first before anyone decides to embark on a meaningful relationship and the reason why people always say to you that communication is everything - that's because it is.