101: Can You Cheat on Someone Who You Aren’t Technically Dating?

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May 15

In this episode, I answer a question from a listener who wants to know whether they need to feel guilty for cheating on someone they aren’t technically dating? We will explore the feelings of guilt and learn why avoiding difficult conversations with partners and lovers can lead to unforeseen difficulties down the road. By the end of this episode, you will have a new view on guilt and new tools for processing guilt and handling tough situations in relationships.

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Timestamps ⏱️

Introduction: 00:15
Question: 01:15
Outro: 22:37

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This podcast was transcribed by an AI tool called Castmagic. Please forgive any typos or errors.
Amanda Durocher [00:00:01]:
Welcome to New View Advice. I'm your host, Amanda Durocher, and I invite you to join me here each week as I offer advice on how to move through whatever problem or trauma is holding you back from living life to the fullest. Let's get started. Hey, beautiful soul. Welcome to Nuvia Advice. I'm your host, Amanda Durocher. And if you're new here, this is a healing centered advice podcast where I offer guidance for the healing journey. It's not my intention to give you all the answers.
Amanda Durocher [00:00:24]:
I believe you have all the answers you seek. You just may need a new view and a little help along the way. Thank you so much for joining me for today's episode. In today's episode, I answer a question from a listener who wants to know whether they need to feel guilty for cheating on someone they aren't technically dating. Together, we will explore the feelings of guilt and learn why avoiding difficult conversations with partners and lovers can lead to unforeseen consequences down the road. By the end of this episode, you'll have a new view on guilt, new tools for processing guilt, and handling tough situations in relationships. If you haven't checked out my website, I invite you to check it out after this episode for more free resources, including journal prompts, meditations, blog posts, and podcast episodes about the healing journey. You can check that out at nuviadvice.com, and today's episode show notes will be at nuviadvice.com/one01.
Amanda Durocher [00:01:07]:
With that, let's jump on into today's listener question. Hi, Amanda. I'm in a relationship right now where I feel like I'm actually in love the first time in my life. Flashback to the beginning when we were not officially together, but we had started going out. We were going on a couple dates a month, but nothing too serious. We had a conversation one night where he didn't want me to think we were in a relationship. He wanted to take things slow, keep it casual, and get to know each other before we rushed into anything. I thought this was fine, but it made me feel like he didn't actually want anything serious with me as I am 4 years younger than him, and this has happened with past relationships, and they ended before they even started.
Amanda Durocher [00:01:47]:
It was 2 months into us hanging out and going on dates that I started a new job. I met someone at my new job. We clicked, and I hooked up with this coworker a couple of times. Now, the original guy is talking as if we have been officially dating ever since we met, but we haven't. In my head, I assumed the original guy and my now boyfriend was also hooking up with other people as well. I can't get the guilt of hooking up with someone else out of my head. I feel as if I went too far when he thought we were together, but I didn't. He never asked me to be his girlfriend.
Amanda Durocher [00:02:17]:
There was never another conversation about officially dating, but I can't seem to shake this guilt for feeling like I cheated, but I know I didn't. I can't tell him about this because I know he will be so upset, and I don't wanna ruin this love. I just don't know how to shake this guilt I have. Can you help? Thank you. Thank you so much for this question. I think this is a great question, and I think many people can relate to this experience of the in between of relationships. You were dating this guy, but you weren't officially dating, and now you're officially together. And that time where you weren't official is murky.
Amanda Durocher [00:02:51]:
Right? So he thought one thing about it. You thought another thing. And I think that this happens in many relationships and especially when, unfortunately, there's a lack of communication, which we'll talk about throughout this question. The first thing I wanna talk about with this question is the feeling of guilt you mentioned because guilt is so common. Guilt is the number one emotion expressed in questions and in my 1 on 1 sessions. People always mention that they feel guilty they don't know how to shake this guilt. And sometimes it's for infidelity and sometimes it's for other things, but I think that so many humans walk around feeling guilty. I think this is because guilt is connected to the feeling that we did something wrong or that we did something bad.
Amanda Durocher [00:03:32]:
And, unfortunately, I think so many humans suffer from feeling like they're bad, Like, they did something wrong, like, they did something bad, and they're constantly afraid of making a mistake. I talk with people all the time who are afraid that somebody's gonna be mad at them if they set a boundary or they're afraid that somebody's gonna tell them they're wrong if they speak their truth. And I think that guilt plagues so many people. And I wanna bring this up because you mentioned feeling this guilt even though you know you shouldn't feel guilty. But I do think that you're feeling this guilt for a reason. So my first piece of advice is for you to really connect to why do you feel guilty and what do you feel guilty about. Because you and other people listening to this episode are going to feel guilty about different things. So you could feel guilty that you slept with someone else, or you might feel guilty that you're not being honest with your now boyfriend, Or your guilt could be that you feel like you did something wrong and you just keep beating yourself up for doing something wrong.
Amanda Durocher [00:04:27]:
And I think it's important to start exploring this guilt because as I mentioned, I really believe guilt is one of the strongest emotions humans suffer from right now. I think so many people feel guilty. I can't believe how many people come to me and just tell me that they're overwhelmed with guilt. And I know I can relate to this feeling throughout my life as well. And feelings of guilt often feel so intense because it brings up old feelings of guilt. It triggers past feelings of guilt. And like I said, it triggers a past belief oftentimes of not being good enough, of not feeling like enough, of feeling bad inherently, of feeling like we did something wrong, like something was our fault that we still haven't processed. So I'm gonna give an example with somebody I was talking to the other day that we realized that the guilt they were expressing today actually had nothing up to do with their present day circumstance.
Amanda Durocher [00:05:14]:
And it actually did with the guilt they felt all the way back to their childhood, and they felt guilty for their parents getting divorced. Was their parents getting divorced their fault? Of course not. But these feelings continued to reside in this person because they hadn't looked at or really been with the small child who felt guilty for their parents' divorce and felt like they had done something wrong and like it was their fault even though it wasn't. But that small child at the time didn't know how to process the experience happening. It was very out of their control. And so from a child's view, children view the world incredibly selfish. They view it as if everything is somehow connected to them. They don't understand yet that things happen outside of our control.
Amanda Durocher [00:05:57]:
So children take on the beliefs as if they did something, and this person had taken on the belief that they did something wrong and so their parents got divorced. And through us exploring this, they were able to see that the guilt they were continuing to play out today was rooted back in that guilt. And that's just one example, but I wanted to share that because I think that it's so important when sussing out guilt in our own lives to begin looking at what is the root of this guilt. How long have we truly felt guilty? Do we keep creating situations in our lives where we feel guilty again and again? When we experience patterns in our lives, it's oftentimes an invitation for us to go deeper. So if we have a wound like I am bad or I did something wrong or I am the reason for all this pain, we're going to continue to create situations from that place because the world we live in now is a reflection of our inner world. And so if we have beliefs that we are wrong, we tend to continue to create situations where we feel wrong, whether that is true or not. So for you in this question, you're saying that you feel guilty, but you know that you shouldn't feel guilty. You know you did nothing wrong.
Amanda Durocher [00:07:10]:
That's what you said. You said that you know you didn't do anything wrong, but you feel guilty. And so the guilt isn't necessarily pointing towards that you did something wrong. The guilt can very often be tied to past guilt that is just triggered whenever we do anything that could be labeled bad. I hope that makes sense. And one other thing I wanted to mention here with guilt, a pattern I've noticed with guilt is that many people who feel guilty all the time or feel inherently guilty are people who feel responsible for other people's feelings. So, again, this pattern of feeling responsible for other people's feelings tends to go back to childhood. Oftentimes, when somebody suffers from feeling responsible for other people's feelings, it's because they had a parent whose feelings they felt responsible for.
Amanda Durocher [00:07:56]:
They felt as though they had to show up in a certain way in order to please this parent, or the parent shared too many emotions with this child. Right? So if a parent was always angry at a child, that child felt responsible for that anger and oftentimes would try to change themselves to change the parent's behavior. But oftentimes, this is unconscious. This is just a pattern that develops in childhood, and then this continues throughout life that somebody who feels responsible for other people's feelings will change themselves in order to make other people happy, in order to make other people comfortable, in order to not rock the boat. But unfortunately, though this pattern has a good heart, I wanna say, I think it's kind that you don't want other people to be upset. But this pattern has us ignore ourselves. So the problem with this is that very often we begin to change ourselves and ignore our own emotions, so we sacrifice ourselves. Or as I talked about in a previous episode, we self abandon.
Amanda Durocher [00:08:56]:
We abandon how we're truly feeling in order to change ourselves to make somebody else happy. And guilt can arise when we can't do this. So I don't know if this is true for you in your situation, but maybe for somebody else. But I'm gonna use your situation as an example. So say you now see that you did something that would upset your now boyfriend, and you cannot control how he would react if you were to share what you did. So you feel guilty because inside you feel like you did something wrong because you're not able to make him happy if you were to share your truth. I hope that makes sense, but basically, this guilt can arise within us because we feel like if we can't control somebody else's emotional behavior that we did something wrong. Or if we make them upset, that we did something wrong because we're so used to changing ourselves in order to make others happy.
Amanda Durocher [00:09:47]:
But again, this is a pattern that needs to be reset because the persons whose feelings you're ignoring when you're prioritizing somebody else's feelings are your own. And we are responsible for our own feelings and we are not responsible for the feelings of others. Gonna say it one more time. We are responsible for our own feelings and we are not responsible for the feelings of others. I really want that to sink in. So if somebody's mad at you and somebody is angry with you, it is not your fault. They are responsible for their own anger and how they handle that anger. If something you say makes somebody very very sad, it is not your responsibility to take away that sadness.
Amanda Durocher [00:10:28]:
And this is something I think is so important to learn on the healing journey that you are not responsible for the feelings of others. So many of us learned at a young age that we were responsible for the feelings of others and we were responsible for the feelings of adults. My hand is up over here. This has been a lifelong thing I've been trying to unravel. All the adults who put their feelings on me and made me feel responsible for their feelings and made me feel responsible for their states of happiness or sorrow or whatever feeling was arising. They made me feel it was my fault. I was not responsible for any of that. We're all responsible for our own feelings and the way we process those feelings.
Amanda Durocher [00:11:05]:
And I'm a strong believer in hard feelings are not an excuse for bad behavior. Doesn't mean bad behavior doesn't happen. I know that I've had hard feelings and done some bad behavior. But I like to remind myself that because if somebody else is having hard feelings and they throw bad behavior at me, it's not my fault. They're responsible for their own feelings. I wanna share this with you because people who experience guilt and immense guilt and suffer from a lot of guilt often feel responsible for the feelings of the world, and that is a very, very heavy burden to carry. You can't control everybody, and you can't control your boyfriend, and you can't control how he would react to knowing that there was a miscommunication in your relationship. And so my next piece of advice is that after you explore this guilt is to be really honest with yourself.
Amanda Durocher [00:11:51]:
Because to me, through reading your question, there were a lot of assumptions made and assumptions can be dangerous. And you were making assumptions based off of past experiences. And unfortunately, your past experiences were influencing you in the present. That is so common. That's what we're talking about with the guilt. And for you, you assumed he was dating somebody else at the same time, and it sounds like he wasn't. And you assumed he didn't think you were in a relationship. You also had a conversation about that, so it was an assumption months down the road, it sounds like, and it sounds like he considered you guys dating.
Amanda Durocher [00:12:25]:
But there were assumptions made because there were conversations not had, and that's not anybody's fault. That's not a good or bad thing. It just is. You guys seemed to skip a few conversations. Right? Like you said, he never asked you to be his girlfriend, so you never had an official conversation about becoming official. So as I mentioned earlier, you were in this murky place for a while, and in the murkiness, you hooked up with somebody else and he apparently didn't. So what this tells me is that I think moving forward, it's going to be important for you to learn how to have tough conversations. And there's nothing wrong with that.
Amanda Durocher [00:13:00]:
I think healthy relationships are built on communication and are built on tough conversations. Right? So many of us didn't learn how to have tough conversations growing up or our parents didn't model tough conversation, and so we don't know how to have them. And sometimes they're messy. But I wanna go back to that you're not responsible for his feelings because that can be a reason we don't wanna have tough conversations is because we can't control the other person's reaction to that tough conversation. But it sounds to me like you 2 need to have an honest conversation, and you can choose if you're gonna disclose to him that you hooked up with somebody else or not. That's a personal decision that I trust you will make based off of what you explore with the guilt and through your exploration of honesty with yourself. But I do think you need to have an honest conversation. But I do invite you to have an honest conversation about how you didn't know you 2 were officially dating.
Amanda Durocher [00:13:47]:
I think it's okay to bring that up. Right? Like, oh, I didn't understand we were dating. You never officially asked me to be your girlfriend. When did you think we were officially dating? I remember when we had this conversation where you said you didn't wanna be official, and you can tell him how that made you feel. I think that it's going to be important for you to have a voice within this relationship. You mentioned he's 4 years older than you. And again, I don't know if this is you, but I'm sharing this because there's many people who listen to this episode. But I find sometimes when young women date older men, they can lose their voice or at least for a little bit.
Amanda Durocher [00:14:19]:
And what I mean by that is that many times when there is an older person in the relationship, it could even be an older woman and a younger man, the younger one looks to the older one for guidance within the relationship. But it's really important that no matter the age difference, you create equal footing within the relationship, and both of your feelings are heard and both of your experiences are heard. No one person should have a step up or more power within the relationship. A relationship is about equality. And so not all moments in a relationship feel equal. I think many times when relationships are starting, it can feel like one person has more power than the other and then there's a switch. But, really, in order to create a healthy relationship, you wanna create an equal relationship. An equal relationship would be that your view of the relationship matters just as much as his and that you're open to each other's feelings and you're not looking to one up each other or you're not looking to put each other on a pedestal.
Amanda Durocher [00:15:12]:
You know, when we fall in love, it can be easy to put somebody on a pedestal. Like, I love this person so much. I don't wanna lose them. But then we can tend to lose a piece of ourselves. And, of course, we don't wanna lose the people we love. But it's important to remember that we are just as worthy as the other person in the relationship and that in a healthy relationship, we get to have a say. We get to have tough conversations. We get to share our feelings.
Amanda Durocher [00:15:37]:
And that it's important that you have a voice within this relationship. And again, that might not apply to you and you may not think that resonates, but I did wanna share that. And it's funny I wanted to share that. I think that was also inspired by I watched the movie, the Titanic, the other night. I love the Titanic. I love that movie. Okay. So this isn't me insulting Titanic.
Amanda Durocher [00:15:59]:
I love the first half of the Titanic. I think it's about a woman finding freedom. She feels trapped within a loveless relationship, and she meets a guy who helps her to understand what it would be like to live a life of her own. Love it. But if you watch Titanic, Rose falls in love with Jack. And though they go through a difficult situation, the Titanic's sinking, they never really have a tough conversation. You know, they never are met with, like, an obstacle of life. You know, they're never met with, like, that moment they have to pay the bills, or they're never met with that moment where somebody did something they regret.
Amanda Durocher [00:16:34]:
Right? And that's real about relationships, and I wanna share that because real love isn't like the movies because movies tend to show a little snippet of relationships where relationships are a journey. They're not a destination. Right? We wanna grow with somebody. And oftentimes, movies only show one small snippet of what it can be like to be in a relationship. And we can think a relationship is Rose and Jack, all fun and games, all love and make outs and physical touch. But true relationships have all of it. The ups, the downs, the ebbs, the flows, just like life has ups and downs, ebbs and flows, just like your own healing journey has ups and downs, ebbs and flows. So I wanna share that because I invite you to think about having a tough conversation or what feels tough to you.
Amanda Durocher [00:17:20]:
And it's okay for not every moment of your relationship to be blissful. Sometimes there's some tough conversations, but that's where we grow with one another. Right? There's nothing wrong with that. It's where we grow ourselves, and it's where we become mature, and it's where we learn to have a voice, and it's where we learn what feels good and what doesn't feel good. And we learn to talk about our feelings rather than react. We learn to respond. So I just invite you to think about that. Right? You said you're in love with this person maybe for the first time, and that's beautiful.
Amanda Durocher [00:17:52]:
So I invite you to prioritize building a strong foundation rather than a rocky foundation. And it sounds like this murky time you 2 had together has put you guys kinda on uneven footing, And it's important for you to work on creating that solid base for your relationship in order for you guys to grow and build a relationship that is lasting and will be healthy and loving for both of you. The last thing I wanted to mention before I wrap up this episode is be kind to yourself. I always end these episodes talking about self compassion. And life can be really hard, and the situation you described isn't black or white. Your feelings are valid. Don't beat yourself up. You didn't do anything wrong as you said.
Amanda Durocher [00:18:35]:
You don't feel that way, but you have this guilt. That's why I invite you to explore the guilt because it sounds like you really don't feel like you did anything wrong. And so I want you to lean into loving yourself and kind thoughts rather than self punishing thoughts. I think this is a learning experience for you. And growth is great. Learning is great. And I think that self kindness can come in when we recognize that we're growing and we're learning and we're human. So much of self compassion is about recognizing we're humans and we make mistakes, and that we're always growing and we don't know what we don't know.
Amanda Durocher [00:19:07]:
You had experiences in the past that were different than this one. You didn't know that you should have a certain conversation with this guy because in the past, as you said, the relationships ended before they began. You didn't know where this was going. You didn't know how to handle this situation because it was different, but you didn't know at the beginning it was different. Be kind to yourself. Forgive yourself. You know, to loop back to the title of this episode, can you technically cheat on someone who you weren't official with? I just wanna say for anybody out there, it's really going to be you exploring this situation for you. I think it's so important for you to be kind to yourself because the truth is you didn't know what you didn't know.
Amanda Durocher [00:19:46]:
And if you didn't think you were together, then you were making decisions from that place. And many times, this guilt can also arise because you're judging your past self with future information that they didn't have. So say you're hooking up with somebody else because in the present of that moment, you're not in a relationship. Fast forward 2 months, you're in a relationship, you start having guilt about the past. The truth is in the past, you didn't know what you know now. So I invite you to be kind to yourself. Don't judge your past self for what your present self knows now. Instead, you can invite yourself to learn from it.
Amanda Durocher [00:20:20]:
I think we can learn from every situation. And maybe next time you'd ask more questions or you'd have a conversation or maybe you wanna have a conversation now. But I invite you to be kind to yourself. I invite you to lean into that self compassion and really loving yourself from just a couple months ago. Right? I talk about inner child work all the time on the podcast. But you also can do, like, inner 3 months ago work. Right? Inner child work's really about connecting with past versions of ourselves, and that could be you from 12 years ago, and that could be you from 20 years ago. That could be you from 3 months ago.
Amanda Durocher [00:20:51]:
You know, be kind to yourself. We're always ebbing and flowing, and we're always growing. And so it's important for you to remember that when you're judging your past self. I think so much of the healing journey is about learning to be your own best friend, learning to love yourself because you deserve it. And so many of us, which makes me so sad, don't love ourselves because we're not taught how to love ourselves and how to honor ourselves and how to respect ourselves. I know that was true for me. That's one of reasons I started this podcast because it's been so hard for me to learn to love myself. I had so much self hatred, and I think this situation you mentioned is a learning opportunity.
Amanda Durocher [00:21:27]:
And only you know if you need to tell your partner what happened and if this was technically cheating. But from what you described, it sounds like you don't feel that way. So I invite you to be kind to yourself, explore that guilt, explore the assumptions you had made and where those originated from so in the future you don't make decisions from those assumptions because assumptions oftentimes aren't clear. When we make decisions out of assumptions, we're not making decisions from the present. We're making decisions from often the past. So be kind to yourself. I think you deserve kindness. I think you deserve your own understanding, and you deserve to forgive yourself.
Amanda Durocher [00:22:03]:
I think that without communication, mistakes can be made, assumptions can be made, and people aren't on the same wavelength without healthy communication and clear communication. That's why I talk about communication so much throughout these episodes is because clear communication is so important, and so much of the world is lacking clear communication. So these mistakes and these moments, these mishaps and these hiccups can happen. So I hope something in this answer was helpful. Thank you so much for this question. I'm sending you so much love. Thank you so much for joining me for another episode of newbie advice. As always, I am so grateful to have these conversations and to dive deeper into the healing journey.
Amanda Durocher [00:22:46]:
If you haven't already, I invite you to rate and review the podcast. You're on Spotify, you can let me know what you think of this episode. And if you're on Apple, you can let me know what you think of the podcast. So I always love getting feedback and hearing from listeners. And thank you so much for joining me for another episode of new view advice. As always, I hope I was able to offer you a new view on whatever you may be going through. Sending you all my love. See you next time.