Are You Cheating? How Can You Tell?

Adultery.

In these souped-up, soap operatic times, when affairs political and sexual spark across airwaves in a wink, the term seems downright old-fashioned.

In fact, since Clinterngate first hit the media fan, rumors have circulated that the traditional definition of adultery is just too confining for some sophisticates. There are those, it is said, who figure that in the 1990s, anything short of extramarital coitus--including oral sex--is kinda OK.

To which the universal reaction appears to be: “Yeah, right.”

An unscientific survey from East L.A. beauty salons to Westside bars produced what can be paraphrased as a basic, often-blushing, three-part response:

Sure, the rest of society has modified its definition of and tolerance for adultery, but my standard is more restrictive than ever--and, by the way, Buster, the real problem is idiot reporters who continue to lower the level of civil discourse by asking inane questions about subjects best kept private.

The 10th edition of Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary describes adultery as: “Voluntary sexual intercourse between a married man and someone other than his wife, or between a married woman and someone other than her husband.”

The same dictionary describes intercourse as “physical sexual contact between individuals that involves the genitalia of at least one person.”

Only one person approached for this story even knew someone who thought oral sex should be excluded from the definition of adultery. This person said she told a friend about widespread speculation that perhaps the president held such a view. The friend reportedly replied: “Why would talking on the phone be adultery?”

Most people contacted, though, said that even the dictionary definition is far too forgiving.

“Adultery is absolutely anything,” said a 29-year-old dietitian named Ester, casting meaningful looks at her mother and sister, who sat across from her outside a Farmers Market doughnut house. “It’s meeting a colleague at lunch and getting close to them. It’s anything.”

And what about the folks who would exclude oral . . .

“Absolute rubbish!” she interrupted.

Her sister, Pamela, looked down at her hands. “It doesn’t even have to be physical,” she said.

Then the sisters glanced at each other and broke into whoops of cathartic laughter. Wiping tears from her eyes, Ester explained that she’s going through a divorce brought on by her husband’s infidelity.

“It killed me; it wounded me; it left me without breath. It was worse than death,” she said, the laughter gone.

At Santa Monica’s Third Street Promenade, Kirt McMaster said he learned that same lesson from a former girlfriend.

“There’s nothing worse than being betrayed,” he said, as he sat sideways to the procession of temptation parading past Yankee Doodle’s. “It affects every fiber of your body. I’d rather be stabbed.”

McMaster and his friend Shane Walker, a young film industry multi-hyphenate, agreed that the word “marriage” is academic in such discussions--that adultery and unfaithfulness to a lover are essentially the same thing. They also agreed that there’s no wiggle room in defining the term.

“It’s black and white,” said Walker. “There’s no gray area . . . . It’s not like you can go out and kiss someone else and it’s OK.”

McMaster nodded. “Even dancing freaks me out,” he said.

Down the promenade at Teaser’s, US Airways flight attendant Donna Davenport, 32, broke adultery down like this:

“Dancing. Kissing. Any betrayal of trust. Those are things you’re supposed to share with your husband. Even if he goes to a single female’s house [alone], that’s betrayal.”

Society, Davenport said, has a looser view on adultery than her own--a slip she blames on the media. “It’s in movies. On TV. Kids are exposed to it so much more than when I was a kid.”

Her friend Julie Barber disagreed only in nuance.

“I don’t think society’s standards have changed so much. It’s just that we’re not shocked by it any more,” she said.

The media, she said, have “glamorized a raunchy thing. It’s everywhere. It’s huge.” And as a result of media infatuation with celebrity infidelity, people seem to figure that if they succumb to the apparent trend, well, they’re in pretty cool company, she said.

Indeed, judging from talk shows, pop psychology columns and popular magazines, adultery appears to be the rage. Last year, for instance, psychologist Joyce Brothers suggested that more than 50% of married people cheat. In her 1976 study of women, author Shere Hite wrote that 75% of females married for five years or more have been unfaithful.

Most polls, however, have tended to report much lower numbers.

The late sex researcher Alfred Kinsey has been under attack lately for purportedly slanting his research to fit his allegedly libertine views. But even the Kinsey Institute of Sex Research estimated in 1990 that only 37% of married men and 29% of married women had been unfaithful.

A 1987 ABC News-Washington Post telephone poll found that 11% of respondents said they had had an extramarital affair. A 1990 Gallup survey found that only 10% of married people had been unfaithful. And a National Opinion Research Study released in 1993 showed that about 15% of married people cheat on their spouses.

Cornered outside a gumbo restaurant at Farmers Market in the Fairfax district, two visiting British Columbia couples said that it would certainly appear that U.S. and Canadian society’s definition of adultery has broadened. But the Dubes’ and Coleses’ subsequent discussion of the subject didn’t cut the term any new semantic slack.

Adultery, said Kitty Dube, “is any relationship with someone other than your spouse.”

“If I heard someone had a candlelit dinner, well, it may not be adultery . . . .” said Karen Coles.

“But it would be very foolish,” added Dube, eliciting emphatic nods from both husbands.

“If,” said Chris Dube, “you caught me necking with some woman . . .”

“That would be adultery,” his wife filled in.

“Necking,” Chris agreed, “that’s sufficient grounds for divorce.”

“Adultery,” said Bill Coles, “is any failure in the trust given to you by your spouse.”

That said, adultery might be broken into two categories, said Kitty Dube. “Necking could be ‘Little A’ adultery, depending on the attitude of the person after he’s caught,” she said.

And oral sex?

“Big A”

“Definitely!”

“Oh, yeah!”

“Even if someone’s wife allows it,” Chris volunteered, “that doesn’t mean it’s not adultery.”

Such restrictive views of adultery may not, in fact, be as out of step with the times as people assume.

A USA Today / CNN / Gallup Poll, for instance, found last year that nine out of 10 people believe it is always or at least almost always wrong to have extramarital sex.

The supposedly freewheeling 10% that doesn’t agree with that code of conduct is hard to find, though.

What about those--wink, wink--flight attendants?

Barber rolled her eyes. “Some people hear I’m a flight attendant and think . . .”

“Guy in every city,” finished Davenport, who is married.

But it’s that perception, not the definition of adultery that’s antiquated, she said.

“Let’s face it, everyone is going to have temptation,” said Barber, who has a steady boyfriend back in North Carolina. “How you deal with it speaks to the type of person you are. It’s not really even about how much you love the person, because people who cheat think they’ll never get caught. It’s a matter of integrity, of moral fiber.

“When I wake up and look in the mirror in the morning,” Barber said, “I want to face someone I like.”

If flight attendants aren’t willing to tinker with adultery’s definition, who is?

Fava Spitler, 25, and Joshua Gruenbaum, 24, look like the sort who might rebel against the semantic status quo.

Spitler, a waitress at Cadillac in West Hollywood, wears her hair streaked with colors nature usually reserves for plums. Gruenbaum, a waiter at Borders, sports a devilishly eccentric goatee and a ring emblazoned with a grinning Satan.

Spitler’s nail polish is silver. Gruenbaum’s black. And, indeed, the couple’s initial response to questions about adultery is a mutual shrug.

“It’s so common,” said Spitler, “I don’t even have strong emotions if a friend says it happened. Our generation has seen so many parents divorce, have affairs. It’s just common. People expect it.”

“I really don’t care,” said Gruenbaum. Then, sensing the topic’s genesis, he volunteered: “I don’t have a moral code for the president.”

Push the discussion from the political to the personal, though, and even these free spirits quickly changed their tune.

“I think anything is cheating--even kissing,” said Spitler. “Even if there’s no sex.”

“I agree,” said Gruenbaum. “It’s pretty basic. You have a commitment and you stick to it.”

“If she were to cheat on me,” Gruenbaum said, looking at Spitler, “it would be an ‘Oh, my God’ thing.”

“If you’ve been in a relationship, and that’s happened,” said Spitler, “you know what it feels like. It’s the most sickening feeling in the universe.”

Beyond personal pain, though, infidelity creates a distrust that can permeate society, she said.

“It changes how you feel about people. How you treat someone else. I think a lot of people have been cheated on. It closes them off and it creates a cycle. You can’t trust other people,” she said.

“It’s a pretty heavy thing.”