Two days prior to my departure for the United States I had this little farewell party where I invited all my friends over to say goodbye. After awhile when the official part was over, people started rambling around my apartment, engaging in some small talk with the other guests. Just about that time my old university friend came up to me for a little chitchat. She had a lot to tell me because according to some freak of nature I was going to the same university that she went to just a year ago. So after a short conversation about minor things we got to the personal matters, and this is where she struck me with a very puzzling questions. " So, -she said, -are you going to have sex in Clemson?"

I cannot say that such a type of question was very unusual for her (we used to talk about such matters before, besides there were times when we were seriously thinking of dating each other). I answered, "probably not." I explained to her that I had a girlfriend whom I really loved a lot, and the word "fidelity" seemed to mean a lot to me. She said that I could be both loyal to my girlfriend and have sex just to keep my body in a normal physical shape. "Nothing counts if you are faithful to her in your mind," - she said. Ever since then I seriously began contemplating it.

At first I looked up the term and its synonyms in the dictionary, and in practically every case the words like "fidelity, allegiance, fealty, and loyalty" denoted faithfulness, as to a person or a cause. And fidelity in particular implied the "unfailing fulfillment of one's duties and obligations and strict adherence to vows or promises." (www.dictionary.com)

Essentially, to be faithful to my girlfriend I should fulfill all the duties of a boyfriend and keep all the promises that I gave to her. To look deeper into the issue I have to define what the duties of a good boyfriend should be?

I believe, under any circumstances, a boyfriend is doing his duties well when his lover is happy. In my case, being so far away, it might be very difficult to make my girlfriend happy: she can�t see me, I can�t give her all my attention, I can�t even talk to her when I want to. So the best I can do is to write her as often as possible, keep reassuring her that I love her even more than ever and never say or write something that may upset her.

The other part of being faithful is to keep all my vows and promises. Since we are not married, we may not really talk about vows at this time. So all we have now are promises. I see only two possibilities. One is that you did not promise anything to your partner, except for never forgetting her/him and constantly thinking about her/him. And the other is to promise her/him not to sleep with other girls/guys while you are away.

Let us start with the worst case and admit that you have done an unforgivable thing and did promise your girlfriend/boyfriend not to sleep with anyone else. In this case, you don�t have very much freedom. If you still want to remain faithful to your lover, any close personal contact with the opposite sex is out of question by default.

Let us now imagine what might happen to you in the first case. Suppose your girlfriend/boyfriend forgot to make you pronounce those words. You are not restricted with any promises or obligations and may do whatever you want. In a hypothetical situation you go to a different place and, for a while, you really miss your girlfriend/boyfriend; you can�t think of any other girl/guy because when you do you see your darling�s eyes full of tears as they were when you left her/him at the train station. But time passes, soon new images replace the old ones and your whole past life seems to be so distant. This is when you recall that technically you can do whatever you want. First, you start looking at the other girls/guys, then you might try engaging in some relations with them, and eventually you realize that you are deeply involved with another woman/men. So the question that immediately comes forth is: are you still being faithful to your partner? The most obvious answer is � "no." But closer consideration reveals that there could be a positive answer to this question too.

It becomes possible under certain circumstances. First, you must still love your girlfriend/boyfriend and be the same person that you used to be for her/him. And second, you again have to fulfill all the duties of a good boyfriend/girlfriend and keep your beloved happy. Most likely it will be a lot harder for you to do all that if you are involved in a relationship with someone else, but technically, if you love your partner so much that being with other people does not prevent you from giving her/him the best of you, cheating on her/him and still being faithful is by all means possible.

Some people would say though that true love would prohibit any cheating. To clarify that out let us have one more look into a dictionary and see how the term "love" is defined. "Love � feeling of intense desire and attraction toward a person with whom one is disposed to make a pair; the emotion of sex and romance." (www.dictionary.com). Does loving a person prohibit anything according to this definition?

The other thing that may seem questionable is whether it is possible to give one�s beloved the best of oneself while cheating on her/him? Well, I cannot say that it is going to be easy, but under certain circumstances it still might be feasible, especially if one is far away form his/her partner. All you have to do is to keep reassuring her/him that the feelings that exist between you are growing even stronger and your partner in your eyes still remains the dearest, prettiest and smartest person on Earth. Though one should watch out for a situation described in an old Russian joke. A husband returns from a party and says to his wife, " Honey, you are the most beautiful woman in the world and the best lover in this country, and today I got one more proof of that."

After all this discussion, the problem that still remains with me is not whether cheating on my girlfriend is being faithful or unfaithful. Despite the fact that I am really concerned with this problem, none of that really matters to her. Even though I did not leave her with any promises, she did leave me with one: "If you have an affair I will cut your balls off!"