Is having oral sex with someone other than your spouse cheating?

Many questions have been bobbing in the wake of the Clinton-Lewinsky controversy -- the most important being, in my view, whether President Bill Clinton had sex with a young intern and tried to cover it up. But another question has surfaced amid the speculations: Is having oral sex with someone other than your partner really cheating?

Whether oral sex or any type of sexual contact is "cheating" primarily depends upon the understanding or arrangement between husband and wife (or any committed partners). If the marriage or relationship is "open" -- with one or both parties allowed to have sex with others, then No: having sex with someone else would not be a betrayal of the marital contract, because the arrangement between partners would include permission to have sexual contact with others.

However, it's safe to say that the most common type of marriage in the United States is one in which husband and wife vow to forsake all others. In that type of relationship, the answer is Yes: oral sex or any type of sexual contact without the spouse's knowledge and consent is cheating.

Some people rationalize certain extramarital sexual activities -- engaging in sex with prostitutes, phone or computer sex, etc. They deny they're cheating because there's no "real relationship" involved. (In the case of phone or computer sex, there's no actual physical contact with another person.) And some folks argue that only full coitus qualifies as "having sex."

Years ago, writer Florence King skewered the sexual rationalizations of Southern belles in her book "Southern Ladies and Gentlemen," King introduced the term "self-rejuvenating virgin." The self-rejuvenating virgin could have sex with a man and still consider herself "pure" because certain types of sexual activity "didn't count." For instance, "it" didn't count because "I was drunk." Or "I kept both feet on the floor." Or "it happened in New York."

Husbands and wives can sometimes engage in similar feats of logic in attempts to squirm their way out of responsibility for their sexual actions. But my bottom line is this: If your spouse doesn't know about it, would object to it, and would be hurt finding out about it, it's cheating.