I still think writing elaborate fanfiction of being a cool airforce fighter pilot who is roomates with the president is gayer than any of my lesbian relationships have been
Like Suletta and Miorine would look at that shit and be like “WOW, gay much”
Tequila Mockingbird
I both understood and deeply appreciate that reference.
Sajuuk-Khar
Jocelyne needs to make sure she gets written into Joyce’s comic as a Mecha
Tequila Mockingbird
Truly, few are the situations in life that are not vastly improved by the addition of giant fighting robots. My personal fave remains “resurrect John Brown and give him a Battlemech!”
this is what most of us keep saying, but for some reason a percentage of chat just… is angry at lesbians? the “oh no they’re cheating” crowd who has only been huffy about this and literally none of the other cheating that has gone on in (checks notes) almost every relationship in this. ~<3
Anything involving Walky could arguably fall under the cheating umbrella. I’m not saying it does but you could debate it.
Sirksome
Also maybe Asher? He was kissing on Ethan while technically still with Jen. Jen was treating him like dirt (totally justifiable) so no one really felt too bad for her. (also totally justifiable)
Wraithy2773
Asher is a good example of what to do: The kissing happened, and then Asher stopped it and said “No, I’m absolutely into this, but I’m in a relationship, and I’m not going to cheat”.
And then he went to his girlfriend, laid it all out, and didn’t go back to Ethan until Jennifer had made it abundantly clear that she was taking him for granted and he didn’t want to have a part in that anymore.
Asher never cheated on Jennifer, basically. He did everything correctly.
not someone else
Am I remembering wrong that people were fucking livid at Joyce for the Jacob thing and Walky for the Lucy thing?
Like, less so (because it was less clear) and there were people on the other side (like there are for the Joyce and Dorothy thing) but I do not remember the comment sections not being mad.
If nothing else, betting on the comment section not having been mad about something is usually a bad bet.
Thag Simmons
I was not active in the comments section when the Jacob thing went down but I would be shocked if people weren’t pissed about it. That arc would probably have to be chalked up as a failure if it didn’t push at least a few buttons.
Bittersweet
I remember being concerned and wanting Jacob/Raidah to break up properly, I don’t think I was commenting back then though. I *feel* like I called Joyce getting rejected ultimately, but that was so long ago that I could just want to feel like I called it lol. I remember a lot of people being upset about it, but what Joyce was doing was never framed as cute and good behavior lol. Dorothy, Joe, and I feel like one or two others even stopped Joyce to be like “Yo this is fucked up”
Wraithy2773
I don’t know if I was “fucking livid”, but I absolutely saw Joyce in the wrong in that arc, yeah.
The issue was that Joyce was actively trying to break up/into a (by all apparent accounts from what Joyce could see) healthy relationship so that Jacob could instead date someone that Joyce approved of (whether it was Sarah or herself). All while deceiving Jacob about what she was doing.
That is a bad thing. And that is not an exaggeration of what she was doing. And the reason why that arc worked was *because* the strip recognized that Joyce was in the wrong. Multiple characters called her out on it, and it ended with Joyce not getting the guy.
thejeff
Right. That appears to be the difference between that arc and this one. This one seems to be treating the pairing as a big romantic thing rather than critiquing it the way the Jacob/Joyce arc did. It’s not over yet, so we’ll see how that plays out, but currently it seems to be leaning into Joyce’s early romcom “It’s not wrong if it’s true love” ideas.
VicMortimer
Healthy? A relationship with Raidah was NOT healthy. She’s one of the most toxic characters in the comic, the most toxic student character. Malaya is better by a lot. I was totally with Joyce on that one, breaking them up was definitely a positive. Sucks that he didn’t get together with her or Sarah, Lucy is awful too, but at least not as bad as Raidah.
eh, whatever
At the time, Joyce had no way of knowing it wasn’t healthy.
Fahed
“Lucy is awful too” sounds like blasphemy tbh, do you have receipts?
I recall being angrier at Jacob, in the moment, but don’t recall exactly why
thejeff
Jacob kissed Joyce then walked away to go break up with Raidah, saying it could have been something if Joyce had taken a different approach. That got a lot of people mad at him, despite her bringing about the whole situation.
temporaryobsessor
I realized I want someone more like you but not a cheating instigator. It seemed reasonable to me. I could feel a little sorry for Joyce but she brought it on herself.
Bittersweet
When has Walky cheated??????? He and Dorothy broke up, got together, broke up, he banged Amber for a bit, broke up, and then dated Lucy for a week and explicitly refused to cheat on her, and then broke up before getting back with Dorothy.
Like, I think the only other character that has maybe cheated is Asher (and I would like to say Ruth on Jason, but like… I legit get vibes Jason Would Not Care and I think we know he does not care that Ruth would drop him in a second for Billie lol). And tbh, at least Billie is a terrible person who actively pushed him into it, kind of makes it a bit more forgivable.
Also, he told her about it more or less immediately iirc and her response was “lol who cares, not gonna make me jealous.” And then they just like… dissolved like a wet biscuit.
Thag Simmons
Walky rebounds quick, but yeah, I wouldn’t really call it cheating.
Kyulen
Yeah I don’t Walky has cheated on anyone he’s dated in DoA so far.
thejeff
Ruth is absolutely not over Jennifer and would probably cheat on Jason with her (or at least boot Jason out the door) if given the chance, but she hasn’t had that chance, so she’s in the clear.
GholaHalleck
She literally has said she would during one of their back and forths if I remember right.
Doopyboop
Could you explain that? Because I’m not sure how anything involving Walky would fall under the cheating umbrella.
Sirksome
Walky and Lucy? Admittedly I was exaggerating for effect because Walky’s love life is such a mess, but I do remember fevered debates on whether he was cheating or not for sleeping with Dorothy before the ink was even dry on his relationship with Lucy. Even Lucy noted how fast he moved on and it was somewhat ambiguous if she ever truly broke up with him.
Doopyboop
Guess that’s not surprising, with how some people thought Joyce and Dorothy were cheating because Joyce touched Dorothy’s cheek. I get being confused about whether the relationship is still in or not but in the end they were broken up with and although Walky rebounding back with Dorothy is… something, it isn’t cheating.
Sirksome
This was the debate that happened then. I was on Walky’s side but that was not the consensus at the time. The magic words were never said! It was all up in the air cause “See ya at math class.” Does not a solid breakup make!
You be the judge! The scales of judgement ultimately lay with us readers.
Doopyboop
It reminds me of Mako and Asami’s break up in season 1 of Legend of Korra, down to the people who saw the show being like “wait is Mako hooking up with Korra after cheating? Did Asami and him break up?”.
Li
Did Jet just die?
You know, it was really unclear.
Aquila
Cheating Umbrellas; can you buy those on Amazon?
Jon
Joyce trying to seduce Jacob away from Raidah is the only example I can think of.
Leorale
So, do kids these days consider kisses cheating?
I kinda thought the bar for physical cheating was higher, such as sneaking around having penetrative sex outside your explicitly-monogamous relationship, type of thing.
Arguably the wacky washer antics count as sex, but they were both single at the time, plus at the time they believed it was masturbation with a friend. Like y’do, apparently.
It’s probably emotional cheating, in large part because they think it is… but like, is the expectation these days that you’re immediately monogamous from the very first week of dating, without even saying so, unless otherwise specified?
HueSatLight
Joyce did say they were exclusive though, essentially. When she said she’d “been faithful”.
And during the Jacob incident, right before he kissed her, she said that kissing would be crossing a boundary.
Leorale
It does make sense that Joyce would think that monogamy is the default setting of any relationship, and that kissing outside one’s relationship would be a serious betrayal. She’s changed a lot since the beginning of first semester, but still, she wanted Mike to beat up Joe, on their very first date, for looking at the waitress, and that kind of ideal doesn’t just vanish now that she’s kinda learned what a polycule is.
Dorothy, though? Why does Dorothy think that her on-again/off-again deal with Walky is monogamous, or that kissing is automatically cheating?
Or is she concerned about the emotional cheating, of realizing that she and Joyce also love each other?
Mal
See, I want to see this addressed. So we don’t know, exactly, where everyone in this would draw a “cheating” line. Dorothy is conflicted, obviously, but that’s influenced by other factors, and we don’t know whether Joe and Walky would see this as a dealbreaker. Yet.
But given what we’ve seen from Joyce? If Joe did this to her [or Walky did something similar to Dorothy], SHE would likely consider it cheating. Or unfaithful. Or a betrayal of trust. Somehow inappropriate, at the very least. Is that necessarily a good thing, since it largely springs from her “gradually being challenged conservative views on sex and relationships?” No, not necessarily, but her standards still exist.
And I want to see HER deal with that. How, by doing this, she might have broken boundaries that she would expect to be respected, and what that means. Clarification: I DON’T mean that I want her to realize she’s a terrible irredeemable person who doesn’t deserve to be happy. I DO want her to have to face the fact that she–probably, maybe she’s had a greater shift in perspective than it seems– has done something to a partner [Joe] that WOULD be a dealbreaker for her, and see how she handles that. We’ve seen Dorothy wrestle with this a bit, in the lead up to the kiss. We haven’t seen Joyce do that so much, yet.
deliverything
You remind me why I’m glad to be aro ace. How do people deal with all this stuff, with the implied figuring out of other peoples’ values and opinions on what is and isn’t relevant to such matters, along with apparently being influenced by all these feelings for people that can, I’m told, just happen of their own accord?
I’m told love is a wonderful thing that makes life worth living, but so does reading, and I’ve never had to plan my life around a book.
(Ok, maybe I sometimes have arranged things to ensure I’d have time to read, but that’s not the point.)
Li
I still think that, despite READERS knowing better, it’s completely possible Joyce is actually operating on an outdated mental picture of Joe.
(Some folks really wanna believe that the first strip here was Joe joking, and not him having a genuine reflexive reaction of jumping into Sarah’s bed, but Joyce certainly thought he was sincere: if she didn’t, she wouldn’t have characterized the moment as a “mistake” that “doesn’t mean [his whole character arc] was a lie”.)
Like, I kiiiind of think she might be operating on a level where she assumes Joe has been very tempted to cheat, and will understand why she gave into a temptation to kiss Dorothy? I also wonder if the conversation they had about masturbation, where she him know that it felt like being unfaithful to him and he told her that was silly and that she had his permission to do that as much as she wanted…
…might not have maybe left them both confused about where they stood?
Since we’ve since seen him maaaayyyybe refraining from masturbation and taking a cold shower instead? And we’ve seen Joyce maaaaaybe throwing caution to the wind and deciding she had permission not to be monogamous at all???
Just a theory.
HueSatLight
Probably just because monogamy is the norm in the society she grew up in. She’s good at understanding things academically, but applying them to herself is different. eg: bisexuality and orientation fluidity.
She set Walky up with Lucy in order to make him “taken”. I think Roz was right when she called Dorothy “slut-shamey”.
Jerach
I just wanna say as somebody who’s poly that it’s really dangerous for a person to go “why’d you assume this relationship was monogamous” to a partner. Polyamory is still very much not the norm and if somebody wants a relationship to be poly they need to very explicitly communicate that when they intend to have a relationship that isn’t exclusive.
Li
As someone who’s mono, I think that sucks for poly people, and that mono people need to also be willing to shoulder the burden of communicating our expectations.
Proxiehunter
Some of us are old enough to recall a time when at least pop culture displayed a norm of having a discussion about if your relationship was exclusive before assuming it was.
Sarah Lea
I just assumed the discuss is less “Why did you assume this is monogamous?”
And more… (to borrow a maybe outdated term – my background is more like Joyce’s, with more of a “courting” culture than dating)
“Why did you assume we’d ‘gone steady’ within a week of starting dating?”
I’ve personally never dated multiple people in a time, but even at my “courting-culture” college, it was common (and even encouraged by some Bible college professors!) to “date around.” My college even had a process requiring young men, before their third “official date” (something off campus, rather than just hanging around getting coffee on campus), to officially contact a woman’s father to “request permission” to continue dating them. I got the sense that carried with it an implied transition from “dating around” to “going steady,” but even that wasn’t written out anywhere.
As a heteroromantic demi AuDHDer…I’m still really fascinated by trying to understand all these unwritten and/or written “rules” in non-fundamentalist dating and relationships.
Sarah Lea
At my college, you could get expelled for holding hands, kissing, high-fiving (yeah :\ ) sitting less than 6 inches apart, etc. too many times. So Dumbing of Age has been a pretty significant source of learning about “normal” relationships for me, and ideas of what people might consider “cheating” to be.
thejeff
@Sarah Lea: A very different dating culture certainly. They’re not going out on specific dates with the intention of seeing if they’re interested in getting more serious. They’re starting out by deciding they want to be serious, because they already know each other, rather than going through any number of official dates. They’ve all said they were boyfriend/girlfriend or otherwise in a relationship, which I think wouldn’t usually have been used if you were still in a “dating around” stage?
Actual dates have been pretty rare in this comic, which matches my ancient college experience. Joyce and Joe’s original disastrous date. Their recent cute one. Ruth and Billie went on one date last semester. Ruth’s blind date with Daisy. Lucy trying to find things to label “dates” with Walky, which kind of echoes something like your college’s culture. I feel like I’m forgetting something, but not very much.
thejeff
@Li: It does suck for poly people and it’s certainly worth working to change that, but I think that’s better done by encouraging everyone to talk about it directly than by trying to reverse the default assumptions.
thejeff
@Proxiehunter: I don’t think so. At least not in the poly sense. More in sense Sarah Lea talks about – Are we serious enough to be “going steady” rather than still “dating around”?
Proxiehunter
@thejeff And my point was that without that discussion a lot of people, at least of a certain age, would assume that both parties would be free to date around thus no one would be cheating. A situation in which it would make sense to wonder why one party assumed the relationship to be monogamous.
Li
@thejeff: I’m not trying to reverse the default assumptions. I absolutely think Joyce’s communication here with Joe (if I’m right, and they miscommunicated) was awful and they both should’ve been clearer.
I’m just saying the responsibility should absolutely not be all on poly people to “disclose”, that’s crummy as heck.
(But Proxiehunter’s also right, and there at least used to be a social convention whereby after a few dates, you and your date-partner would sit down and talk about taking things to the next level: “are we going steady?”, as the kids used to say in, like, the 50s or whatever.
If straight people aren’t having that conversation anymore, and just assuming the answer is ‘yes’ as soon as there’s been one date, that’s a shame.
(As previously mentioned, the dating I did via OKCupid definitely had an expectation where you had to have a conversation before you would both, like, set your profiles to ‘in a relationship’ and stop chatting with other people. But I have never dated in the het scene, so I will not claim to know what that’s like.)
It’s not necessarily relevant to Joyce, because she did sort of stumble over declaring that she saw them as monogamous and exclusive during the masturbation conversation, but in real life, if the “going steady” conversation has stopped being a thing, that sucks.)
Li
Aw MAN I missed that Sarah Lea had already brought up “going steady” conversations. There are so many comments!! I reiterate that it’s sad if that’s gone out of style, but lol, I am embarrassed to have brought it up like it was a new topic.
thejeff
I responded to Sarah as well, (and it’s tomorrow, so you probably won’t see this) but I don’t think that has really stopped being a thing, even if it’s handled a little different. Like you suggest, it is usually handled that way pretty explicitly on dating apps, but in this kind of college scene when you know each other well people often go straight into “relationship” without actual dates. I think talking about being in a relationship or calling each other boyfriend/girlfriend is the language that replaces “going steady”.
None of which is to say that even college kids don’t still go on those formal “get to know you” dates, often through apps without immediately committing. Or for that matter just hook up for sex after a party or something again without committing.
But I think that discussion is a very different one than the poly discussion and they shouldn’t really overlap. “Are we serious enough to be exclusive?” and “We’re serious, but don’t want to be exclusive” are very different cases and it just gets confusing when they’re conflated. Those old “going steady” conversations almost never had any room for being poly.
Li
@thejeff I mean, they didn’t make space for it explicitly, but you could say “no, I don’t want to go steady with anyone, but I would like to keep dating you anyway” and see how that went over? Heck, the 60s and 70s were right around the corner, and they definitely had what we’d now call poly dating situations.
Still, you’re right that “I want a serious relationship” and “I want an exclusive relationship” aren’t the same statement, and could get conflated and confused…
I just think at least having a conversation about the seriousness of the relationship is still better than skipping it or considering it implied. ? That seems destined for heartbreak.
Adeptus
This is why I think Willis is doing an ”Amor Fou” story, about an all consuming, destructive passion. Neither of the ladies seem able to think of their usual ethical considerations right now. Dorothy makes some noises about it, but barely.
Sajuuk-Khar
The goalposts are constantly in motion, Leorale, but if you say so someone will complain that you’re being a mean jerk and how dare you.
Steamweed
Humph you’re being a mean jerk and how dare you!
Sajuuk-Khar
Oh no!!
PedanticJerkass
“So, do kids these days consider kisses cheating?”
Paywalled. Does that cover what “the kids” think? The other results didn’t seem to either and that was the question asked.
Li
It’s from 2016, and an article about a YouGov survey, so probably not? It’s just also the only thing remotely on topic from the Google results they linked. If Pedantic Jerkass meant something else in the result set, they should let us know!
Li
Like, at least it’s a survey, instead of a single post on Reddit…….
Proxiehunter
Or a post on Quora.
Thing 2
You have done a survey, or you are speaking for yourself, but in the plural?
Axel
So, cheating isn’t that much of a concern to me here (yet), because it all happened very suddenly (like don’t get me wrong there was the will-they-won’t-they, and the moment in Joyce’s bed, but the actual first kiss and confession was in the middle of a very emotionally intense moment they didn’t expect to happen), and they haven’t had a chance to tell their partners “I’ve had a realization that will change or end our relationship,” since they don’t have phones and were taking the long route home etc.
That said, yeah I’d consider any intentional* romantic and/or sexual intimacy to be cheating**. I can’t imagine I’d be comfortable with my partner making out with someone without my knowledge, nor he with me doing that. It’s not as bad as sex, since there’s little chance of STIs or (with certain bodies) pregnancy, but it’s also a pretty intimate (both in connection and horniness) thing to be doing without a partner’s knowledge or permission.
*unintentional could be something that happened while carried away in a moment, or while under the influence, or where you haven’t realized there are romantic connotations, etc, and of course anything nonconsensual/unreciprocated
**assuming the relationship follows a typical monogamous structure without allowances for any of this sort of thing
Odo
Ehhh I would argue they have had plenty of time to rethink. In the heat of the moment during the protest… maybe…. but they were just standing in front of the dorms and it went like this:
We should stop holding hands –> Kissing
We are in relationships. We shouldn’t kiss or hold hands –> Kissing
At this point they know full well what they are doing. They have consciously considered it and still ignored it.
Maybe they are driven by passion, but that doesn’t excuse it. If someone is driven by rage and they hit someone, we still call it assault. People are responsible for their own emotions and for their own behavior.
Dot
And now they’re talking about an “us.” Dorothy, at least, seems fully cognizant of the fact that they are having an affair.
Axel
replied to this, but it was from my phone (which has been spotty with wifi) and didn’t post
I agree. I do think that it has already passed into the territory of cheating. But how concerned and bothered I am by it will depend on how it goes when they talk to Walky and Joe, if they chicken out and try to keep it secret, if they’re open about messing up (and then continuing to explore it before checking in with the partners), if they immediately say that they need to break up, etc.
and I’m giving them a little extra grace since they haven’t had phones or anything. they could probably have gotten home faster (esp if they didn’t make out more), but again I’d be more mad if they did have phones and just neglected to reach out with a ‘hey I have to see you when I get back to the dorms.’
also I imagine it is going to sting considering Becky, Sarah, and I’m sure now Joe and maybe Walky (if someone alerted him) have been worrying about them being fucking disappeared while they were actually making out.
so tl;dr I do think it’s cheating, I’m not happy with them and don’t really love this ship, I just want more context before I like, condemn them
Odo
Would you consider it cheating if you walked in on your partner passionately kissing someone else?
VicMortimer
Me? Nope. I once walked in on my girlfriend sucking my best friend’s weenus. My comment was something like “Oh, I see you guys are having fun.” They asked me to join, but I was too tired for sex, had just gotten back from work. I was hungry, offered to make them a sandwich too. The first threesome was later that night.
He knew I wouldn’t mind. She didn’t yet. Glad she figured it out. And yeah, it goes both ways, I occasionally boink his wife.
HueSatLight
“He knew I wouldn’t mind”
That’s what makes it not cheating.
600 thoughts on “Take stock”
Mel
When she’s right, she’s right
Mel
I still think writing elaborate fanfiction of being a cool airforce fighter pilot who is roomates with the president is gayer than any of my lesbian relationships have been
Sajuuk-Khar
They are so so gay for that you’re right
Like Suletta and Miorine would look at that shit and be like “WOW, gay much”
Tequila Mockingbird
I both understood and deeply appreciate that reference.
Sajuuk-Khar
Jocelyne needs to make sure she gets written into Joyce’s comic as a Mecha
Tequila Mockingbird
Truly, few are the situations in life that are not vastly improved by the addition of giant fighting robots. My personal fave remains “resurrect John Brown and give him a Battlemech!”
Sharizard
I wonder how Joyce’s comic is going to change as her repressions rise to the surface.
Nadamás
Which is very often
Pocky
I think everyone with eyes could see it before both of them did lol
Sirksome
They actually don’t have to change anything. They’ve been dating since they first met.
DJTsurugi
this is what most of us keep saying, but for some reason a percentage of chat just… is angry at lesbians? the “oh no they’re cheating” crowd who has only been huffy about this and literally none of the other cheating that has gone on in (checks notes) almost every relationship in this. ~<3
Viktoria
What other cheating has happened in the comic?
Sirksome
Anything involving Walky could arguably fall under the cheating umbrella. I’m not saying it does but you could debate it.
Sirksome
Also maybe Asher? He was kissing on Ethan while technically still with Jen. Jen was treating him like dirt (totally justifiable) so no one really felt too bad for her. (also totally justifiable)
Wraithy2773
Asher is a good example of what to do: The kissing happened, and then Asher stopped it and said “No, I’m absolutely into this, but I’m in a relationship, and I’m not going to cheat”.
And then he went to his girlfriend, laid it all out, and didn’t go back to Ethan until Jennifer had made it abundantly clear that she was taking him for granted and he didn’t want to have a part in that anymore.
Asher never cheated on Jennifer, basically. He did everything correctly.
not someone else
Am I remembering wrong that people were fucking livid at Joyce for the Jacob thing and Walky for the Lucy thing?
Like, less so (because it was less clear) and there were people on the other side (like there are for the Joyce and Dorothy thing) but I do not remember the comment sections not being mad.
If nothing else, betting on the comment section not having been mad about something is usually a bad bet.
Thag Simmons
I was not active in the comments section when the Jacob thing went down but I would be shocked if people weren’t pissed about it. That arc would probably have to be chalked up as a failure if it didn’t push at least a few buttons.
Bittersweet
I remember being concerned and wanting Jacob/Raidah to break up properly, I don’t think I was commenting back then though. I *feel* like I called Joyce getting rejected ultimately, but that was so long ago that I could just want to feel like I called it lol. I remember a lot of people being upset about it, but what Joyce was doing was never framed as cute and good behavior lol. Dorothy, Joe, and I feel like one or two others even stopped Joyce to be like “Yo this is fucked up”
Wraithy2773
I don’t know if I was “fucking livid”, but I absolutely saw Joyce in the wrong in that arc, yeah.
The issue was that Joyce was actively trying to break up/into a (by all apparent accounts from what Joyce could see) healthy relationship so that Jacob could instead date someone that Joyce approved of (whether it was Sarah or herself). All while deceiving Jacob about what she was doing.
That is a bad thing. And that is not an exaggeration of what she was doing. And the reason why that arc worked was *because* the strip recognized that Joyce was in the wrong. Multiple characters called her out on it, and it ended with Joyce not getting the guy.
thejeff
Right. That appears to be the difference between that arc and this one. This one seems to be treating the pairing as a big romantic thing rather than critiquing it the way the Jacob/Joyce arc did. It’s not over yet, so we’ll see how that plays out, but currently it seems to be leaning into Joyce’s early romcom “It’s not wrong if it’s true love” ideas.
VicMortimer
Healthy? A relationship with Raidah was NOT healthy. She’s one of the most toxic characters in the comic, the most toxic student character. Malaya is better by a lot. I was totally with Joyce on that one, breaking them up was definitely a positive. Sucks that he didn’t get together with her or Sarah, Lucy is awful too, but at least not as bad as Raidah.
eh, whatever
At the time, Joyce had no way of knowing it wasn’t healthy.
Fahed
“Lucy is awful too” sounds like blasphemy tbh, do you have receipts?
Freezer
I recall being angrier at Jacob, in the moment, but don’t recall exactly why
thejeff
Jacob kissed Joyce then walked away to go break up with Raidah, saying it could have been something if Joyce had taken a different approach. That got a lot of people mad at him, despite her bringing about the whole situation.
temporaryobsessor
I realized I want someone more like you but not a cheating instigator. It seemed reasonable to me. I could feel a little sorry for Joyce but she brought it on herself.
Bittersweet
When has Walky cheated??????? He and Dorothy broke up, got together, broke up, he banged Amber for a bit, broke up, and then dated Lucy for a week and explicitly refused to cheat on her, and then broke up before getting back with Dorothy.
Like, I think the only other character that has maybe cheated is Asher (and I would like to say Ruth on Jason, but like… I legit get vibes Jason Would Not Care and I think we know he does not care that Ruth would drop him in a second for Billie lol). And tbh, at least Billie is a terrible person who actively pushed him into it, kind of makes it a bit more forgivable.
Also, he told her about it more or less immediately iirc and her response was “lol who cares, not gonna make me jealous.” And then they just like… dissolved like a wet biscuit.
Thag Simmons
Walky rebounds quick, but yeah, I wouldn’t really call it cheating.
Kyulen
Yeah I don’t Walky has cheated on anyone he’s dated in DoA so far.
thejeff
Ruth is absolutely not over Jennifer and would probably cheat on Jason with her (or at least boot Jason out the door) if given the chance, but she hasn’t had that chance, so she’s in the clear.
GholaHalleck
She literally has said she would during one of their back and forths if I remember right.
Doopyboop
Could you explain that? Because I’m not sure how anything involving Walky would fall under the cheating umbrella.
Sirksome
Walky and Lucy? Admittedly I was exaggerating for effect because Walky’s love life is such a mess, but I do remember fevered debates on whether he was cheating or not for sleeping with Dorothy before the ink was even dry on his relationship with Lucy. Even Lucy noted how fast he moved on and it was somewhat ambiguous if she ever truly broke up with him.
Doopyboop
Guess that’s not surprising, with how some people thought Joyce and Dorothy were cheating because Joyce touched Dorothy’s cheek. I get being confused about whether the relationship is still in or not but in the end they were broken up with and although Walky rebounding back with Dorothy is… something, it isn’t cheating.
Sirksome
This was the debate that happened then. I was on Walky’s side but that was not the consensus at the time. The magic words were never said! It was all up in the air cause “See ya at math class.” Does not a solid breakup make!
You be the judge! The scales of judgement ultimately lay with us readers.
Doopyboop
It reminds me of Mako and Asami’s break up in season 1 of Legend of Korra, down to the people who saw the show being like “wait is Mako hooking up with Korra after cheating? Did Asami and him break up?”.
Li
Did Jet just die?
You know, it was really unclear.
Aquila
Cheating Umbrellas; can you buy those on Amazon?
Jon
Joyce trying to seduce Jacob away from Raidah is the only example I can think of.
Leorale
So, do kids these days consider kisses cheating?
I kinda thought the bar for physical cheating was higher, such as sneaking around having penetrative sex outside your explicitly-monogamous relationship, type of thing.
Arguably the wacky washer antics count as sex, but they were both single at the time, plus at the time they believed it was masturbation with a friend. Like y’do, apparently.
It’s probably emotional cheating, in large part because they think it is… but like, is the expectation these days that you’re immediately monogamous from the very first week of dating, without even saying so, unless otherwise specified?
HueSatLight
Joyce did say they were exclusive though, essentially. When she said she’d “been faithful”.
And during the Jacob incident, right before he kissed her, she said that kissing would be crossing a boundary.
Leorale
It does make sense that Joyce would think that monogamy is the default setting of any relationship, and that kissing outside one’s relationship would be a serious betrayal. She’s changed a lot since the beginning of first semester, but still, she wanted Mike to beat up Joe, on their very first date, for looking at the waitress, and that kind of ideal doesn’t just vanish now that she’s kinda learned what a polycule is.
Dorothy, though? Why does Dorothy think that her on-again/off-again deal with Walky is monogamous, or that kissing is automatically cheating?
Or is she concerned about the emotional cheating, of realizing that she and Joyce also love each other?
Mal
See, I want to see this addressed. So we don’t know, exactly, where everyone in this would draw a “cheating” line. Dorothy is conflicted, obviously, but that’s influenced by other factors, and we don’t know whether Joe and Walky would see this as a dealbreaker. Yet.
But given what we’ve seen from Joyce? If Joe did this to her [or Walky did something similar to Dorothy], SHE would likely consider it cheating. Or unfaithful. Or a betrayal of trust. Somehow inappropriate, at the very least. Is that necessarily a good thing, since it largely springs from her “gradually being challenged conservative views on sex and relationships?” No, not necessarily, but her standards still exist.
And I want to see HER deal with that. How, by doing this, she might have broken boundaries that she would expect to be respected, and what that means. Clarification: I DON’T mean that I want her to realize she’s a terrible irredeemable person who doesn’t deserve to be happy. I DO want her to have to face the fact that she–probably, maybe she’s had a greater shift in perspective than it seems– has done something to a partner [Joe] that WOULD be a dealbreaker for her, and see how she handles that. We’ve seen Dorothy wrestle with this a bit, in the lead up to the kiss. We haven’t seen Joyce do that so much, yet.
deliverything
You remind me why I’m glad to be aro ace. How do people deal with all this stuff, with the implied figuring out of other peoples’ values and opinions on what is and isn’t relevant to such matters, along with apparently being influenced by all these feelings for people that can, I’m told, just happen of their own accord?
I’m told love is a wonderful thing that makes life worth living, but so does reading, and I’ve never had to plan my life around a book.
(Ok, maybe I sometimes have arranged things to ensure I’d have time to read, but that’s not the point.)
Li
I still think that, despite READERS knowing better, it’s completely possible Joyce is actually operating on an outdated mental picture of Joe.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/philanderer/
https://www.dumbingofage.com/hard-2/
(Some folks really wanna believe that the first strip here was Joe joking, and not him having a genuine reflexive reaction of jumping into Sarah’s bed, but Joyce certainly thought he was sincere: if she didn’t, she wouldn’t have characterized the moment as a “mistake” that “doesn’t mean [his whole character arc] was a lie”.)
Like, I kiiiind of think she might be operating on a level where she assumes Joe has been very tempted to cheat, and will understand why she gave into a temptation to kiss Dorothy? I also wonder if the conversation they had about masturbation, where she him know that it felt like being unfaithful to him and he told her that was silly and that she had his permission to do that as much as she wanted…
…might not have maybe left them both confused about where they stood?
Since we’ve since seen him maaaayyyybe refraining from masturbation and taking a cold shower instead? And we’ve seen Joyce maaaaaybe throwing caution to the wind and deciding she had permission not to be monogamous at all???
Just a theory.
HueSatLight
Probably just because monogamy is the norm in the society she grew up in. She’s good at understanding things academically, but applying them to herself is different. eg: bisexuality and orientation fluidity.
She set Walky up with Lucy in order to make him “taken”. I think Roz was right when she called Dorothy “slut-shamey”.
Jerach
I just wanna say as somebody who’s poly that it’s really dangerous for a person to go “why’d you assume this relationship was monogamous” to a partner. Polyamory is still very much not the norm and if somebody wants a relationship to be poly they need to very explicitly communicate that when they intend to have a relationship that isn’t exclusive.
Li
As someone who’s mono, I think that sucks for poly people, and that mono people need to also be willing to shoulder the burden of communicating our expectations.
Proxiehunter
Some of us are old enough to recall a time when at least pop culture displayed a norm of having a discussion about if your relationship was exclusive before assuming it was.
Sarah Lea
I just assumed the discuss is less “Why did you assume this is monogamous?”
And more… (to borrow a maybe outdated term – my background is more like Joyce’s, with more of a “courting” culture than dating)
“Why did you assume we’d ‘gone steady’ within a week of starting dating?”
I’ve personally never dated multiple people in a time, but even at my “courting-culture” college, it was common (and even encouraged by some Bible college professors!) to “date around.” My college even had a process requiring young men, before their third “official date” (something off campus, rather than just hanging around getting coffee on campus), to officially contact a woman’s father to “request permission” to continue dating them. I got the sense that carried with it an implied transition from “dating around” to “going steady,” but even that wasn’t written out anywhere.
As a heteroromantic demi AuDHDer…I’m still really fascinated by trying to understand all these unwritten and/or written “rules” in non-fundamentalist dating and relationships.
Sarah Lea
At my college, you could get expelled for holding hands, kissing, high-fiving (yeah :\ ) sitting less than 6 inches apart, etc. too many times. So Dumbing of Age has been a pretty significant source of learning about “normal” relationships for me, and ideas of what people might consider “cheating” to be.
thejeff
@Sarah Lea: A very different dating culture certainly. They’re not going out on specific dates with the intention of seeing if they’re interested in getting more serious. They’re starting out by deciding they want to be serious, because they already know each other, rather than going through any number of official dates. They’ve all said they were boyfriend/girlfriend or otherwise in a relationship, which I think wouldn’t usually have been used if you were still in a “dating around” stage?
Actual dates have been pretty rare in this comic, which matches my ancient college experience. Joyce and Joe’s original disastrous date. Their recent cute one. Ruth and Billie went on one date last semester. Ruth’s blind date with Daisy. Lucy trying to find things to label “dates” with Walky, which kind of echoes something like your college’s culture. I feel like I’m forgetting something, but not very much.
thejeff
@Li: It does suck for poly people and it’s certainly worth working to change that, but I think that’s better done by encouraging everyone to talk about it directly than by trying to reverse the default assumptions.
thejeff
@Proxiehunter: I don’t think so. At least not in the poly sense. More in sense Sarah Lea talks about – Are we serious enough to be “going steady” rather than still “dating around”?
Proxiehunter
@thejeff And my point was that without that discussion a lot of people, at least of a certain age, would assume that both parties would be free to date around thus no one would be cheating. A situation in which it would make sense to wonder why one party assumed the relationship to be monogamous.
Li
@thejeff: I’m not trying to reverse the default assumptions. I absolutely think Joyce’s communication here with Joe (if I’m right, and they miscommunicated) was awful and they both should’ve been clearer.
I’m just saying the responsibility should absolutely not be all on poly people to “disclose”, that’s crummy as heck.
(But Proxiehunter’s also right, and there at least used to be a social convention whereby after a few dates, you and your date-partner would sit down and talk about taking things to the next level: “are we going steady?”, as the kids used to say in, like, the 50s or whatever.
If straight people aren’t having that conversation anymore, and just assuming the answer is ‘yes’ as soon as there’s been one date, that’s a shame.
(As previously mentioned, the dating I did via OKCupid definitely had an expectation where you had to have a conversation before you would both, like, set your profiles to ‘in a relationship’ and stop chatting with other people. But I have never dated in the het scene, so I will not claim to know what that’s like.)
It’s not necessarily relevant to Joyce, because she did sort of stumble over declaring that she saw them as monogamous and exclusive during the masturbation conversation, but in real life, if the “going steady” conversation has stopped being a thing, that sucks.)
Li
Aw MAN I missed that Sarah Lea had already brought up “going steady” conversations. There are so many comments!! I reiterate that it’s sad if that’s gone out of style, but lol, I am embarrassed to have brought it up like it was a new topic.
thejeff
I responded to Sarah as well, (and it’s tomorrow, so you probably won’t see this) but I don’t think that has really stopped being a thing, even if it’s handled a little different. Like you suggest, it is usually handled that way pretty explicitly on dating apps, but in this kind of college scene when you know each other well people often go straight into “relationship” without actual dates. I think talking about being in a relationship or calling each other boyfriend/girlfriend is the language that replaces “going steady”.
None of which is to say that even college kids don’t still go on those formal “get to know you” dates, often through apps without immediately committing. Or for that matter just hook up for sex after a party or something again without committing.
But I think that discussion is a very different one than the poly discussion and they shouldn’t really overlap. “Are we serious enough to be exclusive?” and “We’re serious, but don’t want to be exclusive” are very different cases and it just gets confusing when they’re conflated. Those old “going steady” conversations almost never had any room for being poly.
Li
@thejeff I mean, they didn’t make space for it explicitly, but you could say “no, I don’t want to go steady with anyone, but I would like to keep dating you anyway” and see how that went over? Heck, the 60s and 70s were right around the corner, and they definitely had what we’d now call poly dating situations.
Still, you’re right that “I want a serious relationship” and “I want an exclusive relationship” aren’t the same statement, and could get conflated and confused…
I just think at least having a conversation about the seriousness of the relationship is still better than skipping it or considering it implied. ? That seems destined for heartbreak.
Adeptus
This is why I think Willis is doing an ”Amor Fou” story, about an all consuming, destructive passion. Neither of the ladies seem able to think of their usual ethical considerations right now. Dorothy makes some noises about it, but barely.
Sajuuk-Khar
The goalposts are constantly in motion, Leorale, but if you say so someone will complain that you’re being a mean jerk and how dare you.
Steamweed
Humph you’re being a mean jerk and how dare you!
Sajuuk-Khar
Oh no!!
PedanticJerkass
“So, do kids these days consider kisses cheating?”
For the most part, yes.
Li
You linked to Google. Did you mean to take the “””AI””” overview at its word?
Anyway, scroll down, and you get this GQ article which did a survey where only ~30% of self-identified women said yes, but ~60% of men did:
https://www.gq.com/story/is-kissing-cheating
Not much of a “for the most part” there, actually!
Also don’t trust “””AI”””, it can’t even count the r’s in a word correctly lol.
NGPZ
https://ludic.mataroa.blog/blog/i-will-fucking-piledrive-you-if-you-mention-ai-again/
*TAPS THE SIIIIGN* D:<
Proxiehunter
Paywalled. Does that cover what “the kids” think? The other results didn’t seem to either and that was the question asked.
Li
It’s from 2016, and an article about a YouGov survey, so probably not? It’s just also the only thing remotely on topic from the Google results they linked. If Pedantic Jerkass meant something else in the result set, they should let us know!
Li
Like, at least it’s a survey, instead of a single post on Reddit…….
Proxiehunter
Or a post on Quora.
Thing 2
You have done a survey, or you are speaking for yourself, but in the plural?
Axel
So, cheating isn’t that much of a concern to me here (yet), because it all happened very suddenly (like don’t get me wrong there was the will-they-won’t-they, and the moment in Joyce’s bed, but the actual first kiss and confession was in the middle of a very emotionally intense moment they didn’t expect to happen), and they haven’t had a chance to tell their partners “I’ve had a realization that will change or end our relationship,” since they don’t have phones and were taking the long route home etc.
That said, yeah I’d consider any intentional* romantic and/or sexual intimacy to be cheating**. I can’t imagine I’d be comfortable with my partner making out with someone without my knowledge, nor he with me doing that. It’s not as bad as sex, since there’s little chance of STIs or (with certain bodies) pregnancy, but it’s also a pretty intimate (both in connection and horniness) thing to be doing without a partner’s knowledge or permission.
*unintentional could be something that happened while carried away in a moment, or while under the influence, or where you haven’t realized there are romantic connotations, etc, and of course anything nonconsensual/unreciprocated
**assuming the relationship follows a typical monogamous structure without allowances for any of this sort of thing
Odo
Ehhh I would argue they have had plenty of time to rethink. In the heat of the moment during the protest… maybe…. but they were just standing in front of the dorms and it went like this:
We should stop holding hands –> Kissing
We are in relationships. We shouldn’t kiss or hold hands –> Kissing
At this point they know full well what they are doing. They have consciously considered it and still ignored it.
Maybe they are driven by passion, but that doesn’t excuse it. If someone is driven by rage and they hit someone, we still call it assault. People are responsible for their own emotions and for their own behavior.
Dot
And now they’re talking about an “us.” Dorothy, at least, seems fully cognizant of the fact that they are having an affair.
Axel
replied to this, but it was from my phone (which has been spotty with wifi) and didn’t post
I agree. I do think that it has already passed into the territory of cheating. But how concerned and bothered I am by it will depend on how it goes when they talk to Walky and Joe, if they chicken out and try to keep it secret, if they’re open about messing up (and then continuing to explore it before checking in with the partners), if they immediately say that they need to break up, etc.
and I’m giving them a little extra grace since they haven’t had phones or anything. they could probably have gotten home faster (esp if they didn’t make out more), but again I’d be more mad if they did have phones and just neglected to reach out with a ‘hey I have to see you when I get back to the dorms.’
also I imagine it is going to sting considering Becky, Sarah, and I’m sure now Joe and maybe Walky (if someone alerted him) have been worrying about them being fucking disappeared while they were actually making out.
so tl;dr I do think it’s cheating, I’m not happy with them and don’t really love this ship, I just want more context before I like, condemn them
Odo
Would you consider it cheating if you walked in on your partner passionately kissing someone else?
VicMortimer
Me? Nope. I once walked in on my girlfriend sucking my best friend’s weenus. My comment was something like “Oh, I see you guys are having fun.” They asked me to join, but I was too tired for sex, had just gotten back from work. I was hungry, offered to make them a sandwich too. The first threesome was later that night.
He knew I wouldn’t mind. She didn’t yet. Glad she figured it out. And yeah, it goes both ways, I occasionally boink his wife.
HueSatLight
“He knew I wouldn’t mind”
That’s what makes it not cheating.