It's a song :P

But anyway, I was thinking about what it means to be faithful to someone. I took the approach that in order to define this, I need to know what a relationship is. Because you need to have a relationship with someone in order to be faithful to them. Now, I'm going to use intimacy relationships (friends, family, partner) as the benchmark, as opposed to proximity relationships (like 'the boss').

So, intimacey relationships are based on love. So whats the defintion of love? It's more than saying 'I love you' in my opinion. Well, we can love all three types of people there, friends, family and our partner, but it's not all the same. So I'm going to infer that love is the commonality between these relationships. Whats common?

Well, I care about those people. A lot. And it's not quantative, it's qualitive.

Those people also care about me. That is, they know how I feel, and reciprocate to some extent. Possibly not to the extent that I do, maybe more, maybe less. But they know. And they reciprocate.
On the flipside, if I 'love' someone who doesn't reciprocate, i.e. they don't know how I feel or don't reciprocate, and I die, they may not care at all. There was no love. Love is a bond between two people.

For love to be known, it must be shown. I believe that actions speak louder than words, and are often a truer reflection of how we feel than our words are. Lip service love is easy. Putting action behind it requires effort. That's physical intimacy.

Mental intimacy is also required in my opinion. This relates to the way that we all create our own version of 'the world'. This is formed, I believe, by our beliefs, attitudes, and values. In order to share mental intimacy, we need to share our worlds.
And it needs to begin with values. Values don't really change. Values are what help us distinguish what is right from wrong. What is just from unjust. They are generally fixed when we are young and impressionable. When we use our five senses to help tell us about the world.
Beliefs are manifestations of values. For instance, some people believe that the police are corrupt. Some people believe Microsoft are a bad company. And so on.
And attitudes are reactions to beliefs, our own and others. When someone brings up a belief that we do not agree with, do we beat them down and impose our beliefs on them? Or do we accept that they are different? Or maybe adopt their belief as our own, and change ourself?
These are my definitions. If you love someone, you need to share values, because otherwise there will be a lot of cognitive dissonance, and you will either change your behaviour or change your values. Since values don't really change, it is more likely you will change your behaviour and not be around that person. Thats not love.



So love is:

- A caring bond between two people
- A sharing of common values
- A sharing of worlds, mentally and physically


Developing these requirements takes _time_. How much time is subjective in my opinion. Everyone is different. Also, we seem to get it wrong a lot!
Developing these requirements also takes _effort_. To put effort in, people must want the reward. So it also requires both parties to want to build a relationship.

With these requirements, it can be seen that there are different qualitive levels of love. For instance, even though I don't share the same beliefs as all my friends, because our values match, I am able to have a working friendship, and love them for being who they are, my friend. Thats one level.
But for my partner, I share my whole world with her. And it's common. Our values and most of our beliefs and attitudes. And that sort of love results in me not needing or wanting to give my whole world to anyone else.

So now, back to the original question, what does it mean to be faithful?
At a basic level, I think it means sustaining the love.
This will result in different meanings for different levels of relationships. I.e. for friends, I do not share everything about me, or all my attitudes and beliefs with them. So the expected level of faithfulness is less than my partner. With my partner, I share my whole world. So I have to continue with that level of action to maintain that level of love.

This definition of what it means to be faithful explains why one couple can be in love and maintain that love, but share parts of their world with others. For instance, I can have a friendship with a girl, but my partner knows that I love her and that my partner is the only one I share my whole world with.

For me, with my beliefs and attitudes, I also have additional constrains on what being faithful means to me. If my partner wants to kiss someone else in passion, and does not, then it is almost as bad as if she actually does it. And if she does not tell me about it, then she has started blocking me out from her world. Which degrades the love.

Do I think I can live up to these definitions? Absolutely...If I have the right girl! Someone who rocks my world, and continues to. Someone to take on my yacht, just the two of us, and never feel lonely :)