Can you cheat without having sex?

Emotional cheating hurts just as bad.

If your partner doesn’t like it, then it’s cheating. Kissing, emotional, ignoring the partner to spend time with another, anything like that.

Men are inclined to forgive an emotional alliance but become fearful and angry if their SO has a sexual alliance. Women can sometimes forgive purely sexual escapades, but are upset by emotional affairs. This has been predicted by evolutionary psychology, and is backed up by some pretty good trans-cultural data.

Yep, what you have there is an emotional affair. It’s cheating in my books.

@pdworkin GA!

In my experience, emotional cheating can can be just as harsh, of course that is not from some study or poll, that is from experience.. Depends on how deep the connection is and the situation on how sever the pain would be.

I believe that the brain is the largest (or at least the most vital) sexual organ, so to me there is no differentiating. In my opinion cheating involves reciprocation from another person, whether it is physical or indirectly physical.

When I think of a partnership, I imagine two people that are closer to each other than they are to anyone else.

If someone is forming a relationship, sexual or not, that interfers or intrudes on the closeness that the partners feel with each other, then it can be considered cheating.

(I suspect this is the origins of in-law jealousy also.)

Yes – I’ll only reiterate what’s been said, and as @sndfreQ stated that the brain is “sexual”
It takes the brain to drive all of your actions, and when you begin confiding in someone other than your SO, you are cheating. As you form the verbal exchanges, your brain can override what you think you feel. The more time you spend chatting with that person, the less time you are devoting to your SO.

I’ve seen it happen several times just this year with my neighbors, HE texts with HER and his wife doens’t know the texts are going back and forth. Then that innocent text becomes something more and then even more. Then they begin to depend on hearing from the other and on it goes. If it’s done in secret, it’s wrong, and that newly formed dependence is cheating his wife out of what they should be sharing.

Anything that you do with someone else you are physically or emotionally attracted to, that you wouldn’t want your significant other to know about… is cheating.

If it will surely hurt your partner eventhough there’s no sex involved it is already called cheating.

I see the physical act of betrayal as the confirmation. The concrete evidence of the destruction of trust.

The emotional act of cheating as a tough one in my mind. I am partly conflicted due to personal experience in the area, on the same side as yourself. I was devastated, heartbroken and felt that I could never look at the person the same again. But it strikes me that in my case perhaps the emotional dependence upon another was to some extent a fault of my own. A guilt with which I shall always be ridden.

If you secretly love another person, you’re just being cruel to yourself and your partner.

Doing other physical things besides sex with another person depends on what kind of relationship you’re in. Some people are just touch/feely/cuddly with their normal friends. It’s a matter of what your SO is comfortable with.

I think that having an emotional relationship over the internet is cheating, but I think it is very different from having a physical relationship. When you aren’t together physically, then it is, of necessity, all in your head. In other words, it’s a fantasy. Cheating on your spouse with a fantasy driven by words, voices and pictures, is virtual cheating. You are spending more quality time in your fantasy world than you are interacting with your spouse.

Of course, anything that takes you away from your spouse is cheating in the same way. Porn, rebuilding cars, drinking with the guys, drugs, work—and a thousand other reasons why people can withdraw from their spouses for more interesting loves. It is all cheating without having real sex. It all threatens the relationship.

Some people would say that masturbation is wrong. You should save it all for your spouse. Virtual sex is not really any worse than anything else that takes you from your spouse. How far you take it is up to you, but any activity that gets in the way of your primary relationship is cheating. And it’s all without real sex.

Now the question is what do all these forms of cheating mean for the relationship? I don’t think you can take virtual relationships as seriously as real relationships. I also think you have to take any of these other things that take time from the relationship as seriously as you would take a virtual relationship.

They are all pastimes. And pastimes can get in the way of a marriage. “You love your car, more than you love me!” “You love work more than you love me!” A virtual relationship, I believe, is not the same as a real relationship, and anyone who thinks that is fooling themselves. It is possible to turn it into a real relationship, but it is, by no means, a slam dunk. And I believe that most people involved in them never meet in reality. In the end, it’s just another pastime, as engaging as anything else you really like doing, and as threatening to a marriage as anything that takes you away from your spouse.

One might ask whether it is possible to have two love. I think that if the balance is right, you can. You can tinker with the car, or any of the other things people do, and if you don’t do it too much, it won’t threaten your relationship. Virtual relationships seem different, and they are. But I don’t think they are as much different as people believe. The problems with a virtual relationship are that they could become real, and that they are with another person.

Some people can handle it, I guess. My wife couldn’t. I don’t know what I would think if she did it. I can’t imagine her wanting to. Then again, I can’t imagine ever wanting to hurt her, or the kids, but I still did it. There are probably so many reasons for that, and I doubt if any of them matter to anyone but me. For most people, it’s a matter of black and white; right and wrong. For me, the world is more subtle than that. But I’m crazy. I have the certificate to prove it.

so are you all saying you cant have a friend other than your S O?

Yes, definitely

I hear those emotional STD’s can be a real bitch to get rid of, let’s just fuck hookers instead….