By Stephanie Boucher, Registered Psychotherapist | The Mindful Loft
The short version: There is no universal definition of what counts as cheating. One couple’s harmless is another couple’s betrayal. But across every kind of relationship, two things tend to define cheating more than the specific act: secrecy and a broken agreement. The real question is not “is this cheating?” in the abstract. It is “what did we agree to, and is anything being hidden?” This article walks through what the research says, the modern grey areas, and how to have the conversation before confusion turns into hurt.
If you have ever wondered what counts as cheating in relationships, you are in good company.
It is one of the most common questions people quietly carry, often without saying it out loud.
Is texting an ex cheating?
Is watching porn?
Is a deep emotional connection with a coworker?
Is following an old flame on Instagram?
Is talking to an AI companion?
The honest answer is that it depends, and not in a way that lets anyone off the hook.
It depends on what the two of you agreed to, spoken or unspoken, and whether anything is being hidden.
Here is what I keep coming back to in this work:
Cheating is not always defined by the act itself. It is often defined by secrecy and broken agreement.
The same behaviour can be completely fine in one relationship and a devastating betrayal in another. What changes is not only the act. It is whether both people knew, agreed, and felt respected.
Let’s unpack what that actually means.
What people actually count as cheating
One of the reasons this question is so confusing is that people genuinely disagree about the answer.
That does not mean some people are right and others are naive. The disagreement is real and measurable.
The Institute for Family Studies surveyed 2,000 U.S. adults through YouGov and asked what behaviours they considered infidelity. The results show how wide the range is:
- 76% said a secret in-person emotional relationship counts as cheating
- 72% said a secret online emotional relationship counts as cheating
- 42% considered flirting to be cheating
- 32% considered secretly following an old girlfriend or boyfriend online to be cheating
- 30% considered using pornography to be cheating
Look at those numbers.
For almost every behaviour except a secret emotional relationship, people are split.
Roughly half of people think flirting is cheating. The other half do not.
If you are in a relationship with someone whose answer is different from yours, and you have never talked about it, you may have a misunderstanding waiting to happen.
This is why the question “what counts as cheating?” cannot be answered for everyone at once.
It can only be answered between two specific people who have actually talked about it.
The thread that runs through all of it: secrecy
When you look closely at what people most often identify as cheating, one pattern stands out.
Secrecy matters.
The behaviour people most agreed was cheating was not just emotional closeness. It was a secret emotional relationship.
That is the key.
In my work with people healing from betrayal, what I see again and again is that the deepest wound is rarely only the act itself.
It is the hiding.
It is discovering that someone you trusted was living a part of their life behind your back.
The lie often hurts more than the thing being lied about.
Think about it this way: if an action stays within the boundaries of your relationship, there is usually no reason to hide it.
The moment something needs to be concealed, that concealment is often a sign that a line has been crossed, even if the action seems small.
Secrecy is the tell.
This is also why the same behaviour can land so differently depending on context.
A partner texting a friend openly, phone on the table, nothing hidden, feels completely different from a partner texting someone in secret, deleting messages, or turning the screen away.
The texts might even say the same words.
The secrecy is what changes the meaning.
Emotional cheating versus physical cheating
For a long time, cheating was understood mostly in physical terms.
Sex.
Kissing.
Physical contact.
But anyone who has lived through an emotional affair knows it can hurt just as much, and sometimes more.
Emotional betrayal happens when a partner forms a deep, often secret, connection with someone outside the relationship.
They start sharing their inner world, their vulnerabilities, their daily joys and frustrations, with someone else. The intimacy that used to belong to the relationship gets redirected.
Often there is no physical contact at all, and yet the betrayed partner feels the floor drop out from under them.
An emotional affair is not automatically a lesser betrayal.
For many people, it cuts deeply because what has been given away is intimacy, secrecy, attention, and trust, not only physical contact.
What makes emotional cheating so painful is also what makes it hard to define.
There is no clean universal line.
A close friendship can be healthy.
So when does a close friendship become an emotional affair?
The answer, again, often comes back to secrecy and agreement.
If you are hiding the friendship, downplaying how much it means to you, deleting messages, comparing your partner to that person, or sharing things with that person that you have stopped sharing with your partner, those are signals worth paying attention to.
The modern grey areas
This question has become more complicated in the last few years because the behaviours people are asking about now did not exist, or were not as common, a generation ago.
Micro-cheating
Micro-cheating refers to smaller behaviours that may not rise to the level of an affair but still cross a relationship line.
This might include keeping a flirty text thread going, liking and commenting on someone’s photos in a way that feels clearly more than friendly, keeping a dating app installed “just to look,” or cultivating attention from someone you know is interested in you.
Individually, each behaviour may be small.
Together, they may show that something is being fed outside the relationship.
The question is not only:
Did anything physical happen?
It is also:
Is this behaviour protecting the relationship or quietly stepping outside it?
Digital affairs that start as “nothing”
Many betrayals now begin through phones, messaging apps, social media, or work platforms.
Almost no one tells themselves, I am going to blow up my relationship today.
More often, it starts as a conversation that feels harmless.
Then it becomes a secret.
Then it becomes emotionally charged.
Then it becomes something the person would not want their partner to see.
That progression matters.
Digital betrayal can be easy to minimize because it does not always look dramatic at first. But secrecy, emotional intensity, and the shifting of intimacy away from the relationship can still create real harm.
Financial infidelity
Financial infidelity can surprise people because it does not look like romantic or sexual betrayal.
But it follows the same pattern: secrecy, broken agreement, and hidden consequences.
Bankrate’s 2024 financial infidelity survey found that many partnered adults have kept financial secrets from their partner, including hidden debt, secret spending, or undisclosed accounts.
For some people, financial secrecy feels as painful as physical betrayal because it changes the sense of trust in the relationship.
It can also have real material consequences: hidden debt, missing savings, or a shared future built on numbers that were not true.
The secrecy is one wound.
The financial impact can be another.
AI companions and chatbots
This is one of the newest grey areas.
Is it cheating to have long, intimate, romantic, or sexual conversations with an AI companion?
There is no settled cultural answer yet.
Reasonable people may land in very different places.
Some people see it as harmless fantasy, closer to a game or private imagination.
Others feel deeply betrayed, especially if it is hidden, sexual, emotionally intense, or if the energy that used to go into the relationship is now going into the chatbot.
The technology is new.
The underlying question is old:
Is it secret?
Does it break an agreement?
Is it pulling intimacy, honesty, or sexual energy away from the relationship?
In every modern grey area, the same two questions cut through the confusion:
Did we agree to this?
And is it being hidden?
Cheating can happen in every kind of relationship
It is worth saying clearly: cheating is not only a monogamous issue.
It can happen in open relationships, polyamorous relationships, and every other relationship structure.
People sometimes assume non-monogamous relationships cannot experience cheating because “anything goes.”
That is not how it works.
Non-monogamous relationships often have detailed agreements about what is and is not okay. Breaking those agreements is a betrayal in the same way breaking a monogamous agreement is a betrayal.
The boundary may be different.
The violation works the same way.
In fact, non-monogamy can make the core principle even clearer: it was never only about the physical act.
It was about the agreement and the honesty.
Someone who breaks the agreed-upon rules of an open relationship, or hides something they were supposed to disclose, has still crossed a line, even if the same physical act would have been completely fine inside the agreement.
How to have the conversation before someone gets hurt
If there is one thing I would want you to take from this article, it is this:
The conversation about what counts as cheating is worth having before there is a problem, not after.
Most couples never explicitly discuss it.
They assume they are on the same page, and often they have a rough sense of what would hurt the other person.
But “a rough sense” is exactly where misunderstandings live.
I often see couples where one partner genuinely believed something was harmless, like texting an ex, keeping a dating app “for the memes,” or maintaining a close work friendship, while the other experienced it as a real breach.
Both people may be sincere.
They may simply never have mapped the boundary together.
You do not need a formal contract.
You need a conversation.
You might say:
I want to make sure we are on the same page about what feels okay and what does not, with friendships, social media, texting, attraction, and emotional closeness with other people. Can we talk about where our lines are?
It can feel awkward to bring up, especially if nothing is wrong.
But having the conversation while things are calm is much easier than having it after someone has already been hurt.
And the conversation itself can build trust.
It tells your partner:
I take this seriously, and I want to protect what we have.
When you’re ready
If you are dealing with the aftermath of a betrayal, or trying to make sense of a boundary that got crossed, you do not have to sort through it alone.
I offer a free 20-minute consultation. No pressure. Just a conversation about where you are and whether one of our therapists is right for what you need.
Sessions are covered by most extended health benefit plans. Fees are discussed in your free consult.
If trust in your relationship has already been broken, our work with betrayal trauma and childhood relational wounds may be a fit for what you are carrying.
You may also find it helpful to read what betrayal trauma is, signs you may be experiencing betrayal trauma, or why denying cheating can hurt more than the betrayal itself.
Not ready to book? I write about this territory monthly in our newsletter, The Messy Loft. Subscribe for free for thoughtful reflections on relationships, repair, and understanding yourself more clearly. We really are in this mess together.
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About the author
Frequently asked questions about what counts as cheating
Is texting an ex cheating?
It depends on whether it is open and whether it fits your relationship’s agreements.
Texting an ex that your partner knows about, with nothing hidden, is very different from a secret thread you would be uncomfortable having your partner read.
The secrecy is usually the tell.
If you would hide it, that is worth paying attention to.
Is flirting cheating?
People genuinely disagree on this.
In one large survey, only about 42% considered flirting to be infidelity. That means many people do not, and many people do.
What matters is whether you and your partner have the same answer.
If you have not talked about it, you may be operating with different definitions.
Is watching pornography cheating?
Again, people are split.
In the Institute for Family Studies survey, only about 30% of people considered pornography to be cheating.
Some couples consider it completely fine. Others consider it a betrayal.
There is no universal answer. There is only your answer and your partner’s, and whether they match.
Is emotional cheating worse than physical cheating?
Neither is universally worse.
For many people, emotional betrayal hurts more because it involves the redirection of intimacy and trust, not just a physical act.
For others, physical betrayal cuts deeper.
Both can be real. Both can be devastating.
The comparison matters less than the breach itself.
Is financial infidelity real cheating?
Many people experience it that way.
Financial infidelity usually involves hidden spending, secret debt, undisclosed accounts, or other money-related secrecy.
It follows the same pattern as other betrayals: secrecy, broken trust, and a hidden reality the other partner did not consent to.
The financial consequences can make the betrayal even more complicated.
Is talking to an AI companion cheating?
There is no settled answer yet, and couples may land in very different places.
The useful questions are the same as for any grey area:
Is it secret?
Does it break an agreement?
Is it pulling emotional or sexual energy away from the relationship?
If it is hidden, romantic, sexual, or replacing intimacy that used to belong to the relationship, it is worth talking about honestly.
How do my partner and I figure out our own definition of cheating?
Have the conversation directly, ideally before there is a problem.
Ask each other what feels okay and what does not across friendships, social media, texting, physical contact, pornography, emotional closeness, exes, work relationships, and digital behaviour.
You do not need to agree with every couple.
You need to understand each other.
Further reading
These are accessible reads if you want to go deeper:
- John Gottman and Nan Silver, The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work. A practical, readable book on trust and what keeps relationships stable.
- Esther Perel, The State of Affairs: Rethinking Infidelity. A nuanced exploration of why affairs happen and what they mean, including the role of secrecy.
- Institute for Family Studies, What Counts as “Cheating”?. A plain-language write-up of survey data on what people actually consider infidelity.
- Bankrate, Financial Infidelity Survey. A current survey on hidden financial behaviour in relationships.
References
Bankrate. (2024). Financial infidelity survey 2024. https://www.bankrate.com/credit-cards/news/financial-infidelity-survey-2024/
Gottman, J., & Silver, N. (1999). The seven principles for making marriage work. Crown.
Institute for Family Studies. (2019). iFidelity survey conducted by YouGov, n = 2,000. Analysis: What counts as “cheating” in marriage? Emotional infidelity in a national sample. https://ifstudies.org/blog/what-counts-as-cheating-in-marriage-emotional-infidelity-in-a-national-sample
Perel, E. (2017). The state of affairs: Rethinking infidelity. Harper.
This article is for educational purposes and is not a substitute for individualized mental health care.
If you are in immediate crisis or thinking of harming yourself, please reach out to a crisis line in your area. In Canada, you can call or text 9-8-8.
