According to dating expert Melanie Schilling and HuffPost Australia, micro-cheating seems innocent, but it’s really not.
Micro-cheating is a series of seemingly small actions that indicate a person is emotionally or physically focused on someone outside their relationship.
Essentially, it’s the small step towards physically cheating on someone–and, can often time be considered emotional cheating. It’s essentially putting energy into someone else that’s outside of your relationship that borderlines flirtatious or romantic. You may be working with a co-worker or a peer on a project and it turns into something flirty and takes a majority of your time up. You start feeling more comfortable talking to them about things than you do with your significant other. Sometimes, you lie about how often you speak to this person, how much you share with them, and ultimately begin hiding things from your partner.
All of these things are considered micro-cheating. Essentially, micro-cheating is emotional cheating. You would rather be with someone other than your significant other and allow that relationship to be your “have my cake and eat it too,” moment because you’re not physically cheating on your partner. Now, there’s nothing wrong with having friends of the opposite sex outside of your relationship and, everyone is entitled to have their own relationships/friends in their life that don’t always involve their partner, but, when you know you have a physical or emotional attraction to someone outside of your relationship and you continue to nurture that relationship, you’re doing a disservice to yourself and your partner–especially because the third party may feel the same way you do and it can escalate to physical cheating.
Truly, I’m a full believer that if you have to hide something from your partner, your relationship isn’t exactly healthy or in a good place. Relationships should be built on honesty and trust, and if you’re lying to someone you’re dating, you’re setting yourself up for some pretty big problems down the road.