Signs of Micro-Cheating in a Relationship

What Is Micro-Cheating?

Let’s start with probably the most important question. Some of you may not be aware of such a concept, some of you may have a rough idea of it, but you are not really sure of what it is. Thus, let’s find out what micro-cheating is.

What is micro cheating in a relationship? The term “micro-cheating” implies secret communication with a person to whom you have a sexual or romantic attraction. It's about communication without any physical contact. Since this concept is relatively new, psychologists are still arguing about its definition. They are still trying to define micro-cheating. The creation of the term is associated with the emergence of various instant messengers and great opportunities for online communication and as a result, people have unlimited access to communication with a person of their passion. Some equate micro-cheating to flirting in all its manifestations, including direct communication with the object of your interest. There is also yet another definition of this term. Australian psychologist Melanie Schilling defines micro-cheating as a series of actions that show your emotional attachment to another person with whom you are not in a permanent relationship.

Surely you were surprised when you felt affection for a new person, with whom you’ve had some correspondence. This is the first alarming sign of micro-cheating.

Today there are several generally accepted signs of micro-cheating:

• To be in constant correspondence with another person that is not your partner.
• To complain about problems in a relationship with someone who is interested in you.
• To communicate on intimate topics with someone who sexually attracts you.
• To hide the fact that you are in an ongoing relationship.

Is Micro-Cheating a Harmless Affair or a Threat to a Relationship?

“At its core, micro-cheating implies virtual communication with a person to whom you are experiencing a romantic or sexual attraction. At the same time, everything that happens on the Internet is an absolute secret to your partner,” as according to a psychologist, sexologist, and trainer at the Center for Family and Sexual Education Secrets, Brie Hudson. According to the expert, this concept is still very much a young one, and therefore, the question of whether it is worthwhile to consider virtual attention to someone as a full-fledged manifestation of infidelity is still open to discussion. As the specialist emphasizes, the very fact that your partner likes the photos of another person of the opposite sex doesn’t yet mean that they plan on having sex with them, they may not even have such a desire in the first place. After all, you must agree, apart from sexual interest, there are plenty of reasons why a person would like someone else’s photos, I mean, isn’t it just normal for us to scroll and like the photos of our colleagues and friends? It is.

However, the opposite is also true: there are no guarantees that a virtual manifestation of attention to someone will not grow into something real and quite damaging to your current relationship. “We live in an uneasy digital age, which also affects the relationship between a man and a woman. Social networks erase the boundaries of privacy, and likes are now a way of manipulation and influencing someone. In such a world, it is very difficult to feel the boundary between ordinary flirting and virtual infidelity,” says Brie. At the same time, as the psychologist notes, this form of infidelity does not mean that problems have arisen in your relationship. “However, manifestations of micro-cheating may indicate that partners have moved away from each other or have lost their previous interest in their relationships.

Perhaps your lover is looking for support, interest or proof of their attractiveness online because they do not receive it from you. Perhaps they are on a mission to find someone else on the Internet, and you are the reason why they are not satisfied with their current relationship. But until the question is raised for discussion between two partners, it’s very difficult to talk about any patterns in the cause-effect relationship.” Now that we know the micro-cheating definition and its impact on a relationship, let’s look into some micro-cheating signs.

Micro-Cheating Signs

Let’s start our discussion about signs of micro-cheating by taking a look at ourselves, we often critique other people and accuse them of all sorts of different things, but we forget about ourselves. You may be micro-cheating on your partner right now, you just don’t know it yet.

You play with fire if you don’t dress like you always do when you know that you’ll see a certain person, of which your partner doesn’t know anything about, including your regular meetings with them after work, and you lie to them by not talking about this situation. For example, you always like and comment the photos of another person on Instagram (and this is not just some celebrity or a relative, it’s a completely unknown person) or you stopped taking your relationship seriously because you’ve just met another person that is more interesting to you than your partner.

This is just harmless entertainment, you say. Yes, while we can probably agree with that, but only to a certain extent. In every relationship, there is a line, crossing which will be considered as an act of infidelity. Micro-cheating means that you think about the attention of a stranger, and this is a red flag for your ongoing relationship. What motivation can you have to put on all of the best clothes you have for yet another basic day of work? What would your partner feel if they knew that you are making extra efforts for the sake of a stranger or that you delete text messages out of fear that your partner can read them?

And what if you suspect your partner of micro-cheating? Recognizing this without any hints and signs will not be easy. But if you intuitively feel that this is the case, simply bring your partner to an honest conversation, tell them how you feel. Say, “It seems to me that you have some kind of connection with this person, that is, if I were with you, I would be uncomfortable in your presence. Do you have any feelings for them?” If you have concrete evidence, then you can say, "When I see how you comment on the photos of this person, I worry about us." If they don’t give a damn about you and your relationship, then they will try to correct everything as soon as possible. If they decide to just dismiss you and not to take your words seriously, this is a reason to think about the future of your relationships.

That being said, there are still some common signs of micro-cheating you should be aware of. As the expert notes, the signs of micro-cheating, like the concept itself, are rather blurred. However, as a rule, in the case of virtual infidelity, one of the partners begins to behave in a way that is not quite usual. So, you should be alerted by the following changes in their behavior.

• Your partner began to like the photos of a person. This may be, for example, a partner's colleague, ex-wife or just a new acquaintance.
• A partner’s phone starts to vibrate from a variety of new messages. However, you cannot really answer the question of who their addressee is.
• Your lover has become very distant from you, and now you spend the evenings separately — both of you are sitting in front of your computers, not doing anything together.
• A partner always tries to be sure that their phone is near them at all times. They try not to leave a smartphone in another room or, if you are nearby, flips it with the screen down.

Naturally, you will hardly be able to reliably find out the motives for such behavior. Therefore, the only thing you can do to clarify the situation is to speak frankly with your loved one. “What is definitely not worth doing is secretly exploring the partner’s phone while they are taking a shower or throwing out the garbage, trying to take a look into their conversations and see the people that called them over the past few days. Practice shows that relationships without trust do not work, and all your actions aimed at depriving a partner of privacy can destroy a relationship between you even faster than their likes on social networks,” says Brie.

That being said, let’s look into some common micro-cheating examples.

Micro-Cheating Examples

If you are micro-cheating yourself:

• You’ve got people listed under made-up names in your phone.
• You do it to prevent your partner from entering your personal space and scanning your phone for all sorts of possible signs that you are having an affair with someone else.
• You are still using a dating app
• Why would use a dating app if you are in a relationship? I mean, do you really think that people use them to find friends? Of course not, dating apps aren’t made for that.
• You have a person that is very dear to you, yet your partner doesn’t know anything about them.

Now this one is pretty much self-explanatory. You may think like there is no problem in such behavior, but let’s be honest, ask yourself, is there any real reason why you in a relationship with your partner that doesn’t get the same amount of attention as some relative stranger? Is there a reason for you to not just leave the first person and start a relationship with the latter? There are lots of possible different ways of finding out whether your partner is micro-cheating on you or not, you can even find a micro-cheating quiz online, although you should not just rely on the result of one of such quizzes.

If you suspect your partner of micro-cheating:

• A new person has appeared in their life
• Now, this doesn’t mean like a long-lost son or a daughter, but rather just a random person that can be, at least in theory, classified as a potential partner.
• Your partner’s relationship status on their social media accounts doesn’t correspond to reality.
• This one is quite simple, they are trying to hide something from someone else, they don’t want them to know that you exist.
• Your partner doesn’t really want to spend time with you and either spend it in front of their computer or somewhere else

This is the killer sign, perhaps there is no coming back after that when a person is not more interested in someone else. They are trying to either avoid you or spend the least amount of time with you possible.

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