I was on Instagram late one night, scrolling through the feeds of various models (I’m always looking for new and exciting ways to experience insomnia), when I noticed that my friend’s boyfriend was all over their comment sections, leaving hearts and emojis on a bunch of different girls’ photos. Ew, I thought. Not because leaving a heart emoji is, in itself, some terrible offense, but because there’s something bleak about seeing a man you know in real life working his way through a stranger’s thirst traps while his girlfriend, presumably, has no idea.
Technology has made the parameters of cheating much harder to pin down. There’s physical cheating, obviously; then there’s emotional cheating, sexting, sliding into DMs, liking someone’s bikini photos, keeping an ex on standby—or what’s now known as micro-cheating. According to basically every definition that comes up when I google it, micro-cheating covers a collection of small, subtle behaviors that violate the trust within a relationship without crossing the line into physical sex.
They’re usually things you hide from your partner because somewhere, deep down, you know they’re wrong. That could mean texting someone and deleting the messages afterward. Flirting over DM. Going on dating apps “just to look.” Exchanging numbers with someone at a party. In other words, all the little things you’d probably be less inclined to do if your partner were standing next to you, watching.
I remember the first time I fell victim
I remember the first time I fell victim to micro-cheating, before the term had been coined. I was at the tail end of a relationship that, looking back, we both should have ended much sooner. One day, while we were lying in bed, I noticed a new icon on his phone’s screen. “What’s that?” I asked. “Uh, nothing.”
It was Tinder. I yanked the phone out of his hand and a blowout fight ensued.
Eventually, he let me go through the app because I had threatened to dump him and he wanted to prove his innocence. “I never met up with anyone,” he pleaded. This was true; he hadn’t met up with anyone. But he was still on Tinder, exploring his options, presumably for some kind of reassurance that there were other women out there who might want him. We later broke up. I’m not exactly sitting here on my moral high horse; I have been a perpetrator of the micro-cheat too.
(Also the cheat cheat.)
My personal favorite move in years past was keeping my exes a little too close when I had a new boyfriend. Even when a relationship seemed to be working, it was difficult for me to fully commit: What if he left? What if I got hurt? Even if I didn’t meet up with anyone, I did rely on them emotionally. I’d reach out to other guys when my boyfriend and I fought.
I didn’t want to be unfaithful; I mostly
I didn’t want to be unfaithful; I mostly just wanted attention and to know that if my relationship exploded, there would be someone in the blast radius who still wanted me. At the time, I could convince myself that none of it was technically cheating. I wasn’t sleeping with anyone. I wasn’t going on secret dates. But whether or not my partner knew it, I was eroding something between us.
Because every time you seek romantic or sexual validation outside of your relationship, virtually or in person, you are creating a little world apart from the one your partner thinks you’re sharing. Maybe that’s why micro-cheating feels so violating even when the individual acts seem trivial. It’s not really about the heart emoji; it’s about the meaning behind it. Throughout my relationships, I’ve learned that trust and loyalty aren’t just things you owe your partner; they cut both ways.
When you sneak around and hide things, you’re introducing secrecy where there used to be innocence. You’re teaching yourself, little by little, that it’s okay to be deceitful. And eventually, even if nobody can point to the exact moment when it happened, the relationship starts to feel different. So maybe my friend genuinely doesn’t care that her boyfriend leaves hearts on the photos of girls he’s “friends with” or “worked with.” Maybe that’s completely fine for them.
But for me? It’s a boundary I’m no longer willing to cross.
Source: www.vogue.com
