What’s Considered Cheating? Here’s What Reddit Reveals

The latest news emerging around Adam Levine’s cheating allegations has set the internet on fire. The musician, who is married to Victoria’s Secret model Behati Prinsloo, has been caught up with a whole lot of women sharing DM’s he allegedly sent them… there’s also been talk of an affair.

Now, Levine has shared a public apology and said he “crossed a line” but denies he cheated (you can read all about it through our pals at Pedestrian), but what constitutes cheating in the public eye?

We’ve written on boundaries and expectations in relationships before – namely, the importance of defining what cheating means in any relationship you commit to because this can be quite different depending on the people involved. But there are some expectations that appear to be fairly broadly held.

We took a look at our favourite public barometer, Reddit, to see where the consensus lies. Here’s how people defined cheating there.

What is considered to be cheating?

Taking to the r/Women Reddit forum, folks were asked to share what they defined cheating to be, and the most upvoted answer was a pretty straightforward one.

MelodiS8 wrote:

“Honestly, anything you have to hide. If you would be in serious trouble if your partner saw it, I consider it cheating.”

RetroSaturdaze echoed this sentiment, sharing that “I agree. I always say – anything you say or do that your partner wouldn’t be cool seeing is a pretty good indicator.”

Reddit user thecolourofthisstone added, however, that there are, of course, cases in which this kind of ruling could be taken out of context. So, this kind of broad definition may not be helpful in all cases.

“Although I agree I’d feel a bit wary of the phrase ‘if you would be in serious trouble if your partner saw it’ because it feels to me like someone being coerced or emotionally manipulated by their partner could infer from that that normal healthy friendships are “cheating” because they get ‘in trouble’ from their partner for it,” they wrote.

In r/SampleSize, thetowerstruckdown shared that they had run a small survey of about 400 people and posted some results in the forum. Obviously, we haven’t seen the full survey results and can’t speak to the details of that, but some of the comments in response were pretty interesting to observe.

SquishyButStrong wrote that “In my perspective, emotional cheating is forming a romantic or emotionally intimate bond with someone outside of your current relationship boundaries. It usually includes disclosures, secrets, or discussions which you don’t have with your partner but do have with this new person. It can also refer to flirtatious relationships where nothing sexual happened but you wanted it to and maybe even tried to make it happen.”

Others, however, felt that emotionally intimate bonds can be formed with friends, and don’t always constitute cheating.

Separately, throwaway_0x90 shared this clear explanation of their view on cheating:

“Well I’m a monogamous type of person so that’s the basic framework my partner needs to understand.

“Sex with someone else is definitely cheating. Romantic dinners by candlelight and watching romance movies with someone else is cheating. Basically all the stuff my partner & I do together for the purpose of romance & sex shouldn’t happen with anyone else.”

Of course, the above will not apply if you’re in an ethically non-monogamous relationship, but there are many who see this as a clear definition of what traditional cheating looks like.

So, what do you think? Let us know in the comments below.