Is sexting someone else cheating?

TOBY Green gives her verdict on whether flirty text messages to a third party is grounds for breaking up.

sexologist

TOBY Green gives her verdict on whether flirty text messages to a third party is grounds for breaking up.

question: I recently ended a relationship when I caught my boyfriend "sexting" an old friend. He swore it wouldn't happen again and said she was just a friend and they were only fooling around. But it did happen again and I was devastated. Is it okay for a man to text dirty messages to another woman while in a relationship?

Is thinking about sex cheating?

answer: No, it is not okay. This issue is wide open for the hypothetical "if the circumstances were reversed" question. While women feel more betrayed by the emotional intimacy of what drives men's sexual flirting, men are radar-like when it comes to being threatened by other men sexually hitting on their woman.

Men know there is nothing platonic about suggestive sex. They know other men are fishing to score.

At the very least, men are looking for a "yes" for an ego payoff. It matters that he doesn't take up the option in reality, but it's still an act of emotional infidelity. A sexual suggestion to another in cyberspace or sexting is as disloyal as it is at a party or in your living room. Any woman receiving this flirtation would assume the man sexting her was available. If she knows he has a partner, she is kidding herself if she thinks she's not guilty of participating in an act that jeopardises the man's relationship.

I have no objection to "perving" on the internet, but only when it is as anonymous as a Playboy magazine. Men will always look. Much of this is motivated by curiosity and the pleasure of the visual imagery of attractive women, and some use it to stimulate their existing relationship.

I have never had a male client say he was thinking of someone else while engaged in sex with his partner. They describe themselves as being too lost in the moment to have their minds elsewhere. The irony is that many women have confided they visualise other men when engaged in sex with their partners. This indicates that men may be more physically unfaithful; however, sexually speaking, women can be more mentally unfaithful.

Anonymous pictures, fantasies and thoughts are okay when contained. Cheating is when there is a real third person made to feel, in any form, that they are invited to trespass into a primary partnership.