LONG GONE ARE the days when cheating was as easy to spot as a lipstick smudge on a shirt collar. In 2026, infidelity often takes the smaller, yet nonetheless shitty, form of “microcheating.”
It could be a borderline flirty text to a colleague or check-ins with an old “friend” that start out innocently enough, but slowly replace the ones happening at home. Essentially, “microcheating is any kind of ‘dancing around the edges’ behaviour,” says Lauren LaRusso, L.P.C., L.M.H.C., a psychotherapist specialising in affairs and the author of Beyond Infidelity. “It’s the kind of behaviour that still gives you excitement and a sense of vitality about a connection with another person—without feeling like you’re truly breaking any relationship rules or boundaries.”
It’s worth noting that what one couple might call microcheating, another may consider fair game. For example, many people don’t consider watching pornography a form of microcheating, but some do. What’s specifically off limits depends on your personal and relational boundaries, but generally speaking, some of the most common microcheating behaviours include:
Not mentioning your relationship status when you meet someone new
Exchanging phone numbers or social media and sending overly interested or flirty DMs or texts
Sexting or sending suggestive photos, even without meeting in person
Flirting in person with someone else
Following models on social media and consistently liking or commenting on their content
Keeping an active dating profile, even if you’re not using it
How microcheating differs from having an emotional affair
Microcheating and emotional affairs are often grouped together, but they aren’t the same. Rather, think of microcheating as the appetiser and an emotional affair as the main course. “Emotional affairs consist of deeper emotionally intimate relationships between people,” says Sarah Hensley, Ph.D., a social psychologist, relationship coach, and founder of The Love Doc. “Usually, these are ongoing for quite a while–it’s essentially a romantic relationship that hasn’t turned sexual…yet.” Meanwhile, microcheating tends to be fleeting—and deniable—bursts of excitement, flirtation, and attention.
Although each instance of microcheating may be short-lived, over time, it can develop into an unhealthy pattern of behaviour. “Sometimes, a person has been microcheating for ten or twenty years, and it takes that long for them to transgress the relationship fully [because] they’ve sold themselves on a story that what they were doing wasn’t harmful,” says LaRusso, who sees this behaviour all the time in her practice. “[But] microcheating is harmful to relationships because it signals personal and relational vulnerability.”
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