Is Flirting Cheating? Harmless Flirtation Signs

5 Ways to Know If Your Body Language is Harming Your Relationship

Dec 29, 2007
Laurie Pawlik-Kienlen

Flirting Versus Cheating, Emotional Infidelity - stock xchange vranarc

These differences between flirting and cheating will help you recognize harmless flirtation versus the more serious emotional cheating. Plus, here are signs of a flirt.

Flirting is cheating on your partner when your body language goes beyond innocent winks, smiles, and teasing. It's not harmless flirtation when people are emotionally involved.

Here are signs of emotional cheating, a few signs of flirting, and five ways to know if your flirtatious behavior is harming your relationship.

Signs of Emotional Cheating

You often have long lunches or extended drinks after work with colleagues of the opposite sex - and you don't often talk about business.
You discuss your work problems thoroughly at work with colleagues of the opposite sex, leaving nothing to talk about with your spouse.
You share jokes and gossip with friends or colleagues of the opposite sex, not with your partner.
You spend as much time buying the right gift for a friend or colleague of the opposite sex as you do for your spouse.
You share intimate issues with friends of the opposite sex, not your partner.

“When a spouse places his or her primary emotional needs in the hands of someone outside the marriage, it breaks the bond of marriage just as adultery does,” says Gary Neuman, author of Emotional Infidelity: How to Avoid it. “An emotional affair can be just as dangerous to a marriage [as a sexual affair], and often a more complicated situation to remedy.”

Flirting is not harmless if it leads to emotional cheating.

Signs of Harmless Flirtation

You tease or talk to friends or colleagues of the opposite sex in front of your partner.
You don’t make romantic innuendos or promises to others.
You make eye contact for short periods of time (in other words, you don’t stare meaningfully into someone’s eyes for long moments).
You laugh at jokes, tease, or nudge your flirting partner in unsuggestive ways.
You don’t lie to your partner about who you spend time with.
You treat everyone the same way. You don’t reserve certain squeezes or moments for a particular person.

5 Ways to Know If Your Flirting Is Harming Your Relationship

Your partner isn’t comfortable with your actions. If your partner feels hurt, betrayed or angry because of your flirting, then you need to reevaluate your understanding of flirting versus cheating.
Friends or colleagues misinterpret your actions. If your coworkers think you’re leading someone on or flirting with emotional cheating, then you probably are. Pay attention to what the people around you say with regard to your flirtatious behavior.
Your flirting partner misunderstands your signals. If your flirting partner thinks you want more than to share a joke, then you don’t know the flirting versus cheating difference. If your flirting partner makes a pass at you, then you’ve gone too far.
Your flirting partner contacts you regularly. If the person you flirt with calls you at home often or visits your work regularly, you may have blurred the flirting versus cheating line. If your flirting partner is a colleague of the opposite sex and you’re getting strong sexy vibes, then your flirting isn’t harmless.
You’re flirting for the wrong reasons. If you’re flirting to manipulate another’s feelings, attract people, get a job, or increase your self esteem, then you may have crossed over into emotional cheating (or just flirting for the wrong reasons). Flirting harmlessly doesn’t usually have strings attached, nor is it manipulative.

Are you a flirt? Read 10 Signs of Flirting.

Related Reading on Sex and Love

For a full list of articles about sex and love, read Creating Healthy Sexual Intimacy in Love.

How to Make Love Last in Long-Term Relationships describes how to stay intimate, and improve your love life.

Healthy Ways to Say I Love You helps couples express their feelings in sincere, effective ways.

Laurie Pawlik Kienlen, Psychology Feature Writer, Bruce Kienlen

Laurie Pawlik-Kienlen - Laurie Pawlik-Kienlen is a full-time writer and blogger in Vancouver, BC, and the creator of the Quips and Tips blog series.

Is Flirtatious Behavior Emotional Cheating - sxc rknds

Signs of Harmless Flirtation - sxc Ambrozia

Is Flirting Cheating on Your Partner - sxc Kiomi

Flirting, Flirtatious Behavior, Emotional Cheating - sxc fangol

Comments

Feb 21, 2009 9:01 AM

Guest :

I have been married for 15 years. It has been tough the past 5 years. My wife has gone through some tremdious changes. I quess she is finding out who she really is. She is into ghost hunting and kareokee singing. She spends most of her time on Myspace and has numerous friends. She has a lot of male friends. She says she can't be friends with female because they are out to hirt her or steal her man. She has been to alot of places with groups of her friends. She loves to flirt. She had a few close calls because of flirtting. I am an old fashioned man who believes a woman who is married shouldn't flirt and a man who is married shouldn't flirt either. As you may quess it has lead to some deep talks. We have three children to think about. The reason I am hear to seek help or answers to what to do. She gave her cell number to a stranger and they constantly texted and called each other and left each other sexual comments and the L word was said. I do not know what to do now except call it quits.

Jun 30, 2009 6:28 AM

Guest :

Oh dear that doesnt sound very good? Maybe she is just going through an identity crisis? How old were you when you got married?

It sounds like she is being silly and rather selfish, your marriage and kids should come before any myspace strangers and flirting with other men, but then hopefully there is no harm in it and she will come to her senses.

I hope since you wrote this your situation has changed and you are back to your old selves.

Good luck!

Oct 15, 2010 8:18 AM

Guest :

Ow! that\s quite sad... the article is nice and all.. but the comment really makes one think.. I am a married woman and I am looking through these articles because there's this hottie at work that Ihave a lot of eye contact with.. I know there's nothing missing in my relationship with my husband and also know that it would be just plain wrong to start anything I know I won't be able to follow-up with... the comment really made me think though on how my hubster would take things...
We were together since we were both 18 and have never known a person of the opp sex intimately.. may be that\s the curiosity I was trying to satisfy.. or may be its got to do with me earning for the both of us for the last 4 years after I completed the college while he's still repeating his exams... may be its also got to do with the crazy fat belly he's grown and that he never shaves for over 2-3 weeks... either way.... the comment tells me how much something unintentaionally done by a wife can affect the husband....

Thanks for the artical and the first comment...

Nov 28, 2010 3:21 PM

Guest :

Some people flirt with everybody and some or all could be "innocent", but the person on the receiving end of the flirt might see it differently. If you flirt, don't get upset if it is misconstrued because it's bound to happen.

Being in a relationship means different things to people and some don't see flirting as bad at all. If you are looking outside your relationship for attention, maybe it's time to ask yourself why. Where is the line drawn before you get into dangerous territory?

May 4, 2011 8:17 AM

Guest :

I am newly married, this is my second marriage and I am 40 years old, my wife likes to stare and flirt with other guys. I tell her she is wrong in what she does and all she does is get mad when the subject is brought up am I wrong in thinking that she is cheating by stareing and flirting?

Dec 5, 2011 2:00 AM

Guest :

I knew my partner had been emotionally cheating on me after I saw some of the messages to a (married) friend of his involving a mutual desire to make out and more, and in the weeks following the discovery and break-up (his dumping me) I've been constantly in tears. I read this article while feeling particularly upset again to see if there were any signs I could have picked up on sooner, and the way the last section was phrased made me realize just how insensitive and unfair my partner had been towards me. Even until the break-up I had wanted to try to stay friends and maintain some sort of relationship because I still cared about him, and that was why it just wouldn't stop hurting. After reading this I stopped crying. I realized that a person who thinks like that and continues such actions with total disregard for his loved one's feelings is just not worth crying over.
I am so glad I came across this when I did; I think it saved me from another few weeks or even months of hurting and crying. Now I don't regret kicking him out. I don't regret being dumped; I only wish I had done it myself sooner. I don't regret my decision to push him out of my life and no longer pursue a friendship with him. I just feel so much better, knowing that all of this self-doubt was useless and unnecessary, and that I shouldn't need to put up with a person like that in my life. Thank you so much. I never expected this to help me recover but now I know I can survive this and move on with my life.

Dec 9, 2011 11:02 PM

Guest :

Hi thanks for the article, this might be unusual but bear in mind it still bothers me. My partner and I met several years ago and we both 'knew' we were going to meet someone special and things got off to a nice start, I wanted things to be quite formal in some ways but relaxed in others and have a bit of an old fashioned courtship, we did sort of have this to start with for a couple of months, then he started staring continually at someone in the course that we were doing, it went on for about 3 months, then I said something, I wanted to watch him and try and figure out if he was a cheater or not, he reassured me that it was not in his nature to cheat that he never would or could and was not even capable of it while I believe this is true, it really impacted on me and I have never really got over it deep down, I am not an insecure person and did not feel she was more attractive, but feel betrayed right at the beginning of a special time which we will never ever have again or get back. It actually puts me off physically even years later, because to me real imtimacy is about sharing soulfully with someone and reserving a sense of specialness for that one person, it seemed to me that he gave it all away to someone else and I hate it. I am trying to move on from these feelings years later and really struggle with it, we are looking at getting married and I don't want to take this into a marriage. I did want my dream to come true and it did not, I didn't expect anything else or anything superficial to happen when I met him, but did think that the sense of closeness I wanted would of happened with the right man. The awful part was that the person he was looking at was about 10 years younger and also a very manipulative girl who seemed to want to make the most of interferring in my relationship, even though the contact between them never went beyoind 'looking'/staring.

7 Comments