The main difference between the two is honesty and communication. And a lot of people are monogamous so of course they’d get upset if their partner admitted to doing anything romantic/sexual with another person. As someone who is poly, I always feel like I can’t put in my two cents when someone asks “what would you do” because 99% of the time they really mean “what should I do” which makes my answer useless. If my partner was like “hey, I went to a party last night and had a one night stand” I would answer “oh, why didn’t you invite me💁🏻 but fr though was it just a one time thing or do you want to get brunch or something? Can I meet them?” I wouldn’t be upset. If my partner didn’t tell me, or continued seeing them without telling me: that would be cheating.

In monogamous relationships cheating is always some variation of breach of trust via emotional/sexual closeness to someone of the preferred gender in any manner.

In polyamory it’s *typically* some variation of breach of trust via hiding emotional/sexual closeness with someone of the preferred gender in any manner.

Of course the definition of cheating is fluid depending who you ask and set rules in a given relationship/polycule.

I thought I’d just post this here as an informative guide/brain dump of my thoughts on polyamory and cheating instead of commenting “I’m polyamorous so not cheating because honesty and xyz”