Cheating has a lot of criteria that makes it a controversial topic. I understand the obvious one, where a partner goes against his or her other partner by giving and/or getting physical affection from another person willingly and with consent (kissing, sex, holding or touching each other’s body parts affectionately). Another one is to give or get affection from a person other than your partner without it being physical (affectionate texts, sexting...), however the non-physical part may be grey.

I want to see if this particular scenario is considered cheating in your perspective:

A girl is dating a guy. She then starts to fall for another guy. She still stays in the relationship and doesn’t pursue the guy she’s falling for whatsoever. But she does express her love for him in writing on her own time, knowing that she will never share them to anyone. She never did, until she broke up with her boyfriend and started dating the guy she was writing about.

I know this might be complicated because technically the girl never shared her writings to anyone, but there’s also the argument that if she took an action that goes against her partner at the time, it would mean that she wasn’t faithful to her partner. I’m not sure how to see it. Maybe my definition of cheating at the top is arguable, because if you factor in being faithful, maybe the definition would simply mean that cheating is just being unfaithful. What are your thoughts?