Now here's what I like to call "Mental Cheating". Mental cheating is having an intimate relationship with someone that you never meet in person. This differs from long distance cheating because the distance doesn't matter, the parties involved will most likely never meet and probably have very little desire to do so. The person who asked me about this is a handsome man (lets call him John), he is in a committed relationship with a beautiful woman who he is very in love with, and they have started a family together. He explained to me that over the past year he has begin speaking to other females on the Internet, and more recently over the phone and he feels like hes sort of cheating on his spouse. I began to ask him why and his reasons we very interesting and eye opening. John told me that over the years his girlfriend has begun to show him less and less passion and enthusiasm about the relationship. He met a woman online who seemed very interested in him physically and they began chatting. This woman made John laugh and was interesting, and most importantly found John interesting. She and John would text and call each other, they would send each other funny emails, and talk about their families, they even Sexted! John thought she was beautiful inside and out, from what he could gather, and he felt very sexy and wanted when speaking to her. She lived in another town and they never met. In my book, that's cheating. Particularly the Sexting. I am pretty sure that if his significant other knew about this she would feel violated and unhappy with the situation, so why did he do this?

What are your thoughts on this? Do you think "Mental Cheating" is as bad as the real thing? Do you think its more common than we know?