Is Remote Work Increasing Microcheating Within Relationships?

In the last decade, a new term has grown increasingly popular to describe some ethically questionable behavior while in a relationship: microcheating. Australian dating expert Melanie Schilling described the term as involving “a series of seemingly small actions that indicate a person is emotionally or physically focused on someone outside their relationship.”

Writing in Psychology Today in 2018, Sam Louie observed that actions aren’t the only component of microcheating; there’s also an element of secrecy to it. In other words, someone whose significant other is aware that they’re “liking” a lot of posts on someone else’s social media is probably not microcheating, as it’s currently defined. But this also raises another question: what’s brought microcheating back into the spotlight?

According to experts cited by the Associated Press’s Albert Stumm, the rise in remote work since 2020 has played a big part here. “In this work-from-home environment, [microcheating] can happen even easier because it’s real low risk,” therapist William Schroeder told the AP.

That said, the AP’s article also gets at a critical point about microcheating: precisely what constitutes it can vary dramatically from couple to couple. As Stumm points out, the debate over microcheating speaks to broader questions of communication within a relationship. Psychologist Abby Medcalf offered the AP a fairly straightforward way of looking at online behavior that might cross a line: “It’s cheating if your partner doesn’t like it, or doesn’t know about it, or wouldn’t like it if they knew about it.”

The Year the Dating Apps Died

While their downfall has been prophesied for years, there’s finally a trend that can replace them: “intentional dating”

The effects of remote work on relationship dynamics is just one aspect of the changes wrought by working from home more often. A paper published last year explored the effects of remote work on travel within the United States, for instance. With that in mind, it’s not shocking to learn that dating and fidelity would also be affected by a transformative moment in how we work.