Emotional Love Affair

I think I'm in love with my computer. Mainly  because it opens me up to the bigger world wide web.

But that's not the love affair we will talk about here. But it is related to this.

People who surf the net naturally meet very interesting people and sometimes they get attracted to that person for one reason or the other. The interest grows to exchanging emails, weekly, then daily, then hourly. But since for one reason or another, there is no chance to meet...perhaps due to geographic locations, due to one's relationship status/attachment ...the exchanges are enough to stimulate deeper intellectual and emotional stirrings inside  each one of the correspondents. In layman's terms, one starts "developing"  special feelings and thoughts for another but without any physical contact.  

They now think they are in love with each other or have this very complicated feeling of feeling more than friendship but less than lovers.

This is what is called the emotional love affair.

Is this cheating?

My take on this is if one is in a relationship, you are committed to loving only that person you chose to be with. If for some reason, one starts loving / being attracted / connecting to another while in a present attached relationship even in thought (without the physical / face to face contact or any other contact for that matter...you know what I mean ;-)) , that's not being faithful....that's cheating.

It's not bad having friends of the opposite gender while married or attached, but its when you start feeling more than friendship (we all know that feeling...or if you don't....if you start feeling those same feelings you felt with your present partner with this new person), then nip it in the bud for it not to proceed to being complicated and out of control.

If you're going to tell me that you feel entirely different from this person to your present mainly because they both stir different feelings in you, then ask yourself, " Would I like my present partner feeling this way for another other than me"?  If you don't, but continue on with the exchanges, then you're pretty sure you're into the affair.