Is "chexting" really cheating?

Bad news ahead for digital philanderers. Just when you thought technology couldn't contribute any more perils to the dating jungle, in comes a phone phenomenon that is bound to get the claws out.

Introducing "chexting": the act of sending a barrage of raunchy text messages to someone other than your significant other. Thanks to unconfirmed reports of alleged chexting by Tiger Woods, Jesse James, Ashley Cole, David Beckham and Shane Warne, the act has fast become a pop culture phenomenon.

Bored with your partner? Lonely between the sheets? Want to get your rocks off with someone else? Fancy a little techno-foreplay? A chext might just do the trick. But while all this is mightily amusing for us, chexting is unfortunately a very real and sinister phenomenon. Because when texting leads to sexting, which leads to chexting, people get caught, lives unravel and "exting" can very well be the consequence ...

The trouble with chexts is that they can easily be saved, analysed and used as hotter evidence than a lipstick mark or a hotel receipt for two. (Which if you're starting to get paranoid, is why it might be wise to check your trusted partner's digital gadgets next time he or she takes a shower.)

So what's the appeal?

For a start, it's instantly gratifying. The chext can be carried around all day in a purse or pocket; the chexter can say whatever they desire without getting red-faced; they can act out their wildest fantasies, be chuffed at their smart jokes (that they've probably taken hours to write), can give themselves a good dose of endorphins and get their ego continually massaged by their loving and loyal chexting buddy.

But the question remains: is chexting really cheating?

This is where the lines get muddy. This is where debate rages on. This is where chexters might deny any wrongdoing but partners of the chexters in question will think otherwise. After all, if there's chexting, what else has their loving partner really been up to?

New York-based psychotherapist Dr Robi Ludwig, claims that it might not be the chext itself that falls into the philandering category, but the consequences that might follow. I watched an interview she did the other day with CBS news in which she said that "because text messages can be looked at throughout the day, it can leave someone quite stimulated and lead to impulsive behaviour".

Yet, even if the chexting relationship doesn't go anywhere, Ludwig still believes it's a form of doing the dirty.

"Texting is a betrayal," she says, "even if it doesn't go anywhere. It is emotional cheating, but very often these situations do lead to sex. It's opening a dangerous door."

This "dangerous door" is all thanks to the rise in social media platforms, which give the bored and the lonely a plethora of options to step out on their partners. Whether first thing in the morning at work, or late at night in bed while watching Survivor, unfortunately it's opened us up to a world in which adultery is almost impossible to avoid.

An ex adds you as a friend on Facebook? It would be rude not to respond! An old fling wants to iChat? Where's the harm? An ancient crush sends you a private Tweet? How will your spouse ever know if you respond?

Unfortunately, diving head and fingers first into the social networking chasm has the ability to kill relationships. In fact, the more one indulges in chexting behaviour, the further couples begin to fall down a sticky and slippery slope all the way to splitsville.

Polly Vernon, writing for The Guardian newspaper, says that, from her research, she's surmised that most of us "are, at the very least, testing the borders of fidelity via the medium of text message, or Facebook connections, or Twitter exchanges".

In an attempt to make some sort of conclusion about whether or not social networking is really to blame for all the trysts and untrustworthy behaviour, she interviews author Esther Perel (via Skype, no less) who I thought gave a fitting - albeit disturbing - conclusion to the debate.

Concludes Perel: "At all four corners of the world, at this very moment, someone is either cheating, or contemplating cheating, or listening to the stories of someone else who is cheating, envious of that person who is in the throes of an affair - or maybe they are the lover in the affair ... With every marriage, with every relationship, comes the possibility of an affair. It always will."

Somehow I hope she's mightily incorrect.