[Poll] Would you consider ERP-ing on the Internet cheating?

ah. weve got a representative for the eternally single group already.

i salute you.

 

It's emotional cheating, you are still getting those feelings.

 

1. Would you consider ERP-ing with an Internet stranger "cheating" if you were in a monogamous relationship?
Wow that's one of the greyest cheating or not questions I've ever seen. I'm really not sure... More black if the ERP is done with the same person more than once and more white if .... well, I just forgot what I wanted to say. Splendid. xD I just know that in any case, I'd be uncomfortable with it.

2. What if rather than a total Internet stranger, it was an Internet friend/acquaintance instead? What if it was a close friend?
Increasingly leaning towards black the more contact they have with that person. I'd pretty certainly consider it cheating if it was with a close friend they could theoretically be attracted to (or who could be attracted to them). Like e.g. if I was dating a straight guy who for some reason had fun ERPing with his straight guy pal, and I was sure of their sexuality, I'd probably be pretty amused by the situation. It's not too likely but just as an example xD

3. What if your significant other insists that it's just a hobby for them, and they don't take it seriously? Furthermore, they swear that they would never "cheat" in real life?
"If your mind and heart are not here, what do I want with the body?" That'd be the essence of my thoughts but I'm not sure how I'd react if I actually had a partner who was like that. Pretty sure I wouldn't like it much though, and it may cause conflict.

4. Is it possible to emotionally cheat on somebody? What is "emotional cheating" to you?
Oh I guess I kinda answered that in the answer just above this one... or so.
That aside, if it's just emotional, I wouldn't call it cheating. Then it's just a change of feelings... It doesn't make much sense to me to call having feelings cheating, since you can't control it. Cheating to me is breaking an agreement to not voluntarily be intimate with other people. It's about choice, and properly acting in line with your values and wishes of who you want to be with. Most often though, developing, having and losing feelings for someone isn't controllable. As the saying goes, "You can do what you want but you can't want what you want". However, as soon as you realize that your heart no longer belongs to the other person, you can choose to come clean and officially annul the agreement. You may not be able to control what you feel but you're able to value the sincerity and honesty originally present in the agreement. And without thinking of dragging it out while hiding, clearly break it off. If you don't and instead love someone else while still physically being together with your former love, I wouldn't call it cheating but rather "being a dumb cowardly douche lacking respect". Of course, it's not always easy to be a wise courageous nice person with respect but that's just what life's like (´▽｀)

 

It depends on how invested i am in it. If i take it very seriously, yes it is cheating. If im just doing it for the lolz, no i dont consider myself an adulterer.

 

I have a personal rule of defining relationship boundaries with my SO's regardless of whether it's casual, mono or poly. I dislike leaving an opening for potential problems that could be nipped in the bud from the get-go. Together we define what is/isn't okay and we revisit that conversation from time to time as the relationship develops.

1. Would you consider ERP-ing with an Internet stranger "cheating" if you were in a monogamous relationship?
If we had defined sexual encounters online with an internet stranger as "cheating" then yes, I would see it as cheating regardless of the relationship dynamic. If we had decided it was okay to ERP with other people then no, I wouldn't. If we hadn't had the conversation about it and they'd done it I would wonder why they didn't at least give me a heads-up about this potentially being a thing and I insist we discuss it openly.

2. What if rather than a total Internet stranger, it was an Internet friend/acquaintance instead? What if it was a close friend?
As long as we're both in agreement I wouldn't mind if it was an internet friend/acquaintance. If it was a close friend then we'd need to talk about that. In my experience three way dances with people you're close to don't tend to end well if you improvise as you go along. Better to have at least an outline of a plan than stumble along blindly hoping for the best.

3. What if your significant other insists that it's just a hobby for them, and they don't take it seriously? Furthermore, they swear that they would never "cheat" in real life?
If we agree it's not a problem then it's a complete non-issue for us. If we had an agreement that we shouldn't do it and they broke that agreement then I'd immediately leave them.

4. Is it possible to emotionally cheat on somebody? What is "emotional cheating" to you?
Yes. When a person gives energy, effort, intimacy and care which should be directed towards their SO, to someone outside of their relationship. Often characterized by romantic/sexual attraction (whether acknowledged or not), emotional intimacy, deception, secrecy and denial.

 

1 Cheating!
2 Cheating!
3 Let's spend more night time awake together.
4 Yes? Isolating your partner?

 

Regardless of the circumstances involved, I'd definitely have a big and long talk with my partner about it to come things clean... It's a very very very touchy topic for me, and I have a hard time believing I'd deal with it well...

1) To me that's cheating, I mean... After having my fair share of cybersex with my exes back when we were still dating, I take this kind of thing very seriously. The emotional investment in ERP can be very very real.

2) That would just increase my worries I guess? With a stranger it may just be a way of "playing around", with a friend it may feel like a "friends with benefits" situation... I'd feel really troubled about it.

3) I'd still be very troubled about it. I don't think this is the kind of thing that I can accept as "just a hobby." Maaaaaaaaaaaaaaybe I'd be able to accept that my partner doesn't view it as cheating, so I could not think of it as cheating... At the same time, I doubt I'd be able to come to terms with it, we'd probably need to work out a solution, because I don't think I'd be able to handle being in a relationship with someone that is having ERP with someone else.

4) I'm not quite sure how to define emotional cheating, I mean... Cheating is about taking action I think.
Like... You can imagine or sometimes wish you were with someone else... I honestly doubt anybody in a long relationship never had any doubts about the current state of their relationship, which may lead to them start thinking of someone else... They key part in cheating is the action though. If you start wondering about your current relationship and how might maybe be better off with someone else... Well, that's a worrisome sign, but I can't count it as cheating unless you act on those feelings. At least that's how I feel about it.
Though I should note that ERP totally counts as acting on those feelings in my books.

 

I’ll admit I was a little weirded out when Hana proposed to me, but I decided to accept and see what would happen. I told my hubby about it, and he was perfectly fine with it. But that wasn’t ERP, just RP... I don’t think I’d be into doing ERP myself, the thought is too disturbing to me, although I do write E rated fanfics, which I suppose could be considered double ERP or doing ERP by myself? As for my hubby doing it, I don’t think I’d be quite so okay with it. (Which could make me a hypocrite, I know.) I’m fine with him looking at porny stuff, but I wouldn’t be okay with him taking an active role in it. (Although I guess I’d be okay with him drawing or writing an E rated story.) Fortunately, I really can’t imagine him doing ERP with someone else.

 

I think there are multiple different kinds of roleplay.

There is the writing kind of roleplay where people write text walls, have characters, and clear delineation between IC and OOC. There are some examples of this in NUF’s roleplaying section where there’s a character creation form and the style is a third person narration: “Kirito took out his sword and dashed up a hill.”

In contrast there is also the NUF profile post style roleplay, where essentially you could put asterisks around everything. For instance: *takes a table and throws it at you*

I think both of them are roleplay and there are ERP versions of each of these. That said, I believe that most ERP-ers would argue that they are always playing a fictional character IC (hence “roleplay”), which is distinguishes it from sexting.

My understanding is that this kind of arrangement is very common. Whether it is on gaming sites or something else, I’ve heard that it’s often just two (male) guys writing/roleplaying with each other with at least one of them playing a female character.

I actually have a pretty nuanced view about this because I did a lot of writing roleplay when growing up, and often we would brainstorm characters with various plot arrangements. For instance, X is the husband of Y, and Z will get shipped to Q. I’ve definitely had fictional characters of mine dating fictional characters of someone else. All of us on my writing site were girls though, and we definitely didn’t have any OOC attachments to each other, and I have both male and female characters.

 

This is an interesting point, because like... I honestly can't imagine doing this kind of thing~

I'm really bad at drawing the line between OOC and IC, I can't quite make my character attached to someone without being attached myself... Already tried a handful of times, it never worked... >.>

At the same time, I know a fair amount of people that had IC relationships (and even did ERP) without really having any sort of attachment to one another. Heck, one of my exes already did it before while catfishing people (that was before we started dating), and for him it was just fun playing around.

But even though I do know this happens, it just doesn't enter my head... If someone I love start having some form of stronger connection with someone else, even if it's just a strictly IC thing, I think I'll have a very hard time coping with it, because I can't separate the OOC and IC well myself, so I can't really understand how it works on the head of the people that do separate it properly.

 

I think some of it can depend on how formalized the RP space is, and how it is viewed by the participants.

Having a formalized space for roleplaying (e.g. only this sub forum is for roleplaying), helps establish a clear line between IC and OOC. In contrast, on NUF basically everywhere is IC, which can lead to confusion.

If you’re an extremely prolific role player with dozens of characters, you’re generally less likely to be attached than somebody who only has one OC. You’re also much less likely to make your character a self-insert if you’ve done a variety of roleplaying.

 

Your fourth question kinda answered the first two. How emotionally attached were you in the role. Were you actually roleplay for role-playing sake, or to fill up what you were missing from your partner.

The third question though, if your partner really swore that they wouldn't cheat on you in real life in the discussion about whether role playing can be considered cheating or not, then you might need to be concerned. Because the fact that they're bringing this up might be because they considered it as emotional cheating to an extend.

 

1. Not in a relation so ehh dunno, probably no if it is nothing creepy and just fun.
2. Points to NUF's Masquerade Event. I take great pride in the fact that I turned a masquerade into a "pg-13" orgy while simultaneously roleplaying as two characters. Others didnt even realize that was the case.
3. I dont see the problem as long as it is within bounds of condition (1)
4. Sounds odd, who knows.

Okay who am I kidding, I will not like it at the end of the day but engaging in erp is not the same as nor implies cheating.

We all nuffians need to conduct more research on this subject using live experience.
Nah but seriously, normal rp barely works here (points to the Andventure's Guild and co's personal cemetery). What are the chances ERP will work?
Actually how about ERP as Valentine day's event.

 

Hm, doesnt this at some level assume you are equating any relation with internet strangers to be equal to real life people? Like in a way you are saying that if some random nuffian decides to flirt with you here believing it to be same as flirting irl is kinda dumb.

 

Some random guy irl flirting with me is the same. I will dislike it. It's strictly cheating. Won't you be mad if you had a gf and came to know that she was having cyber sex with another guy?? Stranger or not...

 

Mmmmmm, perhaps having the formalized space would help... Though in all honesty I still dunno if it would work for me! xD

OTOH, I'm not very good at Roleplaying characters that are too distant from myself, like... They don't need to be perfect self-inserts, but they usually reflect some aspect of myself and that's what I use to guide my roleplay with them... And I'd still probably get pretty tangled into things if those characters got into a relationship! >.<

I equate all my relationships with people in the internet to the relationships with people IRL, I don't really see any difference between those two. There are people on the other side of the screen when I'm talking to them on the internet after all, so at the end of the day it's just a matter of a few thousand miles of distance between us... It's not that different to talking to someone face to face.

 

So.... does ERP means kinda like an online gaming or something?

1. Would you consider ERP-ing with an Internet stranger "cheating" if you were in a monogamous relationship?
No. Its just like playing an online game, right?

2. What if rather than a total Internet stranger, it was an Internet friend/acquaintance instead? What if it was a close friend?
Nice, we got internet player thats actually also friend IRL.

3. What if your significant other insists that it's just a hobby for them, and they don't take it seriously? Furthermore, they swear that they would never "cheat" in real life?
Yeah, at least its not cheat IRL.

4. Is it possible to emotionally cheat on somebody? What is "emotional cheating" to you?
Very possible. Like when we imagine with someone else beside our significant others, and that someone else is real person IRL. (that means not included for the fictional characters)

 

1. Yes and no. Jokes aren't funny when you repeat them and if they are so obsessed over them then i have the right to be suspicious. Just one time only then i wouldn't mind.

2. The crime of the cheating rest on the shoulder of the cheater alone. Whether it's a friend or not it's irrelevant to me. I would even advice my friend to not take them seriously since they do in fact has cheated.

3. I don't believe them. If they don't want to stop despite they had listen on your concerns why even believe them ?

4. Yes. When they're more emotionally attached to the other than yourself. Unfortunately there's nothing like only emotional cheating in this world and bodies does follows afterwards.

 

Erotic Role Playing.

Basically, consider it as having sex, but virtually through text instead of IRL.

 

Only text? Okay then.