Relationships

Lots Of People Don't Think Using Dating Apps While In A Relationship Is Cheating

by Candice Jalili

How would you feel about your boyfriend browsing Tinder while he was bored at work?

Don't feel like answering that question? No worries. I'll tell you how I'd feel about it: NOT GOOD.

If my boyfriend was still on Tinder doin' his thing like it was nobody's business, we'd be broken up. I don't normally get infuriated, but I would go so far as to say this would infuriate me.

I honestly thought that was a pretty universal opinion everyone shared, but according to a new study, some people are actually cool with their partners going on dating apps.

Apartment hunting site Abodo surveyed almost 4,000 college students across the country to look into everything dating app-related, including how people in relationships use (or don't use) dating apps.

Are people in relationships even on dating apps?

Luckily, for the sake of morality and common decency in our society, most people surveyed did NOT admit to using dating apps while in a relationship.

That being said, the answers did vary a bit based on gender.

While only 11.5 percent of women admitted to being on apps while in relationships, 16.4 percent of men admitted to doing the same.

That percentage SKYROCKETED when it came to respondents who chose not to identify their gender: A whopping 44 percent of them claimed they had used dating apps while in relationships.

Is using dating apps while you're in a relationship cheating?

As I admitted to you earlier, I would be INFURIATED if my boyfriend was still actively using dating apps.

That being said, I'm not sure I would fully consider it "cheating." I mean, it definitely would fall under some form of betrayal, but I don't think I'd put it right up there with boinking another girl.

To me, it would fall under the same umbrella of your boyfriend going out and spending the entire night hitting on random girls — maybe even slightly worse than that. And honestly, that betrayal alone would be enough for me to call it quits on the relationship.

But enough about what think. What did the survey find?

ABODO

As you can see, the majority of respondents (74.3 percent of women and 63.3 percent of men) agreed that being on dating apps while you're in a relationship is cheating.

But again, the answers differed greatly with non-binary respondents, as only a third of them agreed that using dating apps while you're taken is cheating.

Honestly, though, the fact that there were still a pretty surprising amount of people (8.4 percent of men, 4.7 percent of women and a whopping 25.9 percent of those who didn't identify a gender) who didn't consider being on dating apps as cheating AT ALL was alarming to me.

But the part that confused me here was the fairly large number of wishy-washy respondents (20 percent of men, 16.8 percent of women and 25 percent of non-binary people) who only considered active flirting and sending messages to matches cheating.

OBVIOUSLY, the active flirting makes things worse, but REALLY? YOUR PARTNER JUST CASUALLY MATCHING WITH BABES ON TINDER DOESN'T SEEM EVEN SLIGHTLY CHEATER-ISH TO YOU?

But, hey, maybe I'm just a jealous psycho.

Citations: Swipe Right for Love? (ABODO)