Cheating is a common problem in many relationships. When one partner discovers that the other is cheating, there are heart-wrenching emotional effects. Unfortunately, cheating cannot always simply be defined as having sex with someone outside of your relationship. Cheating comes in a variety of shapes and forms, but they are all equally devastating.

Simply put, physical cheating is the act of being sexually intimate with someone other than your spouse or significant other. It is one of the most common forms of cheating. Although physical cheating is common among men and women, it seems to affect men and women in different ways. Men view physical cheating as emasculating and a form of physical rejection. Women, on the other hand, may be more likely to see beyond the physical indiscretion if they perceive that emotions were not involved.

Emotional cheating may include physical intimacy but not necessarily so. Emotional cheating may begin as an innocent friendship. Eventually, an emotional cheater finds himself intimately confiding in the person, sharing thoughts, dreams and an emotional closeness that would normally be reserved for his mate. In some ways, emotional cheating is more crippling to a relationship than physical cheating. With physical cheating, the cheater may still feel emotionally connected to his partner and may only be seeking to fulfill a sexual fantasy. With emotional cheating, however, the cheater's heart may no longer be in the relationship.

With the popularity of the Internet, cyber cheating is becoming a more common problem among couples. Cyber cheating can come in a variety of forms. Cyber cheating includes Internet pornography, online dating and flirting with other people on social networking sites. Cyber cheating is harder to catch than other forms of cheating. It requires the couple to have access to one another's computer passwords and to pay close attention to conversations each person is having on the Internet.

Text message cheating, also known as chexting, has come to the forefront due to the high profile affairs of celebrities who were caught cheating via text messaging. According to Fox News, this is a new form of cheating because it supplies the physical proof of infidelity. "Chexting" includes sending sexually explicit messages or pictures and texting to arrange dates. Even simple messages that seem innocent, such as asking how someone is doing, can be considered chexting if the intention of the person sending the text is to hook up with the recipient.