What is cheating? Men, women differ slightly on where to draw the line

Is sexting different than flirting in person?

Does watching pornography count as cheating? What about signing up to an infidelity website (like Ashley Madison), but never following through?

It seems Canadians have small but important differences when it comes to cheating, and where they draw the line.

“Canadians agree, on the most part, on what constitutes cheating” said Quito Maggi, president of Mainstreet Research, authors of a poll released Thursday on love and relationships.

“But there are some things Canadians disagree on, and when they do, the difference falls mainly among gender lines. Seventeen per cent of Canadian women, for instance, believe watching pornography constitutes cheating compared to nine per cent of Canadian men who think the same.”

It’s not quite the same as Bill Clinton denying that fellatio counts as sex – but does visiting a strip club count as infidelity?

For Canadian men and women, the answers are fairly close: 17 per cent of men say yes, compared to 19 per cent of women.

Mainstreet Research and Postmedia conducted the poll on Monday, surveying 2,459 Canadians. The survey comes in the wake of the Ashley Madison scandal in which hackers calling themselves the Impact Team released reams of data on the company, including users’ email addresses.

Just the act of signing up for a site like Ashley Madison is cheating, according to 74 per cent of Canadian men and 80 per cent of Canadian women.

Flirting, meanwhile, takes on a different tone when it’s done through text. Just 37 per cent of men and 40 per cent of Canadian women consider in-person flirting to be cheating, but that number jumps when it moves to sexting. Canadian men and women have the same feeling on sexting: 79 per cent believe it’s cheating.

The Mainstreet Research survey also found that on the whole, Canadians are a loyal people. Just 13 per cent of men and eight per cent of women admitted to cheating on their spouse or partner. (However, 13 per cent of men and six per cent of women refused to answer the question.)

But more of us have thought about it: 23 per cent of men and 20 per cent of women have “seriously considered” cheating on their spouse or partner.

According to a 2014 survey, we may be better off cheating: A Bank of Montreal survey found Canadian couples may be more willing to forgive a cheating spouse than to overlook money problems. That poll found that fighting over money would be their top reason for divorce (68 per cent), followed by infidelity (60 per cent) and disagreements about family (36 per cent).