Is cybersex a sexual encounter? If you discover that your partner engages in it, is he/she cheating on you?

This is a nice question, and one variants of which have been turningup lately in the advice columns in newspapers. I don't have anyfirsthand experience of cybersex, but from what I understand, it is akind of virtual sex, involving assumed identities and purely electronicinteractions. So, is it a sexual encounter? I would say 'yes' and 'no'.On the 'yes' side, it is an encounter of some sort--it involvescommunication, back-and-forth response, mutual acknowledgment--and itclearly has a sexual content or character. On the 'no' side, it is notliterally sex, which would seem to require, at a minimum, physicalproximity and contact, and certainly it has little of the practicalconsequences or risks of literal sexual interaction. I suppose it iscloser to phone sex than it is to literal sex, but with greatershifting or concealing of identity. (I should say, for the record, thatmy knowledge ofphone sex comes only from Seinfeld episodes and Nicholson Baker's novel Vox !) Anyway, the answer to whether you are...