How was Haley having sex (foreplay) with Nikki - and not including thoughts of her boyfriend - *not* a form of cheating?
Her intent was pretty clear: no MC needed for going after Nikki. Unless she and the MC had an open arrangement, that's cheating, both in sprit and attempt. And, when the MC tried to figure out what was on her mind, she didn't feel like talking about it. Nikki is apparently the one who opened it up to a threesome, because she wasn't interested in Haley alone (at the time, at least).
I guess it depends on your definition of cheating. For me, it doesn't qualify as cheating until the person actually has sex with someone. A person in Haley's situation I'd define as "curious/confused". She's seemingly never felt anything sexual for another woman before and Nikki, with her smoking hot bod, has clearly awakened something in her. So Haley's got these new feelings inside her and it's making her both curious to explore them and confused about how to deal with them.
I'm sure she wants to go all the way with Nikki, in which case she's at least entertaining the idea of cheating on him, but briefly sucking Nikki's tit and being used as a means for Nikki to get a threesome with her and the MC doesn't quite reach the level of cheating for me.
It's like when I found out the girlfriend of a friend of mine had kissed another guy. I confronted her about it and asked her why she did it and she told me that things weren't so good with her and my friend and that she kind of liked this other guy but still liked my friend too. She was confused about how she felt and that's why she kissed this other guy. So I told my friend that he needed to have a talk with her but didn't tell him about the kiss and I guess it worked because not only did they patch things up but they're married now and expecting their first child.
Sometimes a relationship hits a rocky patch and one or both of the people in the relationship will find someone who makes them feel better which causes them to start developing deeper feelings for them, and in other cases, like Haley's, someone can just enter your life who you have this unbelievable attraction towards. In the first example, the relationship can still be salvaged if there are reconcilable differences, like with my friend, before things go too far, and in the other example it's usually just pure lust that doesn't need to be satisfied if you can get a handle on it. But in either of these cases, I still wouldn't call it cheating until there is actually sex involved.
