To give more context, I met someone online and we've become quite close very quickly. While we didn't define our relationship, we felt we were closer than friends.

I do care for her, like her and she means a lot to me. However I never knew how much she liked me, until couple of days ago.

This is about how I feel about her.

I've also roleplayed for a decade, and for me, it's just like writing a book together, it's an activity I really used to like, but don't as much these days. I had stopped doing it since a year or two.

However, I know someone else (24F) for whom it was important and a necessary distraction. While I would avoid on most days (because we aren't close now and reasons I did earlier are different). I wanted to make sure she was feeling okay and did it for an hour.

It was a non emotional roleplay on text and we were playing characters. It meant nothing for me and for me it was like writing a character or book, nothing more.

I mentioned to this to my special someone casually and she was visibly upset, because she had told me like a day ago that she really liked me. She and I both agree that cheating is an absolute no. But I truly didn't believe that what I did with that person meant anything emotionally (not physically). It didn't even get to anything outright sexual.

I don't think we discussed explicitly on exclusivity nor roleplay being considered as cheating.

My question is two fold: Did I mess it up? If I did, how and what I could possibly do to explain it better?

TLDR: I've roleplayed (non emotional and with characters) with another friend while I'm talking romantically with my someone else. Did I cheat?