An emotional affair happens when someone forms a deep emotional connection with someone other than their partner, often leading to feelings of intimacy and attachment. This bond often involves sharing personal thoughts, feelings, and experiences that are typically reserved for a significant other. While it might not involve physical intimacy, an emotional affair can undermine your relationship and cause great stress to everyone involved.
Why Emotional Affairs Are So Tricky…
The confusion around emotional affairs is that they seem to start out innocently enough. Maybe you’re talking to a coworker about your day or texting a friend about your relationship issues. Over time, though, these interactions can become more frequent and intense, leading to feelings of attachment and emotional dependency. You might find yourself thinking about this person constantly, or turning to them for support and validation instead of your partner.
Emotional affairs can feel harmless because there’s no physical cheating involved. However, the secrecy and emotional investment can cause significant harm to your primary relationship. Your partner may feel excluded, betrayed, and hurt, leading to trust issues and emotional distancing. In essence, an emotional affair creates a rift between you and your partner, making it difficult to maintain a healthy, trusting relationship.
Emotional Cheating Vs Friendship
Platonic friendships have a unique place in one’s life. They are very important but quite different from emotional infidelity. Identifying the boundaries between emotional cheating and friendship can be tricky.
In a friendship, you share interests, support each other, and enjoy spending time together without it threatening your romantic relationship. However, emotional cheating starts when the relationship becomes too intimate or secretive, and becomes a primary course of emotional fulfillment and comfort. Here are some examples:
- Prioritizing the Other Person Over Your Partner: When you consistently prioritize spending time with the other person over your partner’s needs or desires, it indicates that a friendship has crossed into emotional cheating territory. For instance, canceling plans with your partner to be with someone else, choosing to confide in them instead of your significant other, or turning to that friend first in times of need or on occasions of celebration. Such actions can lead to feelings of neglect and hurt.
- Keeping the Relationship Secret or Downplaying Its Significance: Secrecy is a major red flag in any relationship. If you feel compelled to hide or minimize the extent of your interactions with the other person, it suggests that you recognize the relationship has crossed boundaries. You understand that it could be perceived as inappropriate or threatening to your primary relationship, so you start feeling guilty and act secretively about it. This secrecy erodes trust and transparency with your partner.
- Sharing Intimate Details About Your Relationship with This Person: When you confide your personal matters in someone outside of your relationship, especially regarding doubts or issues with your partner, it creates a level of emotional intimacy that should only be reserved for your significant other. People confide in friends to get emotional support but if you start disclosing intimate details about their relationship to someone that they normally wouldn’t, it no longer is innocent. Sharing such details can weaken the emotional connection with your partner and breach their trust.
- Comparing Your Partner: Comparing your partner unfavorably to the person with whom you’re emotionally connected is another significant sign of emotional cheating. This happens when you find yourself mentally contrasting your partner’s qualities, behaviors, or even physical attributes with those of the other person. Such comparisons often lead to feelings of dissatisfaction or disillusionment in your current relationship.
What Are The Effects Of An Emotional Affair On Your Spouse?
Emotional affairs can have devastating effects on spouses. People don’t often consider these repercussions or don’t take them as seriously as those of physical infidelity. Partners who discover emotional cheating can feel betrayed, abandoned, and highly insecure. They can develop trust issues that can be very difficult to resolve. Here is how an emotional affair can hurt your spouse:
Betrayal
An emotional affair can cause a deep sense of betrayal. Your spouse trusted you to maintain the emotional intimacy and loyalty in your relationship, and you broke their trust. This can cause them to feel a deep sense of violation. Knowing that you shared intimate details, thoughts, and feelings with someone outside the relationship can cause hurt and disappointment. It makes it challenging for your spouse to trust you again.
Hurt
Discovering an emotional affair can profoundly hurt your spouse. They may feel deeply wounded that you’ve shared emotional intimacy with someone else, which they expected to be exclusive to your relationship. This action can shake their sense of trust and security in the relationship.
Abandonment
When your emotional focus and support are diverted to someone else, your partner feels abandoned. This may even lead them to feel lonely or deserted because you left them behind to emotionally invest in someone else.
Insecurity
An emotional affair can lead your spouse to question their self-worth and attractiveness. They may wonder why you sought emotional connection outside the relationship, questioning if they are lacking in some way. This can trigger feelings of insecurity and self-doubt, impacting their confidence and self-esteem. This insecurity can manifest itself in many ways such as constant comparisons to the person, doubts about their value in your life, and lowered self-esteem. They fail to see that their partner’s actions are not their fault.
Trust Issues
Trust is the basis of any relationship and an emotional affair can damage it. Once your spouse discovers that you were emotionally unfaithful, they might find it difficult to believe in your honesty and commitment. Damaged trust and belief in your commitment to the relationship can lead to constant arguments, suspicions, and an inability to feel any security in the relationship. Rebuilding this breach of trust requires significant efforts from both partners, time, and professional help to help mediate.
Resentment and Anger
Feeling betrayed and abandoned can also foster deep resentment and anger in your spouse towards you. It might lead them to believe that you have chosen someone else over them. This can lead them to feel a sense of injustice and bitterness. Anger can result in frequent arguments, passive-aggressive behavior, diminished intimacy, and even outright hostility.
Sadness and Grief
Emotional affairs can evoke feelings of profound sadness and grief in your spouse. They may mourn the loss of what they believed to be a secure and exclusive emotional connection with you. The realization that you’ve turned to someone else for emotional fulfillment can be deeply distressing and contribute to feelings of emotional pain.
Confusion and Uncertainty
Your spouse may feel confused about the state of the relationship and uncertain about the future. They may question whether the emotional affair is a one-time lapse or a pattern of behavior that threatens the stability of the relationship. This uncertainty can create turmoil and make it challenging for them to make decisions about the next steps in the relationship.
Desire for Transparency and Reassurance
After an emotional affair, your spouse may seek transparency and reassurance from you. They may desire open communication about your feelings, motivations, and intentions moving forward. Rebuilding trust may require consistent effort on your part to demonstrate your commitment to the relationship and address their concerns.
How Do Emotional Affairs Start?
Emotional affairs often start innocently enough, which is part of what makes them so tricky to recognize and address. They can begin as simple friendships or casual connections with someone outside your romantic relationship.
Innocent Beginnings
You might meet someone at work, through a shared hobby, or within your social circle. At first, the relationship is purely platonic. You enjoy each other’s company, share common interests, and have casual conversations. There’s no intention to develop a deeper connection at this stage.
Increasing Emotional Intimacy
Over time, you begin to share more personal details with this person. You might talk about your hopes, dreams, and fears, or discuss issues in your current relationship. This emotional sharing builds a bond that goes beyond casual friendship. You start to turn to this person for support and validation, seeking their opinion and approval more often.
As the emotional intimacy grows, you might start comparing this new person to your partner. You may feel that this new connection understands you better, listens more attentively, or is more supportive than your partner.
Increased Communication
You find yourself wanting to communicate with this person more frequently. You might text, call, or message them throughout the day, sharing your daily experiences and thoughts. This constant communication can make you feel closer to them than to your partner, creating an emotional dependency.
Eventually, you might start prioritizing this emotional connection over your relationship with your partner. You might look forward to talking to this person more than spending time with your partner, and you may even seek out opportunities to be alone with them. This shift in priorities can create a rift in your romantic relationship.
Denial and Justification
Throughout this process, you might deny that anything inappropriate is happening. You justify the relationship by telling yourself it’s just a close friendship and there’s no physical intimacy involved. This denial can prevent you from recognizing the emotional affair’s impact on your primary relationship.
Emotional affairs can be just as damaging as physical ones, deeply affecting your relationship and your partner’s feelings. They often start innocently but can quickly escalate if boundaries aren’t respected. Recognizing the signs and understanding the impact of emotional cheating is crucial for maintaining a healthy relationship. If you suspect an emotional affair, it’s important to address it openly and seek professional help if needed.
Need help strengthening your relationship? Reach out for a consultation with Stefanie. She can provide guidance and support to help you navigate emotional challenges and rebuild trust.
Understanding Emotional Affairs: Frequently Asked Questions
Is having a crush considered emotional cheating
Having a crush isn't necessarily emotional cheating, but it can become problematic if it leads to secretive behavior, prioritizing the crush over your partner, or sharing intimate details with them. It's important to set boundaries to prevent a harmless crush from turning into an emotional affair.
Why are emotional affairs so addictive?
Emotional affairs can be addictive because they fulfill emotional needs that might not be met in your current relationship. The excitement, attention, and validation from the other person can create a strong emotional bond, making it difficult to break away.
