Emotional Cheating
Emotional Cheating
Emotional cheating involves unintentionally or intentionally developing close, intimate bonds that detract from your attachment to your partner. This happens when you establish a close, intimate connection with someone who isn’t your partner. People define cheating in different ways. The intimacy involved in emotional affairs can often be deeper and more intense than the intimacy in a solely sexual affair.
What counts as emotional cheating?
Emotional cheating happens when your closeness to someone else disrupts your investment in your partner. It can also happen if you keep the intimacy from your partner or cross boundaries set by you and your partner.
Signs of emotional cheating:
- spend more time talking to (or thinking about) the other person than your partner
- Your partner isn’t aware of the person
- know they are attracted to you
- notice some physical chemistry when you are around them
- being less physical with your partner
- wish your partner would be more like them
- they break trust
- they keep secrets
- they can be emotionally unavailable to their partner
What does it look like?
In the beginning emotional cheating feels like a friendship. This kind of situation might develop when something creates unwanted space between you and your partner. When you find out your husband has been talking to an ex- girlfriend and you were not aware of it. He admits to talking to her on a daily basis and having daily phone calls. This is emotional cheating. This husband has developed a “bond” with another woman and his wife is unaware.
Why does it happen?
- A partner may feel emotionally unavailable. One partner might not be communicating so they seek it elsewhere.
- A partner may feel disrespected.
- A partner feels unappreciated.
The impact of emotional cheating
Emotional cheating can lead to breakups. Emotional cheating, sometimes seen as a lesser form of cheating than a physical affair, can also show the cracks in a relationship and encourage growth.The distress caused by emotional cheating can lead to healthy conversations between couples to get them to understand their partners’ needs.
Some ways it impacts the relationship:
- betrayal and feeling hurt
- losing trust
- difficulty forming new relationships
- divorce
- feels of guilt, shame and anger
- worse communication between you and your partner
An inappropriate emotional connection or attachment can be just as dangerous to a relationship as a physical affair. Emotional affairs are a gateway to to other types of infidelity and are just as likely to lead to divorce or a break up as physical affairs.
How to help recover
Here are a few steps in the recovery process
- Acknowledge and validate feelings
- open and honest communication
- set some boundaries
- start to rebuilt trust
- seek professional help
- focus on self care
- reinforce the relationship
How to deal with infidelity in a relationship
Some pick me ups if your feeling down
