Is Emotional Infidelity A Real Thing?
When you think of infidelity, you may associate the word with physical or sexual intimacy and encounters. However, emotional infidelity can just as easily cause issues within a relationship. Emotional infidelity occurs when boundaries in a relationship are broken by one or both partners having an intimate emotional relationship with someone outside of their primary relationship. Emotional infidelity may often lead to physical or sexual infidelity, but even if it doesn’t, it can still be just as detrimental to a relationship.
Is emotional infidelity a real thing?
People may have differing opinions on what constitutes infidelity. For some, only when physical lines are crossed is it considered a form of cheating. For others, emotional infidelity is a real thing, marked by a deep and intimate emotional connection with someone besides one’s partner. Discussing infidelity with your partner can be vital to establishing boundaries within the relationship and avoiding feelings of betrayal.
Signs of emotional infidelity
Do you think you could be emotionally cheating on your partner? Could they be doing the same in return? If you're unsure if you or your partner are being emotionally unfaithful, here are some signs you may want to look out for:
You think of the person often when you aren't together, sometimes even when you're with your partner.
You feel sexual chemistry when that person is around and feel sexually attracted to them even if you aren't having a sexual affair.
You have frequent contact with this individual, and you may send flirty texts, messages, and emails or discuss very personal topics.
You buy them personal gifts that are more like romantic gifts you would give a romantic partner.
You have deep, meaningful conversations with that person but talk only about practical or surface level matters with your partner.
You try to hide your feelings for that person, or you keep secrets about your emotional relationship from your partner.
You may be spending more time with this person and less time with your partner.
You feel you have chemistry and a unique connection with this person.
You fantasize about being in a relationship with the other person.
You begin to compare them to your partner, and you may see this other person as superior to your partner, idealizing them.
Signs your partner may be emotionally cheating
Determining if your spouse is being emotionally unfaithful can be challenging. Unlike a physical affair, emotional infidelity may be more difficult to spot. If you feel that something is going on but don't know whether it's based in reality or not, consider these possible clues:
Your significant other begins to spend more time with another person.
Your partner seems happiest after spending time with another person.
Your relationship with your partner has become distant.
Your partner often seems angry with you for no apparent reason.
If you bring up your suspicions, your partner becomes defensive rather than supportive.
Your partner becomes more secretive and about their phone or suddenly has a password on it.
Your partner starts spending less time with you.
Your partner talks about a particular person more often.
Your partner begins to criticize you more frequently.
Causes of emotional infidelity
There are several factors that may contribute to a partner committing emotional infidelity. These may include relationship dissatisfaction, lack of boundaries, inability to express themselves, and poor communication. It may also even be a combination of these things or for reasons entirely different. Below we will look at some of the factors that may cause emotional infidelity.
Relationship dissatisfaction
When someone is having an emotional affair, they may become more dissatisfied with their primary relationship. However, the dissatisfaction may be what led to the partner having an emotional affair in the first place. When a couple has been in a committed relationship for a long time, the honeymoon stage usually begins to fade, and partners may become comfortable. They might put less effort into the relationship than they did in the beginning. This may result in one or both partners' needs not being met, and they may seek to get them met elsewhere. A new person may show the partner more attention and this new emotional relationship may seem like an escape from the issues in their primary relationship, leading to an emotional affair.
Failure to set boundaries
Just as in other aspects of life, it can be important to set clear boundaries of what is and isn't okay in your relationship. Every relationship has different boundaries as everyone has different needs and feelings. When partners don't set healthy boundaries, they leave the potential for miscommunication and lines being crossed. It may be helpful to set these boundaries in the beginning, so each partner understands what they deem as "cheating" or infidelity.
Poor communication
Healthy communication can be a vital part of any relationship. Without it, you may find it difficult to resolve your differences when they come up. If one of you feels dissatisfied with or worried about the relationship, you may not be able to address those feelings in an effective way without open and honest conversations. Strong and healthy communication may resolve conflict before it begins and can keep things from becoming out of control.
The impact of emotional infidelity
Emotional infidelity can have harmful effects on a relationship. The partner who had an emotional affair most likely hid it and kept secrets. This may make the other partner feel as though they can't trust them again. Seeking emotional intimacy and validation in another person also most likely won't fix the issues within the primary relationship. It may potentially create confusion as to what you want or need. Emotional infidelity can lead to something more physical if left unchecked, which can be incredibly hurtful to the primary partner.
How can you prevent your partner from being emotionally unfaithful?
You can’t stop your partner from being emotionally unfaithful as you do not control their thoughts, feelings, or actions. However, strong, fulfilling, and nurturing relationships may be more resistant to emotional infidelity. Partners who are happy and satisfied in their relationship may be less likely to seek support or emotional intimacy elsewhere. Here are some tips that may help your relationship stay strong:
Be supportive of one another
Have hobbies and interests outside of your relationship
Communicate on a regular basis
Have healthy conflict and manage conflict as it occurs
Have regular dates together and spend quality time with one another
Show respect and apologize when necessary
Show each other affection daily
Have intimate conversations
How can I save my marriage after emotional infidelity?
Emotional infidelity can be considered a form of betrayal and may signal an end to the relationship. However, you can use different strategies to repair the broken trust between you and your spouse and strengthen the relationship. Consider doing the following after emotional infidelity has impacted your marriage:
End The Affair And Hold Yourself Accountable
If you're having an emotional affair and want to save your primary relationship, an important first step can be to end the affair. It may be most helpful to have no contact with the person you had an affair with. It can also be essential to hold yourself accountable to your partner and own up to your mistakes.
Analyze Why It Happened
To begin rebuilding your relationship and preventing an affair from happening again, it may be beneficial to analyze what factors contributed to your behavior. It can help to be introspective to figure out why this has happened. Having open and honest conversations with your partner can help each of you discover which of your needs are not being met in the relationship.
Rebuild Trust
Possibly one of the most difficult parts of repairing a relationship after infidelity is rebuilding trust. If you were the partner having an affair, it can be crucial to be open and honest with your partner moving forward. Reestablishing trust in the relationship can take time, consistency, and patience from both partners.
Online counseling with Regain
If you or your partner has had an emotional affair and you’re struggling to move past it, a relationship therapist may be able to help. Therapy can help partners develop tools and strategies to communicate more effectively and overcome the breach of trust in the relationship. Regain is an online therapy platform that specializes in helping couples overcome challenges within their relationship. They can match you with a therapist that suits your specific needs. Making the time for therapy may seem complicated, especially when you’re trying to accommodate two different busy schedules. With online therapy, you can connect with your therapist from anywhere you have Wi-Fi at any time. Reach out to begin your journey to a healthy and more fulfilling relationship.
The efficacy of online counseling
If your relationship has experienced emotional infidelity, online counseling could help you and your partner move past it. Researchers have discovered that internet-based couples therapy can be a viable intervention for improving relationship satisfaction and decreasing relationship distress. Couples participating in an online intervention were able to identify the specific problems in their relationship and take steps together to address them. This led to greater satisfaction with one another and with the relationship, improving the health and happiness of both individuals.
Takeaway
Being on the same page with your partner about what constitutes cheating can be important. While emotional infidelity may not involve anything physical, it can still have detrimental effects on a relationship and be just as hurtful. Practicing open communication with your partner and being honest can help each of you maintain a healthy, secure relationship with one another, reducing the likelihood that either of you goes elsewhere to have your needs met. If you or your partner has been involved in an emotional affair, online counseling could be beneficial. Regain can connect you with a couples therapist who can help reestablish the trust in your relationship. Together, you can learn how to move past the obstacles that have been holding you back.
Frequently asked questions (FAQs)
What does it mean to emotionally cheat on someone?
Emotional affairs involve connecting with someone intimately emotionally rather than physically and becoming emotionally invested in them. Hence, you begin to rely on them more to meet your needs rather than your partner. This can lead to feelings of romantic interest toward this person instead of or in addition to your partner, and, unless you’re in an agreed-upon open relationship, emotional affairs can be incredibly harmful to your committed relationship with your existing partner. Emotional intimacy and emotional cheating generally involve somehow betraying the trust of your partner and the boundaries of your relationship. Generally, becoming emotionally invested and emotionally intimate with someone who isn’t your partner is considered a non-physical form of cheating that can be quite harmful and dangerous. One study found that 35% of wives and 45% of husbands have some emotional affair, and around half of those become a sexual affair over time.
How do emotional affairs start?
Emotional affairs often start when at least one person in the marriage is somehow emotionally dissatisfied. This is often the greatest contributor to all of the emotional affair signs. Maybe they’ve been fighting, feel like they don’t talk much anymore, or just haven’t been connecting and feel emotional distance because, well, life happens, and relationships and love naturally wax and wane. Some people may cope with this by seeking out someone else to fulfill their emotional needs. They may start telling others about their problems and feel connected with them when they listen and empathize. Over time, emotional intimacy builds, and the individual can feel more emotionally invested in and fulfilled by this other person than by their spouse or partner. This in and of itself is often considered a form of an extramarital affair and, as mentioned above, could over time develop into a sexual affair.
What are emotional affair symptoms?
Some emotional affair signs include feeling emotional distance with your partner, becoming emotionally involved with someone else, developing into becoming emotionally invested in them and depending on them to fulfill at least some of your non-physical needs, and emotional intimacy. If you or your partner feel emotionally dissatisfied with your relationship, this can also be a precursor to emotional affairs or develop emotional intimacy with someone outside of your relationship. These emotional affair signs are quite common to experience and don’t mean that your relationship is over. Rather, they can be an opportunity to help you figure out what you and your partner want and need, and if that still involves each other, then you can grow together through it.
Can a marriage survive an emotional affair?
Whether or not marriages can survive emotional affairs depends on the marriage, individuals, and circumstances surrounding the extramarital affair. Though lying isn’t advised by any means, some marriages can survive emotional affairs if they don’t progress to a serious or physical stage and their partner never knew about it. However, emotional affairs are the most prevalent form of cheating – about doubly as common as sexual affairs. Not knowing about an emotional affair could help preserve the marriage…but it could also greatly worsen or even end.
The hurt of deception is rated as one of the primary reasons why emotional affairs are so damaging. Many people can’t understand why their spouse didn’t just talk with them if they were unhappy or their needs weren’t met. Some didn’t even know there was an issue (around 56% of men who cheat say they’re happy in their marriages). Your spouse developing emotional intimacy with someone else while you experience emotional distance from them can be incredibly damaging. However, avid communication, patience, and a willingness to work through any issues in your marriage can go a very long way to helping repair things, whether emotional intimacy and becoming emotionally involved with someone else played a role or not.
What do you do after an emotional affair?
After an emotional affair, whether you or your spouse engaged in it, it may be important to reflect inward and assess how you feel about yourself, about what happened, and about your relationship with your partner. Write things out if you need to. Writing everything out is a great exercise that may enable you to reflect, as it can help you organize your thoughts a bit better and enable you to read through them again later. You can even write out talking points with your partner to help address issues in your relationship. Then, the two of you can determine if you’d like to work through them or not. Becoming emotionally involved with someone often occurs at the height of relationship dysfunction because both partners feel somehow unfulfilled or unhappy. Though either of you developing emotional intimacy with another person can certainly be harmful to your relationship, you can also both choose to view it as an opportunity to work through it and develop greater emotional intimacy with each other as you learn to communicate through things and, hopefully, grow through it.
What is considered emotional infidelity?
What causes emotional infidelity?
Is emotional infidelity adultery?
How do you deal with emotional infidelity?
Is emotional cheating worse than physical?
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