What is an Emotional Affair?

What is an Emotional Affair?

What is an Emotional Affair?

The term "emotional affair" may seem like the latest buzz word for cheating but this term covers a lot of territory that cheating leaves behind. In some ways emotional affairs are much more devastating to marriages than the physical act of cheating could ever be.

What Isn't Emotional Cheating

Before you get into what an emotional affair is, you need to take a little time to understand what it isn't. Emotional cheating isn't about sex. That doesn't mean that there isn't a strong sexual attraction or element involved in the relationship. It just means that, at this point in time, it remains unfulfilled.

Unfortunately for you (if you suspect your spouse if having an emotional affair with someone else) this is generally a case of logistics or lack of opportunity rather than a strong commitment to marriage or code of values.

You need to understand that the attraction is there. There is no denying it. Most of the time, the attraction is returned to some degree. Otherwise, it would be an infatuation that would eventually burn out on its own. It takes encouragement for this to become a full blown emotional affair.

What Emotional Infidelity Is

Emotional infidelity is what happens when your spouse withdraws from you and becomes more intimate emotionally with someone else. That is the part that is so damaging to marriages. It's so much more than sex.

The Female Perspective

Sex is much easier to forgive, for most women, than the things women value more than sex. Confidence, trust, time, and care are all things that women expect from their husbands.

The withdrawal of these things is devastating enough. When they learn that these things have been given to and received from another woman instead it's a different kind and must more intensely personal kind of heart ache than she would feel over a random sexual encounter because those things matter more to her than sex.

The Male Perspective

Men have a different problem with emotional affairs. To some degree, many men feel a certain sense of relief when their wives begin to withdraw and seek emotional support elsewhere. Not that they don't want to offer it but some men feel a little less than confident in matters of emotion. Understanding that is the difference between saving your marriage now and working frantically later on to get your ex back.

On the other side of that coin though is that men are somewhat possessive of what they believe is theirs. Wives fall into that category. They don't like to share and the fact that it isn't sex isn't going to matter as much to him as the fact that he feels he has lost a little bit of respect and admiration from his wife that he needs from her.

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