Everything you want to know about an emotional affair

Discover all there is to know about emotional infidelity

When you’ve landed here, no doubt you or your spouse or partner is having an emotional affair. Doubtless, you’ll have a ton of questions.

So, I’m hoping to answer all of them!

What is an emotional affair or emotional infidelity in marriage?

The definition of an emotional affair, also called emotional cheating or infidelity, is an intimate, non-sexual connection between two people – one of whom already being in a committed close couple relationship or marriage.

If you’re having an emotional affair, you probably feel the other person is attentive, understanding, supportive, loving and caring. You’re likely to feel like the two of you have clicked in a way that you can’t quite describe – it just feels right – as if you’re soulmates.

Over time, what might have started as a friendship developed into a much stronger emotional attachment. And importantly, the relationship – or the depth of affection – is a secret.

What are the stages of an emotional affair?

The following stages of an emotional affair can take from days to weeks.

1. Initially, you feel alive when around or online with that person.
You feel seen, heard, acknowledged, flattered, unique and important when you’re with that person or online chatting with them.

2. You think of every excuse to meet them.
You’re devising all sorts of ways and reasons to contact them.

3. You begin to exchange confidences.
You increasingly talk about personal things. You share secrets and betray confidences, perhaps about your primary relationship or marriage.

4. Contact intensifies.
You keep checking your emails, phone, and social media and maintain contact – regardless of the time of day and circumstances. That can mean lying to your spouse or primary partner!

5. You become increasingly fond of that person.
You look forward to seeing them more than you’re bothered about seeing your partner or spouse. You can’t wait to tell them what you’ve been doing or have achieved. You know now that this is more than a friendship – even if you’re not ready to admit this to yourself.

6. You can’t put that person out of your mind.
You go to sleep with that person on your mind and wake up thinking about them. That’s another betrayal of your spouse.

7. You keep moving the boundaries.
You keep telling yourself that this behaviour, thought, or feeling is acceptable in a friendship. Yet, you’re increasingly aware it’s ‘dangerous’.

8. You update your looks.
You begin to make small changes or are going all out to update your wardrobe, size, hairstyle, etc.

9. You fantasise about making love.
You may fantasise about making love to that person. You may be thinking about your ‘lover’ or ‘mistress’ while making love to your partner or spouse.

10. You may ultimately transgress physical boundaries.
There’s likely to be an ever-increasing physical tension.
You’re flirting, sexting and ‘talking dirty’.

You may not have had a penetrative experience when you meet, but perhaps you have groped and touched sensitive areas. Or, you’re now having a fully physically intimate relationship with your friend, lover or mistress.

If you’ve met online and there’s no opportunity to meet in person, you’ll likely be physically intimate via video calls.

Somewhere in the process, your behaviour probably no longer matched your values – if indeed you believed in the sanctity of a marriage or committed relationship in the first place.

Is emotional infidelity still cheating?

A friendship – pure and simple – is (usually) out in the open.

However, an emotional affair is mainly kept secret and involves telling lies. The spouse or partner in the primary relationship has no clue about the depth of emotional intimacy, even if they’re aware of the ‘friendship’. Therefore, secrecy and lies define what was meant to be a friendship as an emotional affair.

Emotional infidelity means being unfaithful and cheating a spouse or partner out of that special closeness, sharing quality time, intimate details and confidences.

What is the difference between emotional cheating and friendship?

Here are the differences between an emotional affair and a (platonic) friendship.

A true friendship: 

• is out in the open
• does not involve lying
• is inclusive – meaning friends are happy to include others in the circle
• can provide additional resources to the primary relationship
• can enhance the primary relationship in that it provides for the need for connection, fun, laughter and a sense of community
• friends can potentially be supportive of each other under most circumstances.
• friends can offer support and friendship to both partners in the primary relationship.

An emotional affair:

•  involves keeping secrets
•  involves telling lies
•  detracts from the primary relationship as it takes away resources from the primary relationship
•  is damaging to the primary relationship or marriage
•  restricts the ability of illicit partners to support each other
•  prevents ‘the other’ from offering genuine support and friendship in the primary relationship.

Why does someone have an emotional affair?

As human beings, we are born with essential emotional needs. When another person offers to satisfy several innate needs, we can be easily seduced.

We’re especially at risk when we perceive ourselves to be needy of care and attention regardless of the reason. We’re ready to lap up anything bestowed on us.

An emotional affair, in particular, can meet those needs for attention, love, friendship, self-esteem, fun and laughter.

Do emotional affairs turn into physical infidelity?

An emotional affair can easily turn into a physical relationship and infidelity because the level of intimacy is just like a committed, intimate couple relationship or marriage (once was).

The illicit affair means living on the edge with all the excitement it entails. The brain produces the extra feel-good hormones (dopamine) that may have long been lacking in the primary relationship.

Therefore, going one step further than that stolen kiss (which many of my clients also considered cheating) can be oh-so-tempting, particularly when your body adds testosterone into the mix.

Why do men have emotional affairs?

Men have emotional affairs for the same reason as women or any other gender (see why does someone have an emotional affair).

However, they may be more easily tempted to go that one step further to include physical relations.

What are the signs of emotional cheating?

Here are just a few of the signs of emotional cheating.

Your partner or spouse…

• can be elusive, withdrawn and snappy
• disappears at odd times, or is unavailable when you usually expect to see or hear from them
• is not showing the expected pattern of behaviours
• is paying more attention to their looks
• can seem to be more upbeat
• could be dropping a particular name once too often
• hides their mobile or can’t put it down
• stays up late to chat online
• pretends to have to work when on their laptop.

For more signs of cheating, see my full list in my article The signs of emotional cheating.

Why does emotional infidelity hurt so much?

When your partner or spouse has an emotional affair, that person has become more important in their life than you. Plain and simple.

They share confidences – including details about their marriage or relationship.

They look forward to seeing each other more than their primary partner or spouse. They have loving feelings towards each other.

What they give to each other, they withhold from their primary partner or spouse who is cheated out of all that and let down. Naturally, that hurts!

Anyone can fall for someone else. However, when your partner or spouse chooses an affair of the heart over their primary partner or spouse, the let-down and betrayal can be hugely painful.

Why is emotional cheating worse?

Pardon the following generalisation as it doesn’t consider the full male-female spectrum.

An emotional affair often feels worse for women than for men.

Women tend to take responsibility for the relationship’s well-being more often than men. Emotional attachment is essential to many women.

Therefore, they are more likely to feel that a betrayal of trust through a strong emotional connection with someone else is worse than physical infidelity.

What can you do when your spouse (or partner) has an emotional affair?

Emotional infidelity is damaging to the primary relationship. Doubtless, you’re feeling devastated on discovering your spouse or partner is unfaithful. Be that by having an emotional affair, a one-night stand or physical and emotional cheating.

•  Step 1 – gather evidence
•  Step 2 – confront them calmly and determinedly
•  Step 3 – decide whether or not you can and want to save your marriage or relationship (see also my relationship test)

 See my articles on surviving infidelity.

How can you rebuild trust after emotional cheating?

Building trust can only happen when the emotional affair has finished.

Rebuilding trust will be much harder when the two people in the illicit affair are still in touch (for example, when they continue to work together).

Despite any protestations, the unfaithful partner may not be able to resist temptations.

For details on how to build trust, visit my article How to stay together after infidelity.

How is emotional infidelity different from physical infidelity

Emotional cheating:

• Is driven by the hormones: oxytocin and dopamine
• Includes betraying confidences, including details about the primary relationship or marriage
• Often includes sharing the same interests
• Feels like you’re soulmates
• Includes believing you were meant to be together
• Feels like being ‘intoxicated’
• Meets your emotional needs for support, closeness, love, friendship and laughter
• Is likely to be longer-lasting
• Often is a prelude to a physical relationship
• Is hugely hurtful to the spouse or primary partner.

Physical infidelity:

• May includes all of the above
• Is driven by the hormones: testosterone and dopamine
• Involves physical desire or at least a need for physical closeness with groping, touching sensitive areas and penetration, or…
• the online equivalent with video calls, sexting and explicit photos
• Meets physical needs – relief, excitement, rediscovering
• Maybe more easily overcome and forgiven
• Often follows on from an emotional affair, though not necessarily
• Can be a one-night stand, an occasional meetup or a long-lasting affair.

Can you forgive emotional infidelity?

Yes, you can forgive emotional cheating – in principle.

The affair needs to have ended, though. And, both of you will need to be keen and engaged in saving your marriage or relationship.

How can you overcome emotional cheating?

Here are the very basic steps. To get the essential information, see further down.

Step 1 – cut all ties with the other person – see How to end an emotional affair.

Step 2 – Accept that you can’t just switch off your feelings of love for the other person.

Step 3 – Feed your brain new information (see How to forget someone).

For 6 detailed steps, see my article How to get over an emotional affair.

Emotional infidelity: what about an online or social media affair?

An online friendship can also easily develop into emotional infidelity. Just look at the different stages (above) again. The only difference is that you might not meet up very often or at all in real life.

Equally, sending each other sensitive photos, and having discussions of a more intimate nature is also a betrayal of your partner’s trust. Snapchat cheating or developing an illicit affair on Kik are common, as is using a fake account on Facebook to cheat.

All digital forms of infidelity can also be played out in online gaming. If you’re involved in a virtual reality game, you might want to ask yourself if your partner would feel betrayed if you were to share your role with them.

And you might want to consider sharing it because it could add some excitement to your real-life love-making!

5 possible reasons for keeping the affair or friendship a secret

Other than knowing you’re being dishonest and fearing the consequences of your emotional infidelity, there may be other reasons for you to keep your liaison a secret at least for now:

1. You’re confused about your own feelings.
2. Your partner already has issues around jealousy and is unlikely to accept that you have such a close friend.
3. You’re confused about your identity (your friendship could even be with someone of a different gender than your partner).
4. You know your orientation and gender ‘on the inside’ are different than you portray ‘on the outside’ but haven’t come out of the closet yet. For now, it may feel safer to call this an emotional affair.
5. A combination of any or all of the above.

Is your emotional affair satisfying your essential emotional needs?

As human beings, we are born with a set of essential emotional needs and a brain containing the resources we need to meet those needs (see my article on the Human Givens).

These include the need for:

• giving and receiving attention
• a sense of control and autonomy
• friendship
• laughter
• a sense of belonging
• self-esteem

We must aim to meet our emotional needs in balance for us to live a contented and rewarding life. Not meeting those needs in balance will likely impact our emotional well-being negatively.

We are responsible for fulfilling those needs as best as we can. We cannot expect our partner or spouse to fulfil all those needs, though certainly, they contribute.

Here’s a free printable worksheet to help you see where you can make some improvements regarding your emotional needs…

Your betrayal doesn’t need to mean the end of your relationship or marriage.

If the survival of your relationship or marriage is important to you, then now is the time to end the affair (you may find it helpful to get the End the affair hypnosis download. See my article on hypnosis downloads.)

Your disconnection may cause you much distress, sadness and longing as you won’t just be able to switch off your feelings.

However, those feelings are likely temporary, depending on what you do next. If you wish it, your relationship can become stronger than it has ever been.

I highly recommend that you get some expert advice. It’s very easy these days to find accessible, professional counselling. For more information on how to go about that, see my page: Online relationship advice.

Alternatively, talk to someone you can trust in your own social network and ask them for advice.

Finally

I hope this article has helped answer all your questions about emotional infidelity.

Whatever’s going on for you, I have published a ton of relationship advice articles to help you figure out your next step.

Whatever you need, I’ve got you covered, and I’m rooting for you to have a relationship or marriage in which you can make mistakes, be challenged and grow.