Anger and love are two relatives who never go to the same family gathering.
They are emotions that inspire the best you feel and drag the worst you feel.
Love doesn’t even qualify as an emotion by itself if you base the definition on researcher Robert Plutchik’s basic list. Plutchik defines love as a combination of two emotions: joy and trust.
That’s why when a couple has an emotional affair, it feels so bad. Your love, your joy, your trust are all betrayed.
The first response some people have to the damaging effects of emotional affairs is:
“But there is no sex.”
Sex is not love. It can express love, but deep down inside sex can and does happen sometimes just for the sake of…sex.
For this reason, when couples who have been cheated on are asked what hurts them the most about a love affair or relationship, they say…
the deceit
Studies have shown that both men and women who have been cheated on by their partner feel more hurt by the SECRET than by SEX.
About 70 percent of women, slightly more than men, say that sexual infidelity is more forgivable than emotional infidelity. A partner who is strongly attached to a third party weakens the bond in the first relationship, sometimes to the breaking point.
The risk
For those who feel that an emotional bond between two people is not enough to label it an affair, consider that giving the body can be as temporary a gift as the giver wants it to be.
With emotions, it’s hard to even know where the friendship ends and the deepest feelings begin. Being emotionally close is a risky investment and usually a longer one. Pulling back from that investment is much more difficult than unzipping a fly.
Sexual attraction is part of an emotional issue, even if it is never acted upon. The truth is, the stronger the attraction, the more likely it is to go from fantasy to reality.
offline friendships
More gender-balanced workplaces and online social networking sites make intimate relationships easier to have…and hide. How far one person takes the relationship (a colleague, a chat partner) is a matter of choice.
So how do you know that a friendship, virtual or real, has crossed the trusting boundaries of a marriage or other committed relationship?
Signs of cheating on emotional issues
has. verbal intimacy
The lover or spouse who leaves a first relationship to confide in a third party is breaking the ties of privacy of a primary relationship.
It’s one thing to say “I’m having a hard time at home right now” to a colleague, and quite another to reveal “My husband isn’t very satisfying in bed.”
A couple who complains about a first relationship with someone who is not part of it should talk to a counselor or lawyer. Better yet, that partner should be trying to solve the problem at home instead of sympathy and solutions further afield.
b. Time is over
A couple gradually extending a work day or computer session alone could be letting their spouse or lover know that they would rather be with someone else.
Time itself is a key factor in determining how committed a partner can be beyond a promised relationship.
When a spouse or lover prefers, in their heart, to be away, it is a sign of someone who will stray or someone who already has.
against sexual short circuit
Something is wrong in the bedroom and none of it is pleasant.
A partner who turns down the opportunity to have sex repeatedly or seems distant and mechanical may be somewhere else in their minds. If that other place is an emotional bond with a third person, the symptoms will increase.
Sometimes the opposite occurs. A regular sex life suddenly becomes unusually vibrant. It might seem like a partner is taking the lead in upping or shaking up bedroom life, but it may be a sign that you’ve been fantasizing about having new sex with a new person and may be ready to practice those physical moves soon. .
d. The eyes
The secrecy and deceit that is part of every kind of affair lives in the eyes. Couples who try to hide deep feelings for another person will betray themselves with their body language.
– Avoid the gaze of a spouse.
– Get away from a lover.
– Do not show affection and warmth.
– Create verbal and physical distance.
Often a couple involved in an emotional affair is at war on the inside. Feelings are so consuming beyond marriage or another relationship that there is double guilt: guilt for betraying a spouse and confusion for betraying a third person. A cheater is caught between duty and unspoken feelings.
the end and the beginning
Emotional issues do not last, but what happens with them can be in two ways. Something happens that stops what is happening between two people or the relationship moves towards a physical relationship.
One survey reported that people guilty of online affairs never started out looking for an affair. Maybe they weren’t consciously, but in almost half the cases, that innocent start turned into a physical affair.
The combination of an emotional affair that turns into a physical one can be the most devastating of all.
If you suspect that your partner is in a relationship that has passed the friendship stage, it’s time to take action and ask them some tough questions. These are tough questions because the answers you may get may not be the ones you want to hear.
That makes them even more important to ask.
How do you approach your partner?
What words can you say?
How do you know if the emotional issue is real?
What will you do if they admit it… or worse, don’t acknowledge or acknowledge the relationship as an affair?