Anger and love are two relatives who never go to the same family gathering.
They are emotions that inspire the best you feel and carry the worst you feel.
Love doesn’t even qualify as an emotion in and of 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.
This is why when a couple is having an emotional affair, it feels so bad. Your love, your joy, your trust are 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 sex can and does happen sometimes just because of … sex.
That’s why when cheated on couples are asked what hurts the most about a spouse’s or lover’s affair, they say …
Deception
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 has a strong attachment 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 one’s own body can be as temporary a gift as the one giving it wants it to be.
With emotions, it is difficult to know where the friendship ends and where the deepest feelings begin. Being emotionally close is a risky investment and usually a longer time. Getting away from that investment is much more difficult than flying.
Sexual attraction is part of an emotional affair, even if it is never acted upon. The truth is that the stronger the attraction, the more likely it is to go from fantasy to reality.
Friendships off the line
More gender-balanced workplaces and online social networking sites make intimate relationships easier to have … and hide. How far a person (a colleague, a chat partner) carries the relationship is a matter of choice.
So how do you know that a friendship, virtual or real, has crossed the trust boundaries of a marriage or other committed relationship?
Cheating signals in emotional matters
For. Verbal intimacy
The lover or spouse who comes out of a first relationship to entrust a third party is breaking the privacy ties of a primary relationship.
It’s one thing to tell a colleague “I’m having a hard time at home right now” and quite another to reveal “My husband isn’t very satisfying in bed.”
A couple complaining about a first relationship with someone who is not part of it should speak to a counselor or attorney. Better yet, that partner should be trying to solve the problem at home instead of sympathy and solutions beyond him.
B. Time’s up
A couple gradually extending a day of work or a solo computer session 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 invested 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 is going astray or one who already has.
vs. Sexual short circuit
Something is wrong in the bedroom and none of it is pleasant.
A partner who repeatedly turns down the opportunity to have sex or seems distant and mechanical may be mentally elsewhere. If that other place is an emotional bond with a third person, the symptoms will increase.
Sometimes the opposite happens. A normal sex life suddenly becomes unusually vibrant. It may seem like a couple is taking the initiative to improve or change the life in the bedroom, but it can be a sign that you’ve been fantasizing about having new sex with a new person and may be ready to practice those physical movements soon. .
D. The eyes
The secret and deception that are part of all kinds of adventures lives in the eyes. Couples who try to hide deep feelings for another person will betray themselves with body language.
– Avoid the gaze of a spouse
– Get away from a lover
– Not showing affection and warmth.
– Creating verbal and physical distance
Often times, a couple involved in an emotional affair is at war on the inside. The feelings are so overwhelming beyond marriage or another relationship that there is a 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 affairs don’t last, but what happens to them can be in two ways. Something happens to stop what is happening between two people or the relationship is propelled into a physical relationship.
A survey reported that people guilty of online adventures never started looking for an affair. Perhaps consciously they weren’t, but in almost half the cases, that innocent beginning turned into a physical matter.
The combination of an emotional affair turned 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 some tough questions. These are tough questions because the answers you get may not be the ones you want to hear.
That makes it even more important to ask them.
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, they don’t acknowledge or acknowledge the relationship as an affair?