Is Emotional Cheating Valid? : The Seven Stages Of Emotional Affairs

Highlights

An emotional affair describes a relationship with someone other than your partner where the emotional bond you share with them is almost close to attraction or love.
Emotional Affairs always start as innocent friendships.
Emotional Affairs can happen at the workplace, with an old friend, at some place you go to daily- for example someone at your daily coffee shop. It also might be through social media.

Cheating is definitely one of the biggest deal breakers of a relationship. However, what is the extent of cheating and what exactly do we constitute as cheating? Do we believe emotional attachment to someone else beyond your partner is cheating?

Yes, we definitely do. We call this emotional cheating. Keep reading this article to know if your partner is emotionally cheating on you by understanding the seven stages of emotional affairs. Find out which stage you or your partner are at.

What Is Emotional Cheating?

It is fairly easy to establish when your partner has physically cheated on you. However, that is not the same for an emotional affair. Emotional Cheating is more nuanced, more delicate and definitely harder to prove.

It’s like sitting at a table in a restaurant with two meals you have come to love sitting in front of you and which one you’re going to choose first. And if you’re not choosing the other one, is that cheating on them?

To simply put, an emotional affair describes a relationship with someone other than your partner where the emotional bond you share with them is almost close to attraction or love.

In fact, in the US, there are almost equal cases of emotional cheating in comparison to physical cheating when in a relationship.

Where Do You Draw The Boundary Between Friendship And Emotional Affair?

It is particularly hard to label something as an emotional affair. Everyone knows that when you get physically involved with someone while being in a committed monogamous relationship without the consent of the other, that is simply infidelity.

Emotional infidelity is not that easy to put into labels however. Plus, along with the rise of dating apps on the market, it is particularly easy to chat and strike up a bond with someone just sitting inside your home. (If your partner is on a dating app however, that is enough to call them out)

Now, what can you possibly do to prevent it? The answer is simply, that recovering from this majorly depends on the partner engaging in emotional affairs. For example, It is definitely not healthy to prevent your partner from interacting with anyone or striking up a friendship. That is an abuse of control, and definitely not a healthy way to navigate your relationship.

Emotional infidelity is when you know you have deep feelings for someone apart from your partner that is beyond just platonic feelings. You deliberately find ways to develop such feelings or interact with this person.

While you can control your feelings about someone and how they develop, you can definitely control what to do with these feelings – act on them or battle to discard them.

Signs To Determine If You’re Having An Emotional Affair

If you find yourself relating to any of the signs below, chances are that you might be the one in an emotional affair with someone.

Constant Contact: This is exactly how we acted as teenagers falling for someone. Constantly staying in contact through texts, calls, video calls. You are always up to date with what the other person is doing, where they might be. You might even do this while jeopardizing time with your partner during family nights or date nights.
Deep Sharing: You might have struck up a connection with someone so deeply that you can share your deepest thoughts and feelings with them. You might not even share such thoughts with your partner. They do the same in return with you as well.
Frequent Thoughts: You constantly think about them, not just in fantasies but during all points of the day, even during mundane activities.
Secrecy: You gatekeep some or a lot of information about your relationship or the things you talk about with them from your partner. Hiding photos and texts is also common.
Feelings Of Shame, Guilt or Embarrassment: You always feel a constant guilt or shame. As if you already know what you’re doing might be wrong or make your partner uncomfortable. You know that if your partner was doing something of similar nature you would not have let it pass as just a “friendship.”

Signs Your Partner Is Having An Emotional Affair

If you’re wondering whether your Spouse is the one emotionally cheating on you. Look for these signs:

Spend a lot of time on one particular person, and the way they hangout particularly makes you uncomfortable.
They are absent a lot of time. This absence is not just physical, but also in the mental sense, as if when talking to you, during family time etc.
They keep a lot of unnecessary security on their phone to keep things private.
They constantly bring up the other person in conversations.
They compare you to this other person in a critical way.
You find the other person getting prioritized over you.

The 7 Stages Of Emotional Affairs

How to know at which stage of Emotional Affair are you standing? Here are the 7 stages of an emotional affair to understand how they develop:

Friendship: It all begins with a simple friendship. Might be someone from work, or someone you meet by chance, an old friend. It is hard to stop any friendship evolving into a close friendship and then more.
Deeper Connection: The friendship turns deeper, sharing more intimate, richer things about yourself or your thoughts. You feel like you could never find such a connection with someone else.
Complaining: You start to find the smallest of things about your spouse annoying and you complain about them. To your partner, to others. If the other person is also committed, they might start doing the same.
Filling needs: The other person might start filling in the shoes of your partner. Fulfilling your emotional needs that are unattended in your actual relationship.This is also the stage where you may find yourself getting physically attracted to the other.
Greater importance: The friendship with them becomes more important than anything else for you. Your partner, family, other relationships all might come secondary to it. You may also find yourself choosing this friend over your spouse at multiple occasions
Unhappiness in the marriage or relationship: You may start to feel unhappy or drained in your marriage or relationship. You may sense a loss of connection with your actual partner and start to question if you want to stay with them or not.
Breaking Up: If you don’t act on your feelings to discard or stop them, then it will eventually end with a divorce from your spouse or breaking up with your partner.

How To Recover From Emotional Cheating?

Now that you know the 7 stages of Emotional Affairs and think you might be one of the people emotionally cheating, then relax. Feeling guilty in this moment is natural, because you’re human. If people can mend their relationships after physical infidelity, then emotional cheating also has some ways to be fixed.

Firstly end the emotional affair, to fix things you need to cut the cause for it first. It is not possible to repair your relationship if you keep pursuing this outside person. When that is done, the tough part comes next.

Be honest about it, to yourself if you’re still mildly in denial and to your spouse who was in the dark about it. It is important that the other person also knows what is going on, so that they have the liberty to make a decision for themselves on what they want to do.

When both of you consent and agree on giving a second try and fixing your relationship, establish open communication with your partner. One of the main reasons that one of the partners in a relationship are pushed to emotional cheating is because they find a lack of space to openly communicate their wants and needs to their partner.

There also needs to be the urge to recommit to the marriage or relationship by both ends. Recommitting to building a foundation of trust and connection to each other. There is a want to be the other one’s ‘go-to person’

And most importantly, make sure to set boundaries this time. These boundaries exist to honor your relationship and make sure you remain connected to each other even in the near future.

Wrapping Up

Emotional affairs start as innocent friendships and before you know it you have yourself tangled in a maze of confused emotions and conflicting feelings. While, the nature of it might always seem innocent as you tag it as platonic, deep down one knows that it is not just simply platonic.

If you find yourself in an emotional affair, be honest with yourself and take a decision – either end the affair or your relationship.

Ana