What is an emotional affair? In essence, an “emotional affair” is still undoubtedly an affair, without the physical intimacy but features emotional intimacy. Generally speaking, there is some type of pattern which nearly all emotional affairs tend to follow which will be explained later.
They can begin quite innocently as a friendship but later become more closer and loving in character. It may sound old-fashioned, but you could really say it is an affair of the heart. Another way of putting it is that an emotional affair is a form of infidelity without consummation.
As many people who have gone through it can testify, dealing with an emotional affair in a marriage can be a very stressful and mentally taxing situation, not only for the people directly involved but also their friends and family.
First off, it is important to understand that there are two kinds of infidelity: physical and emotional infidelity. While most people do not differentiate between them, it is important to know which one you are facing seeing as how they stem from different origins.
When speaking of a physical affair, in most cases it all boils down to the cheating partner not being sexually satisfied, and thus seeking it elsewhere (of course, it’s nearly never this simply but generally speaking it’s accurate). On the other hand, we have emotional cheating which is a whole different ball game.
First of all, it is important to understand that two people who live together and have sacredly agreed to stay united until death sets them apart are, or at least were at some point in deep love with each other; both of them have invested a lot into the relationship for the sake of love.
The effects of an emotional affair
When someone discovers that their partner has been cheating on them because they love someone else, the answer is seldom in clear sight as to what has happened, why it happened, and where to go from here; a lifetime of work and emotional investment have just been flushed down the drain. As a result of such a shock, chances are that the victim will fall into a deep depression and become very nihilistic for weeks, if not months after.
They will feel as if they have wasted their lives building and maintain this relationship; they will feel forgotten, rejected and obsolete. As a result, they may end up either isolating themselves from everyone or lash out their anger and frustration on their family, neither of which is a pleasant scenario.
Needless to say, after an emotional affair has happened in the marriage, things will never go back to the way they used. Very rarely will the two people involved be able to look at each other in the same way or trust each other as before; a rule so sacred has been broken that the one at fault may never get a second chance, at least not from the partner on who they cheated.
Why did the emotional affair happen?
As you can see for yourself, an emotional affair is no laughing matter, and while it is true that the cause of it all varies from case to case, there is some type of general pattern which nearly all emotional cheating scenarios follow. In most cases, the person who commits the transgression does so usually because of either of the following two reasons: they no longer love their partner or they no longer feel loved by their partner.
The first situation, where they no longer love their partner, can usually arise after the couple has lived together for a long while and have naturally grown different as they got older. All of a sudden, one of them realizes that their partner is not the person they knew all these years ago, and as a result feel detached from them.
They resort to cheating however because, as mentioned before, there has been too much invested into this castle to allow it to crumble like that. If on the other hand the person who has the emotional affair does not feel loved by their partner then it is possible that the affair is either an attempt to create a wake-up call, or simply an attempt to feed their need to be loved by someone.
Dealing with an emotional affair
Regardless of why it all happened, if you are facing this situation in your marriage than before abandoning all hope you should look at some emotional affair recovery options that are available to you. The best course of action to take in order to repair the relationship would be to see a counselor or a therapist who specializes in emotional infidelity among couples.
The road ahead will be tough, but if you want to save a marriage after an affair you will have to learn to love and trust that person all over again, and if you believe that a person cannot really change, especially at a later age, you would be surprised at how much power regret has and how it can steer a person’s life. As long as you both heavily and truly regret what happened, you will have a chance of making it through an emotional affair.
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