Emotional infidelity and emotional cheating is discussing extremely personal and intimate details of your life with a third person, without your partner’s knowledge. Worse still: you keep these intimate conversations secret and hidden from your partner. The result: conflict situations in your relationship and an emotional affair with a third person. What is emotional infidelity? What are the characteristics of emotional infidelity? Is it harmless or dangerous for your relationship?
What is emotional infidelity?
What is emotional cheating? Sharing your deepest secrets, fantasies, very personal and intimate details of yourself with others, but without the knowledge of your partner. Usually the other person is a person of the opposite sex. Feelings, personal and intimate details are shared with a third person but not with the partner. Emotional infidelity and emotional cheating are only complete if you keep such intimate conversations that you have with others hidden from your partner. You could also say that emotional infidelity is cheating, but without the sex.
A signal of emotional infidelity
A characteristic of emotional cheating is the following:
If you no longer feel the need to share your emotions, personal and intimate details with your partner, but you do feel the need to share all your intimate stories with a third party, this is a very clear signal that you are emotionally unfaithful to your own partner. You keep the appointments, emails, phone calls and text messages that you share with the third person strictly hidden from your partner. The faithful partner clearly feels the distance in the relationship increasing, and the unfaithful partner eventually distances himself more and more.
Emotional affair and being emotionally involved with another person
Your unfaithful partner prefers to deepen the emotional bond with the other. Your unfaithful partner will feel emotionally involved with the other. Your unfaithful partner is building a real emotional affair, outside of you and the committed relationship.
Your unfaithful partner complains, complains, complains and complains
As a loyal partner, you have realized for some time that something is wrong, but you may not have been able to put your finger on the sore spot right away. You realize with horror that your own partner no longer involves you in his/her private life. In fact, your partner does nothing but complain, complain and complain some more! Complaining about work, complaining about colleagues, complaining about the economy or the government. Only complaining, but never even a funny and light-hearted story or joke.
To be clear : this concerns partners who previously could share funny stories with their partner, told fun jokes to their partner and who have slowly but surely changed. in a great wailing wall. So I certainly don’t want to say that partners who complain are (emotionally) unfaithful!
Personal freedom
Nowadays we are all very focused on ourselves, very busy with ourselves and we are even busier with ourselves. (Yes, twice as much, we are so busy with ourselves!) We do have a partner, but we also want to have a life, preferably outside the partner. We call that personal freedom.
Honesty
It happens to all of us sometimes, we honestly forget to tell our partner that we (for example) had an appointment with a girlfriend/boyfriend. Or that we happened to meet so-and-so in town. Whatever the reason, you did not deliberately hide it from your partner. You deliberately keep the appointments, emails, telephone calls and etc. that you share with a third person with whom you have an emotional relationship hidden from your partner.
Characteristics and dangers of emotional infidelity and emotional cheating
The most important characteristic of emotional infidelity is that you end up completely dissatisfied with your own faithful partner and with your own steady relationship. You keep all appointments, visits, telephone calls, emails, text messages with the other person hidden from your partner. By no longer discussing all your intimate and personal details with your regular partner, but with a third party, the other person, you end up in a conflict situation. This will inevitably make you feel guilty towards your partner. You take out your guilt irritably on your partner.
Sexual cheating
A major danger of having an emotional affair with a third person is that the next step, actual sexual cheating, looms.
When does friendship turn into emotional infidelity?
When does a good and close friendship turn into emotional cheating? Do not worry. It’s not that you won’t be able to maintain friendships with the opposite sex once you get into a steady relationship. Everyone has the right to friends and a social life. And you should be able to have honest conversations with your friends. However, if your new permanent partner has had a relationship where the ex-partner emotionally cheated, this new partner can become very nervous about friendships with the opposite sex.
Start emotional cheating
Emotional infidelity begins immediately when you discuss more intimate and personal details with a third person instead of discussing them with your partner. You don’t even bother discussing them with your partner anymore. Even worse, you keep these conversations hidden and secret from your partner! All dissatisfaction about your relationship and about your partner is shared with the third person. That’s emotional infidelity!
You no longer feel connected to your partner. The band is gone, the ,buddy, feeling is gone. In fact, you also have enormous difficulty in showing any respect for your partner. You no longer feel called to guard the boundaries of your relationship and those of your partner. Your partner’s privacy and that of your relationship can be stolen. Working on your relationship? You haven’t done that in a long time!
You prefer to deepen the bond of connection with that third person. You would like to tell this person how your day was. You hardly tell your partner how your day was. You probably also feel something for this third person . There is an attraction, sexual tension or maybe you are even in love with the other person.
Is it harmless or dangerous?
Having a deep, close bond of trust with a third person, outside of your partner, can be very dangerous! The grass always seems so nice and green and more tender on the other! If you cheat during your relationship, sexually cheating, it is usually about the sex. Just for the sex. A discharge. No feelings, just sex.
But if you cheat on someone with whom you have built a close bond of trust by discussing all your personal and intimate details with that person, you are building an emotional affair with that person. All appointments, telephone calls, mail and emails with this third person must be kept strictly secret and hidden from your partner. The next step to seduce the third person is quickly taken.
Feelings of guilt and conflict situations
The partner who is emotionally unfaithful and emotionally cheating generally believes that he/she is doing nothing wrong. What this emotionally unfaithful partner unfortunately does not realize is that his/her behavior is an escape from everyday life. Especially when daily life and existence become a routine, there seems to be a world full of friends, colleagues, social acquaintances, virtual friends who suddenly make life exciting and enjoyable. The danger is that you will compare this wonderful world with your relationship! Which inevitably leads to feelings of guilt and you react accordingly! Here’s to the faithful partner! All your dissatisfaction and frustrations (why can’t your relationship be just as fun and exciting as in your wonderful world?) are taken out on the faithful partner. Conflict situations with your partner are the result.
Your faithful partner
Your faithful partner will generally find the unfaithful partner’s emotional involvement with someone else outside the committed relationship much worse than if the unfaithful partner were to cheat sexually without having any feelings for the other person. The unfaithful partner will do everything he can to keep emotional infidelity and emotional cheating with the other person a secret.
A good relationship
In a good, close relationship you are honest with each other and everything can be discussed. Share all your personal and intimate details with each other. You feel free and yet wonderfully connected to your partner. That’s a good relationship. That is a relationship where emotional infidelity does not occur.
Being unhappy with your relationship
From day 1 you have to work on your relationship. Being in a relationship does not come naturally. If you decide not to work on your relationship anymore, but you still like tension, the first step towards an emotional affair with someone else has been taken.
If you keep the emotional affair hidden from your partner, you should start to wonder how much your current partner still fits into your life.
It’s very possible that you’ve grown apart. Or that your relationship is in a huge dip. Or that you are really bored with your partner. Your partner can no longer fulfill your wishes and needs. Just can’t meet your needs anymore. In short, intense routine, yawning, annoying and tiring and you are looking for excitement, sensation and adventure! And that third person equals the requirements set out for you to have excitement, sensation and adventure in your life!
Be a gentleman. Be a lady
Once upon a time, a long time ago, you were in love with your partner. You decided to build a relationship. Due to circumstances you have grown apart and you probably both live your own lives. If you are really building an emotional affair and you are really emotionally unfaithful to your partner, it seems to me that the time is ripe to ask yourself in all seriousness and honesty what you still want from your relationship.
New relationship? Make your own limits known!
What is your limit? I assume that you grant your partner a social life. Friendships. Does your partner also allow friendships of the opposite sex? Does that make you feel uncomfortable? Or do you grant your partner his/her friendship with the opposite sex because it is supposedly normal these days? In all honesty: where is your limit? Be true to your own norms and values, be true to yourself. And have you made your own boundaries known to your partner? So that no misunderstandings and/or jealousy and insecurity can arise during the development of your relationship?
If you’ve ever dealt with an unfaithful partner who cheated emotionally, the limit for you may be that your partner maintains friendships with the opposite sex. Calmly explain to your new partner what happened and why you are having so much trouble with it.
You create your own fantastic outside world with your virtual friends and the latest communication tools
The topic of emotional infidelity is a difficult one. Not so long ago, infidelity was completely unmentionable and not everyone knows what emotional infidelity is these days. Due to social media, among other things, we are almost forced to believe that we need at least 500 online friends, that we must receive at least 1 message from a friend every minute, that cheating via the computer is normal, that flirting seems to be a necessity to keep you safe. to feel good. In short, current means of communication encourage you to have frequent contact with the outside world. Behind the screen it is easier to create your own world and to reveal your feelings more quickly during an online conversation. It is also made so easy for you.
Alarm bells should go off if you spend more time with this outside world than with your own partner.
read more
- Indications that the partner is cheating
- Monogamy. Are humans monogamous?
- Motives for cheating
- Are you satisfied with your relationship?
- Characteristics and signs of a bad marriage or relationship