Affairs are difficult enough to spot, especially if your significant other is smart, but the hardest to catch is an emotional affair. Emotional cheaters can disguise their affairs in various ways but they can cause all the pain and heartache of a regular physical affair.
What Is An Emotional Affair?
Basically, it’s a situation where your spouse and an acquaintance are attracted to each other, become emotionally attached, but neither act upon the attraction in a physical way. An emotional cheating spouse experiences all the aspects of cheating without having sex.
This new form of infidelity is, in part, due to the internet. Now people can spend their spare time chatting in chat rooms and meeting people on MySpace. Many emotional affairs start this way. And because this situation can be shrugged of as “just talking,” many partners must suffer in silence as their lover’s attention is continually directed toward someone else.
Does Your Spouse Fall In The Emotional Cheaters Category?
There are signs that your spouse is an emotional cheater.
If your partner has a lot of after-work meetings with a co-worker of the opposite sex, this can signify an emotional attraction. If your partner is distant, emotionally or physically, it can be evidence of an emotional affair, especially if they have friendships that you are not privy to, or have regular nights out with a friend of the opposite sex. Your spouse may also refuse physical intimacy with you and stop sharing their feelings and problems.
What Can You Do If You Have An Emotional Cheating Spouse?
Talk to your spouse. Make it a point to be open about felling neglected, without making hurtful or angry accusations. Tantrums and nagging will only make the new “relationship” more attractive to them.
Set a date night together and spend sometime bringing the intimacy back into your relationship. Let your spouse know how much you appreciate them with your words or with a kind deed or gift. Show your partner how much you love them and you’ll quickly put the intimacy back where it belongs.
For more information, go to RepairMyVows.com.
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How silly to say this is a new form of infidility. This sort of emotional attachment has always happened, the only difference is that communication is easier these days.
I agree with talking with the spouse.
I also think it’s necessary to be aware of when he has spent any time with the other person, feeding his emotional attachment.
Knowing this would be important to me. I’d avoid any sexual contact with him right after he has spent time feeding this emotional state with another person.
Somehow, I’d feel like nothing more than a receptacle without exercising this type of control.
I think it is true that it has always happened and making a big deal of it is not the answer. If you are feeling neglected say so, you both need make an effort to spend time together and do fun things together.
I agree that the potential for this has always been there, but the net has made it easier. On the other hand, people aren’t always who they appear to be online, which I guess only complicates things – This is still something that will happen to some people.
Taggart, that is a good point about people not being who they seem to be online. I think Kernow is right about speaking up when you are uncomfortable about something.
Yes, the internet etc has made communication much easier, but trust hasn’t changed. There still needs to be a degree of trust between couples and neither partner should betray that trust.
I know a friend called kemal Ali(Dr.) in Ethiopia working on research having an affair for a long time. He has a wife and four kids. He has been with his “wife” for a long time because the children are grown. With his lover, they spent a long time together and lived in the same house abroad also while on study leave. Everyone seems to know that despite the fact that they both sneak to make it look otherwise. It was a rumor at first but then as time went by people started to say they should rather make it formal.
I want to make few clarifications here: His wife is a stay at home lady; not educated much, no job and dependent on his income alone. She is not attractive but seems to be “sociable”. On the contrary, his lover is highly educated; almost at an equivalent status as him, from a reputable background, and physically beautiful.
Now, I do not know how but they both seem to find themselves attracted to each other. Let us leave the point of “it is for sex bla bla”. Because this is not a major issue in the country I am talking about. Besides, I work with both of them and know both the lover and him well. One day my wife told his wife that he is having an affair because we live in the same area. I dont understand why she did that. I was angry at my wife at the time for telling her. I heard that the wife was furious. The wife is still with him and thanks to my wife she knows about the affair and I hear more when my wife and his wife have their rumor “talk”. she is dependent on him in many ways and that is why she did not leave him. With the love affair, it was the rumor at the time in the office some 8 or 9 years back I think and people even wondered how can two people love each other like him and his lover do after sometime because I know quite a few people who tried to break them apart. But as time went by, some support them and some who are close to the wife rumored. But my question is, why do people poke their nose in somebody else’s business? I just mentioned this example because I see people do that often rather than work their ass for something else. Let us all give constructive advices if we can or better stop saying immature things. As to me, I respect both of my colleagues (the person and his lover).I wish all the lover, wife and the man the best.I hope he stays strong with both of the ladies.
I think that this is GREAT advice. I think that most people think of an affair in terms of sex, but that’s not always the case. Emotional infidelity can be just as bad as the physical type.
I think that in some cases, an emotional affair may actually cause more pain for the spouse than a strictly physical affair. If that’s the case, I’d expect it to apply to couples that have been together for a number of years.
I think it may be easier for a partner to justify a emotional affair (I’m not sure if I agree with the term emotional affair) because they can tell themselvs that they haven’t done anything wrong as they have not been physically unfaithful.
I agree with you justontime, and for the same reasons I think it may be easier in some cases for a couple to rebuild after an emotional affair. By the way I agree with you, the term emotional affair is not helpful.