Emotional affairs may start as innocent friendships. It can happen in your workplace or neighborhood where you begin investing some of the emotional energy in another person outside of your marriage.
It can be a platonic friendship or an ex-lover where you are beginning to form an emotional bond. Before you know it, the seemingly innocent chats and conversations turn into a deeper intimacy that should be reserved for your spouse.
While many believe that this kind of relationship is relatively harmless, many experts view this as a form of cheating. This is usually more prominent in women as they can have a relationship without needing everything to go sexual. You can visit site here for more information about finding a community to help you on the best way to go on your marriage if you feel like you’re emotionally attached to someone. Know that if you’re caught, your spouse’s reaction to the whole thing will determine the next course of your relationship with the parties involved.
Signs that You’re in an Affair
There’s Communication Frequency
You are frequently contacting each other even if you’re not always together. You are texting or chatting with this person late at night and even knowing that they are with their significant others. There’s a lot of video calling, emailing, calling, and texting involved.
Sharing of Whereabouts
You may want to frequently share your whereabouts with this person or get any “news update” from them at any time of the day. If you have had an exciting day, you let them know about this instead of telling these things to your spouse. In fact, you notice that you’re already keeping things from your spouse, not updating her or him about your whereabouts, then this is a red flag that something needs to be fixed in the relationship.
Constantly Thinking of the Other Person
You may notice that this hot girl is constantly taking over your thoughts. You find it difficult to concentrate on other matters, and they are what you thought about when you sleep at night or wake up in the morning. You’re dressing for them, hoping that they notice you or go to the gym so you can get more appreciation from them. In other cases, you may even start to have sexual fantasies about them. Know more about how to stop thinking about someone on in this link: https://www.betterhelp.com/advice/relations/help-i-cant-stop-thinking-about-someone/.
Inappropriate Sharing
Some of the topics may go from light to very personal. You may even disclose some of the problems you may encounter, and you felt that they understand you better than your partner. There are also the concerns and issues that you’re sharing that, in time, you feel dissatisfied with your current partner.
Unfair Comparison
Some of the time, you think about the comparisons that this person has with your partner. You may not see that your spouse is not doing what the other person is doing, and you start to idealize someone you’re not living with most of the time. You may begin to micromanage your current partner and exaggerate what they did wrong for the day. Being critical can be one of the signs that you’re creating a dynamic of a bad or good guy between two people.
Why This is Considered Cheating
Emotional affairs aim for the other person to receive support, acknowledgment, companionship, or sexual needs from another outside of the marriage. These needs should be exclusively met by your spouse because both of you made vows. At first, it may be harder for someone to differentiate a close friendship from a developing emotional affair.
Know that friendships can involve people you may see a few times a month, and you don’t mind their absence. On the other hand, an emotional affair tends to be regular, and more often, this can come with fervent anticipation. This can be the barista on the coffee shop where you’re a regular or the person you always ride within the bus in the morning.
This may boil down to transparency. If you begin purposely to hide information and conversations to your spouse, then you may be treading a line that should not be crossed in this situation.
Does Texting Count in this Equation?
The answer to this is yes. However, it may still depend on the situation. Texting and chatting nowadays are making emotional affairs a more accessible phenomenon.
However, this can slip into something more profound, especially if you end up spending more texts to this person rather than your partner. If you’re leaving your current significant other with the read icon and start rushing to reply to the other person, then this may be a warning sign that you need to set your priorities right.
Social media can also be a slippery slope, just like texting. A purely platonic connection can grow before you know it. This sphere is where co-parenting, finances, housework, careers, in-laws, and children don’t exist. This is where the realities of life may leave you, and you can enter a fantasyland where you can be happy. However, just be careful with emotional affairs because they can have damaging consequences, especially if you’re in for the long haul.