Most emotional affairs begin when there is a friendship that becomes something deeper. This person can be someone you are attracted to or someone that you feel a sexual chemistry with. The problem is, if you are married, this can hurt your marriage.
Emotional Affairs
An emotional affair can hurt your marriage and tear apart your family. There is only so much emotional energy that a person has and when you aren’t giving this to your spouse, then you are putting it somewhere.
Most of the time, an emotional affair or a physical affair will start with just a friendship. The bond is not there at the start, and no one expects it to change. But, as time goes on, this bond can become stronger, and it can lead to an emotional affair which can lead to worse.
How to Know an Emotional Affair
If you don’t know if you are having an emotional affair or if your spouse is, here are some signs to look for:
Contact
When you are spending a lot of time contacting this person or you are communicating with them at all hours of the day, chances are you are having an emotional affair. This can mean you are video chatting, calling, texting, etc.
Sharing
This can be the person that you go to first when something good or bad goes wrong. Instead of talking to your spouse, you run to this person to tell them what happened.
Thinking of Them
You have this person on your mind all the time. This means you are probably having a hard time paying attention to your spouse and your marriage.
If you are thinking about your friend all the time, before you go to bed, when you wake up in the morning and all through the day, you are probably emotionally connected too deep.
They Understand You
This might be someone that you feel really understands you. You feel that they understand you better than everyone, including your spouse. Maybe you and this person have a lot of things in common. Since you have such a strong connection, no one really understands how much they get you, not even your spouse.
Inappropriate Times
You talk about things that aren’t appropriate such as problems in your marriage, problems with your body and more.
Comparing
You sometimes compare your spouse to this person. You get mad at your spouse when they aren’t doing the same things that your friend is doing. You might become critical of what your spouse is doing because they aren’t the same as your friend.
Spending Time Together
You spend much of your time with this person. You might even find that you are making excuses to spend more time with them. You avoid spending time with your spouse so you can be with your friend instead.
Secrets
There might be a time where you start lying or keeping out the details. You don’t talk about the times you meet with your friend, eat with them, text and call them. You keep your spouse out of your communication with your friend. Maybe you block your phone or delete their messages so that your spouse doesn’t find out.
If you are lying or hiding things, then this is not a good situation. Would you be upset if your partner heard the conversation between you and your friend?
No Time for Your Partner
You spend less time with your spouse because you are busy spending your time with your friend. They get less of your love and affection and your time is taken away from your family.
Would you be upset if your partner was giving someone else the same intimacy and time as you are your friend?
How Emotional Affairs Hurt Others
These kinds of affairs are things that you might see more often than you know. When you are with someone or married to someone, you are with them all the time and you get to see all of their unattractive ways and their bad habits. This makes it easy to think about your friend more because you aren’t seeing all of the negative parts.
These affairs have a line that cannot be crossed, or it will become a physical affair. This will put your marriage in danger of ending. Even though there is no sexual contact with that person, an emotional affair can be more damaging than a sexual one because the emotions are all invested in this person.
Final Thoughts
If you are experiencing an emotional affair or if you fear that your partner is having one, you need to talk to your partner. Talking about the problem is the first step to solving it. If that doesn’t help, marriage counseling might be needed.