How Dangerous Is Emotional Infidelity To Marriage
August 7th, 2008 | 
Author: Emotional infidelity occurs when you or your partner become emotionally connected with someone outside your relationship, either in person or on the Internet.
One way of looking at emotional infidelity is that it is very dangerous, because it not only takes away time and energy from the marriage, but it can lead to sexual infidelity and possibly to the end of marriage.
Another way of looking at it is that it is a symptom of problems that already exist within a marriage. My experience with the couples that I work with is that, when the primary relationship is not emotionally and physically intimate, each person may be vulnerable to a form infidelity – either emotional and/or physical. Rather than blaming the affair for the problems, why not address the real problem?
Emotional affairs are compelling because it is so easy to be close with someone with whom you have no shared responsibility – no money issues, no children, no chores. It is easy to share your deepest feelings with someone with whom you have no conflict. It is easy to get the good feelings that you get when someone who doesn’t live with you and doesn’t see all your issues thinks you are wonderful. But it is a cop-out – an easy way out of dealing with the real issues at hand. And if this affair does lead to a break up of your marriage and into a new permanent relationship, the chances are you will end up with the same problems! So why waste your time? Why not deal with the problems now?
The primary problem that leads to emotional infidelity is emotional distance between partners. While emotional infidelity is a symptom of emotional distance within the primary relationship, the emotional distance is also a symptom of the deeper issues within the relationship. These deeper issues might be:
• One or both partners trying to have control through anger blame, and criticism – which are overt forms of control.
• One or both partners trying to have control through care-taking, i.e. giving themselves up and taking responsibility for the other person’s feelings – which is a covert form of control.
• One of both partners withdrawing and resisting being controlled by the other partner.
• Neither partner taking emotional responsibility for his or her own feelings of pain and joy. Each partner abandoning themselves – with self-judgment and ignoring their feelings through addictions, and/or making the other responsible for their feelings.
• Power struggles that result from the control and resistance dynamic and an inability to resolve conflict.
The relationship system that develops, when neither partner takes responsibility for his or her own feelings, and when each partner tries to have control in overt or covert ways, grinds down the love until each person feels disconnected from their partner and lonely in the relationship. This is when they are susceptible to emotional infidelity.
However, these patterns do not disappear just because you move into another relationship. You take your overt and covert forms of control with you into any relationship, as well as your underlying fears of rejection and fears of engulfment that underlie these forms of control. These patterns don’t generally show up early in a relationship or in an emotional or physical affair, but that doesn’t mean they are gone. If your new relationship were to become your committed primary relationship, these patterns would again surface.
Why waste what might turn out to be a wonderful relationship by not dealing with your fears, controlling patterns, and self-abandonment now, in your current relationship? Instead of addictively looking to someone else to fill up your emptiness and take away your aloneness and loneliness, why not learn to do this for yourself so that you can break your dysfunctional patterns and become the loving human being that you are capable of being? Imagine the wonderful relationship you and your partner might have if both of you were to learn how to take responsibility for your own feelings and your own ability to love!
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Emotional infidelity can be extremely hurtful — as well as hard to get over!
emotional infidelity need not be with a person …. emotions can be transferred to a subject, an object, that becomes the new ‘love’ …
@Jenna- I can identify with what you say, because I have been there.
@Susan- You have a good point there Susan.
Awesome article! I hadn’t thought about this in my own relationship. I love my girlfriend and now that I’m aware of this, I can make certain that I don’t fall into this.
Thank you!
this article was so helpful ! ive been there where my partner had an “emotional friend” and i he even asked me if its there was a such thing as “emotionally cheating”. Well i am not with him now and i tell you what it really messes with your as to why or how it happens. I am still not over it and it has been just over a year. i thin its more crushing to find someone getting close to another person rather than if they had of gone and just slept with another person, my opinion anyways, ive had both done to me by separate guys… i feel for anyone who has been through any kind of cheating from there partner.
My boyfriend started his at work. I knew something was wrong. I went on thinking no I can trust him he would never do anything he loves me. I am pregrent too so I just didn’t see it coming. The girl he liked so much was married who recently moved into a small apartment not far from her job and close to my home. I found out when she called the house just befor her husband called and questioned my boyfriend of 11 years with two kids and one on the way. Let’s just say I was very hurt and mad. All I could do was lay down on the couch. After that he wanted to go over to her house and question her about this. I said to just call her. He had in the past talked to her over the phone and went out for coffee with her and another male coworker. He told me she had an abusive husband and a rough life. I never thought anything of it because I considered my man to be a great friend and hero. Well he instited on going over there although he know I was not happy about that. I could not win so he lefted saying he would not be long. Well he was gone for a while so I called him. He seemed different on the phone. He did not want to come home untill I threatned to come over.I found out everything the next day from a mutual friend. That night we talked and he explained that he was not looking for someone else they just connected and bonded emotionally. This all occured within 2 months. The time she started working with him. By the way the worked in a group home on the weekends for 16 hours. From then on the lies and sneaking continued for about a week. He lefted me confused and hurt. We would talk about the situation and how bad it was bit he still didn’t know what to do. He could not deceide to break ties with her or me. I was pregnant and just losing it mentally. He finally deceided to break ties with her. He said that it was not fair to me that he gave up and did not try to make it work. So as far as I know he is trying. I drive by his job every now and then to check on him. It will take a long while befor I trust him again. He seems to want to be with his family so far. I will see.
I have been with my husband for 21 years.
About 6 years ago I found these letters to him from a Japenese girl, that he was having some type of emotional affair with. He had set up a seperate PO box to recieve these letters. We went through hard times after this then I suspected something at work. To cut a long story short he has had an emotional affair with the same girl on and off for the last 5 years. He swears she is just a friend etc etc, but he has had secret sim cards for his phone.
I am really really over it and would like to leave but it is really really hard. We have 2 kids 18 & 17 so I have got through the worst. It is just finding the strengh to do it
We have been happily married for 17 yrs but the last 5 or 6 months I have felt my wife’s distance in our friendship as well as our emotional and physical relationship. I’d been wondering what was going on with her and whenever I asked she would tell me that there was nothing wrong with ‘us’ but that she was just dealing with something unexplainable, some anxiety or possibly a mid-life crisis or ‘the change’. This went on until one day I saw an email she had sent to a female friend explaining how anguished she was to have feelings for someone else as she still loved me but couldn’t stop thinking of this person. She was thinking of him day and night and was missing him. I was devastated! How could this have happened and why? I waited a day before confronting her about what I had discovered. She was remorseful and sorry that I was hurt, but while admitting that she had developed emotional feelings for someone she also said that the feelings were there but were something that she cannot easily stop feeling. She’s asked that I be patient with her as she tries to get over these feelings. She assured me that nothing has happened between them beyond her feelings and that the other person wasn’t even aware of her feelings.
As much as I want to believe that she will try I cannot help but wonder how or if it will happen. I know that this person is someone at her workplace and I fear that as long as they are around eachother in whatever capacity it is that her feelings will always be there to some degree. I will always be suspicious now and be fearing that she is with him and thinking of him. I don’t want to leave her but it’s very painful to know that she has these feelings for someone other than me. I’m afraid that my mistrust will drive a wedge between us making our relationship suffer even worse and giving her more reason to reach out to the other person. She doesn’t want to attend any counseling as a couple or individually. I don’t know what to do beyond prayer to get through this. How can I be certain that she is truly trying to diminish her feelings for him?
As the author of the article, I have frequently dealt with this issue with my clients. Daniel, her feelings for the other man, her anguish over it, and your fears indicate some level of self-abandonment for both of you. I suggest that you do the counseling so that your feelings of wellbeing are not dependent on her choices. You need help in moving beyond your fear and mistrust so that you can be more loving with yourself and her, which is what will help to heal the problem.
I have struggled with this twice in the past 4 years with my husband of 15 years. We have young children. Both times he developed a ‘crush’ on a much younger employee, which lasted 6-8 months. Although no boundaries were crossed, the emotional bond between us was broken both times and I’m having a hard time trying to decide what to do now. He admits to feeling empty and lonely inside, and no amount of adoration/attention/hero worship from the designated crush seems to make him happy. He tells me that he loves me and I know that he adores our children, but he is also very confused about how to fill that ‘void’ inside of him. I feel hurt and betrayed, but guilty that I can’t make him happy. Outside of these situations, we have had a stable, compatible, loving, and fulfilling marriage. He felt shy, and was a social misfit as a child, had no intimacy before meeting me, and suffers from anxiety and depression. Now he feels confident and derives great pleasure from the attention he receives from younger women. I want to believe that he will mature and grow out of this behavior, but a part of me feels that unless he ’sows his wild oats’ and is alone for awhile to decide what he really wants from his life, he won’t be a whole person. We are seeing a marriage counselor, which may or may not help. But I don’t know how to support him (or perhaps I’ve enabled him to become this way), can’t decide what I need/want, and whether our marriage can be saved. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
Carol, I suggest that you go to our website at http://www.innerbonding.com and download our Free Inner Bonding Course. This will be very helpful to you in understand how to take care of yourself through this. In addition, there are many articles on relationships on the site that will be helpful to you.
Blessings,
Margaret