How Do You Get Over An Emotional Affair?
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An Emotional Affair Can Be As Serious as a Traditional One
When you are part of a committed relationship with another person, both of you expect full honesty from each other. Of course, that includes NOT straying from the relationship into the arms of another. But, what about if one of you has become infatuated or smitten with another person outside the relationship - but nothing of a sexual nature has happened between you; can that still be considered an affair? The answer is: quite possibly, yes. When the situation is far-enough advanced, it is often called an "emotional affair."
Emotional affairs happen when one member of a committed relationship strays outside of that relationship with another person, but nothing physical has happened between the two (yet). In fact, the only real difference between an emotional fair and a traditional infidelity is the element of sex.
Still, an emotional affair can actually be much more serious than a traditional affair, fling, or one-night stand. That is because emotional affairs often build up over time. The two people engaged in the affair may not have even verbalized what they are doing to each other. But, at some deep level, both of them know that their relationship has very much crossed the line beyond "just friendship."
If you or your spouse/significant other is engaged in an emotional affair, this lens will serve as a guide to help you break out of your current unhealthy patterns to get over the affair and move on. Your goal should be a healed, healthier relationship.
Emotional affairs happen when one member of a committed relationship strays outside of that relationship with another person, but nothing physical has happened between the two (yet). In fact, the only real difference between an emotional fair and a traditional infidelity is the element of sex.
Still, an emotional affair can actually be much more serious than a traditional affair, fling, or one-night stand. That is because emotional affairs often build up over time. The two people engaged in the affair may not have even verbalized what they are doing to each other. But, at some deep level, both of them know that their relationship has very much crossed the line beyond "just friendship."
If you or your spouse/significant other is engaged in an emotional affair, this lens will serve as a guide to help you break out of your current unhealthy patterns to get over the affair and move on. Your goal should be a healed, healthier relationship.
10 Signs of an Emotional Affair
Look for one or more of these signs
1. Your partner is often late coming home from work or when hanging out with friends.
2. They spend a lot of time going out with one or more co-workers for drinks (not just when entertaining clients).
3. You find your partner taking a lot of work-related phone calls (texts, e-mails) while at home on the weekends or in the evenings.
4. He or she talks a lot about a person outside the relationship very frequently.
5. Your partner gets embarrassed, sheepish or defensive when you bring up a particular person's name.
6. Your partner has been reprimanded at work recently for inappropriate behavior, or their work performance seems to be suffering for no obvious reason.
7. They seem to have lost interest in spending very much time with you - or they don't have the energy to spend as much time with you as they used to.
8. They spend a lot of time in chat rooms or online dating web sites "just for fun."
9. Your partner has a certain friend of the opposite sex who is always seeming to need attention and/or who calls frequently.
10. Others you know have shared their suspicions about an affair with you.
Affection Between Two People Does Not Have to be Physical to be Real
“If your partner seems a bit infatuated with someone else, they could be having an emotional affair.”
5 Things to Do If You Are the One Cheating
If you are the one who is doing the cheating, ere are 5 things you should do - in this order - to end the affair and work toward rebuilding your relationship:
- Recognize that your actions could be causing one or more people a lot of pain, now or in the future.
- You need to find a way to end the affair as soon as possible.
- Seek help, as the affair is a sign that your relationship needs outside assistance.
- Find a way to co-exist in an appropriate way with the person with whom you are having an emotional affair, or find a way to get out of their sphere of influence (e.g., transfer departments at work, change jobs, etc.).
- Work on figuring out the root causes of your behavior.
5 Things to Do If You Are Being Cheated On
If you are the one being cheated on (the injured), you have a lot of work ahead of you if you want to repair your relationship. If you believe it is worth it to save your relationship, do these 5 things:
- Get in touch with the reasons why you believe there is an emotional affair going on.
- Bring up your suspicions to your partner in a non-threatening, but honest, way. Avoid blaming them - you are just sharing your feelings.
- Get your partner to admit that they need to change their behaviors or they risk losing your relationship. This is not a threat, just a fact.
- Express to your partner how the affair feels - how much it hurts.
- Work together to work through this, survive it, and rebuild a much healthier, stronger relationship.
Next Steps: Starting The Healing Process
Still, these things do not usually happen in a vacuum. In other words, there are probably some very significant issues in your relationship that have contributed to the current situation. In all likelihood, one or both of you somehow got "too busy" for each other, not giving each other enough of your personal time. There could have been other seeds of dissatisfaction as well, including:
* not making love often enough
* failure to make an effort to understand and participate in each others' lives
* small incidents of certain behaviors by one or both of you that led to put cracks in the foundation of your trust
* not taking care of yourselves physically
While the exact causes of the emotional infidelity are probably much more complicated than just one thing, it is important to understand that there were definite causes - this did not just happen. And, the causes are exactly the places where you should be looking to remedy as you figure out how the two of you are going to pull through this together.
In addition to identifying the causes of your current situation, it will be important for the two of you to work together to heal the relationship. There are no doubt a lot of hurt feelings floating around between the two of you, so healing will not be easy. But, it will be necessary for you to start expressing your feelings to each other. Do so without recriminations or blaming, but rather in the spirit of sharing what has gone on between you. The goal should be to move through it, not around it, so that you can move past it together.
Help With Rebuilding the Romance
As you put your relationship back onto the path to healing, here are some fun and romantic ideas for spending more time together.
Let The Healing Begin By Taking A Trip Together
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