A blog follower recently left a comment on my article, Turning Complaints Into Requests, asking me to define “emotional affair.”
It’s a good question.
You may have a sense that you know an emotional affair when you see one, but couples sometimes disagree about whether or not a certain relationship was—or is—an emotional affair.
Betrayed partners often perceive an emotional affair as a greater threat to their relationship than one that is primarily sexual. That’s because deeper emotional connection more closely mirrors the kind of attachment found in long-term committed relationships.
An emotional affair involves the participation of two people. The affair may include physical affection, but does not include sexual contact. A fantasy relationship that exists only in a person’s mind or their thoughts is not an emotional affair.
Here are 5 factors that strongly indicate that a person is engaged in an emotional affair:
1
Discussing Intimate Details About Your Primary Relationship
When choosing what to share about your primary relationship with other people, there are many factors to consider including the context in which you know the other person (friend, co-worker, or family member, for example) and the type of information you share.
Generally speaking, the type of information you share with another person about your primary relationship should correspond to how close you are to the person with whom you are sharing the information. For example, you would not tell a complete stranger you just met intimate details about your relationship or your spouse. However, you might share this information with a trusted friend, a therapist, or sponsor.
Intimate details about your primary relationship include the type and quality of your sexual relationship, sensitive or very private information about your spouse, or how you feel about your spouse, especially if those feelings are negative.
2
Sharing Information Not Shared With Your Spouse
When you share with another person who is not a trusted friend, therapist, or sponsor intimate, private thoughts and feelings that you are not sharing with your spouse, you create secrets in your primary relationship. When you begin to hold secrets from your spouse, there is a very high likelihood that you are involved in an emotional affair.
A dysfunctional—and highly seductive—bond is created when one person shares information, thoughts, and feelings that are not being shared with a primary partner. Sharing secrets is one of the most powerful and bonding experiences between two people engaged in an emotional affair, and is often how a person seeking an emotional or sexual affair seduces the other person.
When in doubt, if you are not willing to discuss a certain topic or your thoughts and feelings with your spouse, the only people you should share that information with are those with whom you are not emotionally or sexually attracted to who can help you sort through and process what you are experiencing.
3
Discussing Sexual Matters
Sexual experiences, thoughts, or preferences are highly private information and should only be shared with your closest friends, or a therapist, clergy, coach, or sponsor, for example. Discussing sexual matters with someone other than your spouse or support circle to whom you are emotionally or sexually attracted is extremely dangerous—and damaging—to your primary relationship.
4
Secretiveness
If you are minimizing, hiding, concealing, or in any way attempting to misrepresent the type or amount of contact you are having with another person you feel an emotional or sexual attraction to, there is a strong likelihood you are engaged in an emotional affair.
5
Ongoing Emotional Support
If you find yourself in a situation where you are seeking or getting ongoing emotional support or comfort from someone other than your spouse, especially if you are minimizing or hiding your contact with that person, you are likely headed toward—or engaged in—an emotional affair.
Emotional support and comfort includes verbal expressions of affection, flirting, sympathy, or offers of various types of help or assistance.
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© Vicki Tidwell Palmer, LCSW (2018)
Thank you. My husband had an emotional affair with his boss. It shook me to my core. He blamed me for the relationship. The secretive things kept getting more and more hurtful. Lunches, 41 PAGES of texts in one month, expensive gifts. Thank you for your blog on this. We are in counseling and sometimes the thoughts of what I went thru cause me hurt.
Dear Kathleen, I’m so sorry to hear all that you have been through. I wish you healing and peace.
Hi Vicki,
Thank you for this breakdown of what can constitute an emotional affair. It is not uncommon for a therapy client to tell themselves “It’s not cheating, I didn’t even kiss or have sex with them” (when they are having an emotional affair) or “It didn’t mean anything, we just had sex” (when they are having a sexual affair). Your blog post here helps provide some context in which an emotional affair can be taking place!
Christene Lozano, LMFT CSAT
Thanks Christene!
My estranged husband told me he had a long conversation with a female AA member about her sex addiction. He was “trying to help her” since he was trying to work his SA Program. Since I attend meetings at the same place, I wanted to know who she was. He refused to tell me based on “anonymity”. This triggered childhood trauma and betrayal trauma for me. I feel threatened that she knows him in an intimate way and I don’t know who she is or what was talked about.
Sandee, I can understand why you’re feeling triggered about your estranged husband’s unwillingness to share this information with you since you may potentially attend a meeting with the woman he spoke with. Ideally, these kinds of conversations happen between people of the same sex. If he were actually adhering to anonymity he would not have shared with you anything about the conversation.
Since you mention that the two of you are “estranged” there is probably not much that can be done other than to request that he not share with you in the future his conversations with other program members.
Take good care.
Thank you so much for your insight.
Can a sex addict to have an emotional affair? The most recent affair in which my husband (who is currently in recovery for SA) engaged encompasses at least three of the factors.
Many thanks for your wisdom.
Hi KK, thanks for the feedback! Yes, I believe that it is possible for anyone—including a sex addict—to have an emotional affair. However, physical/sexual affairs include most, or all, of the signs discussed in this article.
Thank you so much for your response!
If sexual addiction is an intimacy/emotional attachment disorder, then how can the sex addict emotionally connect with an affair partner? My husband had sexual contact one additional time and kept seeing the affair partner after discovery. His therapist suggests that this affair partner is the personification of his addiction, and that he is seeing her based on his addiction, and not true, genuine emotional feelings for her.
Hi KK, quick answer on this one:
“Emotional” does not equal intimate. A person can have many emotions or an emotional attachment to another person with no intimacy whatsoever!