Emotional affair: the journey from temptation to seduction and destruction

Anger and love are two relatives who never go to the same family gathering.

They are emotions that inspire the best you feel and drag the worst you feel.

Love doesn’t even qualify as an emotion on its own if you base the definition on researcher Robert Plutchik’s basic list. Plutchik defines love as a combination of two emotions: joy and trust.

That’s why when a couple has an emotional affair, it feels so bad. Your love, your joy, your trust are all betrayed.

The first response some people have to the damaging effects of emotional affairs is:

“But there is no sex.”

Sex is not love. It can express love, but deep down sex can and does happen sometimes just for the sake of…sex.

That’s why, when couples who have been cheated on are asked what hurts them the most about an affair or relationship, they say…

the deception

Studies have shown that both men and women who have been cheated on by their partner are more hurt by the SECRET than by SEX.

About 70 percent of women, slightly more than men, say that sexual infidelity is more forgivable than emotional infidelity. A partner who has a strong attachment to a third party weakens the bond in the first relationship, sometimes to the breaking point.

The risk

For those who feel that an emotional bond between two people is not enough to label it an affair, consider that giving the body can be as temporary a gift as the giver wants it to be.

With emotions, it’s hard to even know where the friendship ends and the deepest feelings begin. Being emotionally close is a risky and usually longer investment. Rolling back from that investment is much harder than zipping up a fly.

Sexual attraction is part of an emotional affair, even if it is never acted upon. The truth is, the stronger the attraction, the more likely it is to go from fantasy to reality.

offline friendships

More gender-balanced workplaces and online social networking sites make intimate relationships easier to have…and hide. How far a person takes the relationship (a colleague, a chat partner) is a matter of choice.

So how do you know that a friendship, virtual or real, has crossed the trust boundary of a marriage or other committed relationship?

Signs of deception in emotional matters

has. verbal intimacy

The lover or spouse who leaves a first relationship to confide in a third party is breaking the bonds of privacy of a primary relationship.

It’s one thing to say “I’m having a hard time at home right now” to a colleague and quite another to reveal “My husband isn’t very satisfying in bed.”

A couple complaining about a first relationship with someone who is not part of their relationship should talk to a counselor or lawyer. Better yet, that partner should be trying to solve the problem at home instead of sympathy and solutions beyond.

b. Time is over

A couple who gradually extend a day at work or a solo computer session may be letting their spouse or lover know that they would rather be with someone else.

Timing itself is a key factor in determining how committed a partner can be beyond a promised relationship.

When a spouse or lover prefers, in their heart, to be away, it is a sign of someone who will go astray or someone who has already done so.

against sexual short

Something is wrong in the bedroom and none of it is pleasant.

A partner who turns down the opportunity to have sex repeatedly or appears distant and mechanical may be mentally elsewhere. If that other place is an emotional bond with a third person, the symptoms will increase.

Sometimes the opposite happens. A regular sex life suddenly becomes unusually vibrant. It may seem like a couple is taking the initiative to upgrade or shake up life in the bedroom, but it may be a sign that you’ve been fantasizing about having new sex with a new person and may be ready to practice those physical moves soon. .

d. The eyes

The secrecy and deception that is a part of every kind of affair lives in the eyes. Couples who try to hide deep feelings for another person will betray themselves with body language.

– Avoid the gaze of a spouse.

– Walk away from a lover.

– Not showing affection and warmth.

– Create verbal and physical distance.

Often a couple involved in an emotional affair is at war inside. The feelings are so consuming beyond marriage or another relationship that there is a double guilt: guilt for betraying a spouse and confusion for betraying a third person. A cheater is caught between duty and unexpressed feelings.

The end and the beginning

Emotional issues don’t last, but what happens to them can go one of two ways. Something happens that stops what is happening between two people or the relationship moves towards a physical relationship.

A survey reported that people guilty of online affairs never started out looking for an affair. Perhaps consciously they weren’t, but in almost half the cases, that innocent beginning turned into a physical affair.

The combination of an emotional affair turning into a physical one can be the most devastating of all.

If you suspect your partner is in a relationship that’s past the friendship stage, it’s time to take action and ask them some tough questions. These are tough questions because the answers you may get may not be the ones you want to hear.

That makes them even more important to ask them.

How do you approach your partner?

What words can you say?

How do you know if the emotional issue is real?

What will you do if they admit it…or worse yet, don’t acknowledge or acknowledge the relationship as an affair?