If you are signing up to a free online dating site, but you’re not single, you may be considering embarking on a flirty friendship Without physical contact, can your emotional affair still be considered cheating?
An emotional affair happens between two people, at least one of which is in a committed relationship with someone else. There is emotional connection without intimate physical contact.
It might start when a genuinely platonic friendship becomes more intimate, or when someone who is attached, intentionally seeks out someone new to connect with.
Whilst some people believe this type of contact is nothing more than harmless flirting between friends, the spouse left out of the conversation is likely to feel differently.
Often emotional affairs are conducted via texts, emails and online messages. It can start out as a bit of banter between friends, before the connection deepens, and a trusting relationship develops. But since little of this relationship is conducted face-to-face, the people involved are more likely to see it is a flirty friendship, than a potential marriage-breaker.
The central argument against an emotional affair being considered as ‘cheating’ is that there is no physical intimacy between the people involved.
Against this single, but substantial, argument, is a whole host of reasons why the partners of people engaged in an emotional affair, may feel cheated on:
1. Their partner has had a secret life. Long-term relationships are built on trust, and the revelation that a partner has been sharing their innermost thoughts with someone else is likely to take its toll on that trust. No doubt some lies will have been spun to explain away absences. In order for the emotional affair to have been conducted in secret, there must have been secrets kept, which in itself is a betrayal.
2. Misdirected time, financial and emotional investment. To develop a relationship to a level of intimacy, there needs to be a considerable investment in terms of time, and emotionally. If the couple having the affair have enjoyed dates together, there is likely to have been costs involved to. Partners will likely feel that the investment would have been better spent on the existing relationship.
3. It wasn’t physical yet. Just because the affair was only ’emotional’ when it was discovered, doesn’t mean it would have stayed that way. Perhaps it would have developed into physical intimacy in time.
The impact an emotional affair can have on a relationship very much depends on the people involved. To embark on intimacy with someone other than your partner is a huge gamble. You might have a partner who is willing to either ignore or accept the ‘friendship’, and to continue loving you in the same way as they always have. On the other hand, your partner may feel deeply betrayed by having unknowingly shared your heart with someone else.
If at any stage you have a nagging feeling that you wouldn’t like the relationship to be uncovered, even if there has been no physical intimacy, you could be cheating.
Consider how this relationship will develop over the next year. Will it remain non-physical? How will your partner feel if they found out? Are you currently doing, or saying anything that you would rather your partner didn’t know about?
Be honest with yourself about why the affair started in the first place? What need was it meeting that wasn’t being fulfilled by your current relationship?
If you are only in the early stages of an emotional affair, you may be able to bring it tactfully to your partner’s attention, and continue with a public, platonic friendship. For affairs that have been ongoing for sometime, the only real escape is to end contact.