RT
Being cheated by your partner is a heart breaking experience, but is an emotional affair worse than a physical affair?
What is Emotional Cheating?
Emotional cheating happens when one of the partners spends time, attention and intimate emotion into someone other than their partner.
It typically occurs when one of the couples feel disconnected and has unfulfilled emotional needs and turns outside the relationship to fill in that void.
Intimate conversations outside the relationship marks emotional affairs that involves treachery and though there’s no physical intimacy involved the impact can be equally damaging and often even worse.
Why Emotional Cheating Might Feel Actually Worse than Physical Cheating
Sure there’s no physical intimacy involved but emotional cheating can be more detrimental to a relationship in many ways such that:
There are actual feelings involved.
While sex may not be involved, emotional affairs run deeper. One night stands and encounter may at some point be acceptable as something that just really happened unintentionally fueled by alcohol and purely physical without emotions involved. But with an emotional affair, the cheater is fully conscious about what he or she is doing.
He or she knows that his or her partner will get hurt but does it anyway because he likes and feels comfortable with the other person and may actually be already in love with that person.
It is more difficult to spot.
Emotional cheating has less visible signs which mean the other party can get easily blinded.
It involves connection with someone outside the relationship on a deeper level which goes beyond what a purely physical cheating can offer which can be more difficult to spot, and at the same time can cause more strain in the relationship.
Emotional affairs are much harder to get over with.
It will require much longer time to completely heal from an emotional affair.
It involves the heart and mind and serious violation of trust and intimacy in a committed relationship.
It makes you feel trapped in gaslighting and it’s more toxic.
Your partner can easily deny the idea by telling you they are ‘just friends’ and that you’re just being insecure and paranoid.
They can just throw the shade on you and make you think you’re just crazy because it’s nothing. This leaves you in doubts, misery and confusion.
Emotional affairs can drag out much longer and before you know it things are already so messed up.
A sexual hookup can be over and done after a night. But when your partner develops emotional intimacy with someone else it can be a slow and torturous burn.
You may start to wonder whether or not your partner really loved you in the first place.
It can be easier to slip into an emotional affair compared to physical affairs.
The thing with emotional cheating is that not the cheater may not admit it as cheating and consider it as normal.
It’s also easier to fall into this kind of affair which can simply start with spending lunch time with a co-worker and gradually developing into more intimate conversations.
When this happens the cheater tends to undermine and channels less effort to the original relationship as the focus is now on someone else whom he or she feels more connected.
