Text Infidelity
What Is Emotional Infidelity? 5 Signs It Could Be Happening In Your Marriage
Emotional infidelity is a word you may have heard before. Chances are, the first time you heard this word you didn’t suspect that it could apply to you or your relationship. However, if you believe that you or your spouse have become attached to or enamored with a person outside of your marriage, you will probably want to spend some more time to understand this phenomenon.
If you are wondering, “What is emotional infidelity?”, you can find a number of various but slightly differing definitions. However, for the sake of clarity, here is a definition of how the term is used herein:
Emotional infidelity is when a member of a committed relationship feeds inappropriate romantic or sexual energy to a person outside of the marriage in a way that is akin to cheating. However, it does not involve direct sexual contact.
A simpler way to describe emotional infidelity is to call it a sexless affair.
But, do not let that description make you take the phenomenon less seriously than you would a traditional affair. In fact, in many ways this type of cheating can be even more threatening to a marriage than a traditional affair.
Here are 5 signs emotional infidelity could be happening in your marriage:
1. Your spouse pays an unusual amount of attention to one particular person outside of your marriage:
If you can think of a particular person of the opposite sex that your spouse tends to spend a lot of their time and energy on, this could be a sign of an emotional infidelity. Of course, there could be plenty of legitimate explanations for this type of behavior. But, if your intuition tells you differently, something inappropriate may be going on.
2. You get the feeling your spouse is often pre-occupied with thoughts of the other person:
Do you find your spouse daydreaming or “not present” mentally when you are together? Thoughts of another person for whom they have romantic feelings may be occupying his or her thoughts.
3. You find your spouse calling or texting the other person at odd times:
Do you ever catch your spouse making secretive phone calls or sending texts at odd times such as on weekends and in the evenings? Even if they somehow explain all of this away as being innocent, it could be inappropriate behavior.
4. Despite the person’s obvious involvement in your spouse’s life, your spouse almost never talks about them openly:
Oftentimes, a spouse engaged in an emotional infidelity will make up a range of legitimate-sounding excuses about why they have to communicate with this outside person so often. But, if you find that, despite all of that involvement in your spouse’s life he or she seems reluctant to talk openly about this other person, something fishy could be going on.
5. You find mysterious signs of your spouse’s extracurricular activities:
Of course, all of the signs of a traditional affair can also indicate emotional cheating. For example, unexplained restaurant or hotel receipts, empty shopping bags, lipstick on the shirt collar, strange perfume smells, and the like are signs that should raise suspicion rather than be ignored.
Consider these 5 signs that emotional infidelity could be happening within your marriage.
About the Author
Find out about how to help your marriage survive an emotional infidelity at: Get Over Emotional Infidelity.
Infidelity; a Blood and Water Reprise