Is Your Relationship Suffering From Emotional Infidelity?
Emotional infidelity occurs when you or your partner become emotionally connected with someone outside your relationship, either in person or on the Internet.
How dangerous to a marriage or committed relationship is emotional infidelity?
One way of looking at emotional infidelity is that it is very dangerous, because it not only takes away time and energy from the marriage, but it can lead to sexual infidelity and possibly to the end of marriage.
Another way of looking at it is that it is a symptom of problems that already exist within a marriage. My experience with the couples that I work with is that, when the primary relationship is not emotionally and physically intimate, each person may be vulnerable to a form infidelity - either emotional and/or physical. Rather than blaming the affair for the problems, why not address the real problem?
Emotional affairs are compelling because it is so easy to be close with someone with whom you have no shared responsibility - no money issues, no children, no chores. It is easy to share your deepest feelings with someone with whom you have no conflict. It is easy to get the good feelings that you get when someone who doesn’t live with you and doesn’t see all your issues thinks you are wonderful. But it is a cop-out - an easy way out of dealing with the real issues at hand. And if this affair does lead to a break up of your marriage and into a new permanent relationship, the chances are you will end up with the same problems! So why waste your time? Why not deal with the problems now?
