

Virtually Cheating – An Emotional Affair

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One buzzword in the virtual world and in the ranks of psychologists these days is the term emotional affair. While many people believe that a physical affair involving having sex and cheating on your partner or spouse is wrong an emotional affair may be seen as innocent or not may not appear so clear. People's definition of a situation of developing an emotional affair with someone else in the virtual world when no sex is involved can be confusing to many individuals.

What Is An Emotional Affair?
Emotional affairs are emotional outlets. An emotional affair is a strong bond with someone else that isn't your partner. It's sharing intimate emotion and creating a connection that can shake any real-world relationship. An emotional affair places above your current spouse or partner. It's receiving and giving support to someone other than the person you previously committed to.

An emotional affair is considered a form of cheating just as devastating as a physical affair by psychologists; an emotional affair can bring a couple's union to its knees. It's an act of infidelity that is very difficult to survive and forgive.

Why Do We Have Emotional Affairs?
Emotional affairs are easy to have in the online environment of the virtual world. The anonymity and the distance of computer communication make an emotional affair a simple situation to create. In real life and in a committed relationship, flirting is a no-no. In the virtual world, we can flirt – heavily. Emotional affairs can be replacements for physical affairs, though emotional affairs aren't at all about sex. They're about feelings.
We can type something intimate to someone else that we might feel we can't share with our partner. A real-life lack of communication and emotional sharing in a relationship is a prime situation for an emotional affair to happen. Keep in mind, though, that a number of factors contribute to an emotional affair and each person's set of factors is different.

Emotional affairs are damaging to a relationship because they shake the foundation of trust, the building block of a marriage or commitment to another, and they shake it badly. This form of affair involves a great deal of deception, lies, and betrayal, but even more so, an emotional affair involves a person's heart and feelings.

Gender Perceptions of an Emotional Affair
Gender may play a role in the differences between an emotional and physical affair. Men tend to disassociate sex from intimacy and love, whereas women equate sex and love. When a man has a physical affair, a woman might have an easier time coping with the betrayal, because she feels that the man's affection and emotion still belong to her despite that he had sex with someone else. Men may accept a woman's sexual contact with another because men already might feel sex and love are not the same thing. When one of the partners has an emotional affair, though, regardless of the gender, the person betrayed can feel that he or she has lost everything.

How Does An Emotional Affair Get Started?
It's simple. In any form of communication with another person, there are lines, boundaries, and rules about what is acceptable behavior and communication and what is not. In real life, these limits are often very clear to others because they are determined by society. These limits include our body language, our facial expressions, or can be verbally.
In the virtual world, there are very few social cues or rules. In short, there are almost no boundaries. Anything goes. Most individuals try to remain true to their beliefs or values and set their own personal boundaries and limits of behavior, while others respond to and maintain a loose set of guidelines for socially acceptable virtual communication. However, because the boundaries of what is appropriate and acceptable and what is not in the virtual world are ambiguous, vague, and open to interpretation, stepping across the line of infidelity is easy.

And that's how an emotional affair begins. One person steps across the line, and the other person accepts and encourages the act.

Signs and Symptoms of an Emotional Affair
Some warning signs that the relationship you're having may be an emotional affair include:
- Withdrawing from or losing interest in your partner, emotionally or physically
- Daydreaming and fantasizing about the other person
- Trying to convince yourself or others that, "We're just friends"
- Providing more emotional support to the other person than your partner
- Anticipating or feeling excited about receiving emails or chat invitations
- Hiding the communication you receive or initiate; keeping secrets
- Sharing more personal information with the person instead of your partner

Is This An Emotional Affair?
You may be wondering if something going on in your virtual world is an emotional affair, but you don't think so. You're not having physical contact or engaging in acts of sexual infidelity with another person other than your partner. Of course not. You're only sending some emails or chatting via a text-based medium like an instant messenger to someone you've grown to care about. This isn't an emotional affair.  You're just friends.
It started innocently enough, sharing opinions about a common interest on a website forum or maybe sending an email to an old high school sweetheart after looking up your class peers online. You started to communicate with each other and before you knew it, you were fast virtual friends.

With a twist. You can't help but have feelings for the other person – more so than you do for your partner. The innocent emails or chat conversations changed somewhere along the way and became a little more personal. The situation slowly became an emotional affair, but you didn't realize it. Communication moved on to being romantic. Thoughts of actually getting together with that other person in real life crossed your mind, but meeting him didn't seem right. You're in a relationship with your partner, after all. So, you let the idea of meeting your virtual friend drop.

But you're still checking your inbox 20 times a day. When you receive a note from the person, it makes you feel excited and warm. There are kind words shared, romantic ones that stir thoughts of mystery and fantasy.  Would you ever act on your thoughts? Of course not; you already decided that this virtual relationship isn't really real. The situation is just an emotional affair where your needs are being met.

It's nice. You get love notes from someone who seems to care about you. Communication about personal thoughts is open and deep. It's exciting when the "conversations" turn racy. There's more spark happening online than there is in your own home and bed. Maybe your partner isn't attentive to you anymore or the romance between you has died down and you miss it. This online emotional affair has the passion and fire that you've been craving.
There isn't any sex happening, and you're not about to leave your partner for this other person. You're just friends with a connection. You're not really harming anyone, are you?

The truth is that while you may not be having a physical relationship with someone else, you're having a deeply emotional one. The virtual world is full of emotional affairs that can be just as damaging, and often more so, than a physical affair. It's easier for a couple to cope with and survive the infidelity of a one-night-stand. It's devastatingly difficult to cope with one of the couple giving their emotions away to another person.

What Should You Do If You're Having an Emotional Affair?
If you're interested in saving the relationship you have with your partner, breaking off an emotional affair as soon as possible is important. After that, you'll have to make the decision whether to tell your partner or not. While it may seem a good idea to keep the situation to yourself and pretend it didn't happen, that is another act of betrayal to your partner.  The truth may be discovered at any point in time, and you will need to face the consequences then.

Personal therapy can be an option to try to correct the situation. You won't be able to erase what's been done, but you can discover why the emotional affair occurred in the first place. Personal therapy can help you decide what steps you'd like to take now. It can also give you resources to talk over the affair with your partner or set the foundation for bringing your partner into a couples' therapy relationship.
Couples' therapy can help to repair the damage an emotional affair causes, though the process can be long, painful for both parties, and is no guarantee the relationship with your partner will survive the ordeal. However, therapy does have a rate of success in helping couples deal with acts of infidelity. Therapy can also help reintroduce communication and intimacy in a relationship and make it a stronger union than it was before.

Is He Your Soulmate?
The term "soulmate" often carries visions of mystic astrological card readings, reincarnation and destiny. But you don't have to believe in anything supernatural in order to have a soulmate. Your soulmate is someone who lights the fire inside of you, whom you love unequivocally and who shares your worldview. So does your guy make the grade or are you settling for a relationship that's just "nice?" Take this quiz to find out now if he's your soulmate.
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