What Is Emotional Cheating and How to Deal with It

Content:

1. What is Emotional Cheating?
2. Emotional Cheating vs Friendship
3. Signs of Emotional Cheating
4. 3 worst ways Emotional cheating affects your life
5. How to Get Over Emotional Cheating

When a new person appears in life, with whom it is pleasant and interesting, it is a wonderful and exciting moment. Meetings - first random, then - deliberately arranged, you in fact like to see each other... Jokes in the chat after midnight. It sounds like the beginning of a beautiful romance. But there is a little problem: you already have a partner. A new person is just a friend to you. True, you yourself feel in what fat quotes the word "friend" is concluded. But it suits you. It seems to you that if there is no sex - there is no betrayal. You are one step from emotional cheating in a relationship.

Disputes about whether it is possible to consider emotional cheating as a full-fledged cheating can go on endlessly. Moreover, there are no right and wrong views here: people build boundaries differently. Someone does not consider sex with a condom as cheating, someone - a connection in another city, someone - a random meeting with the love of youth. However, when you have a loved one for a long time, what you think is not so important. You can endlessly argue that you do not do anything bad. Moreover, you are likely to find weighty, rational arguments. However, all this does not matter - the outcome of such a "friendly" communication is likely to be sad. It will break the heart of your better half. And no guides on how to forgive emotional cheating will help restore your relationship.

What is Emotional Cheating?

Is emotional cheating real? Yes, absolutely.

When emotional cheating begins, its participants hardly even consider it as a kind of relationship ... And of course, it is not cheating. In extreme cases - it’s just friendship. But you are very mistaken.

Unlike standard infidelity with sex, hugs, kisses, and dates, in the case of emotional cheating, there is no physical contact ... For the time being. And yet it is very destructive for the relationship.

The most common situation is cheating with an old friend or co-worker. It all starts with active communication, joint trips to work, going to lunch, followed by long conversations in Skype and on the phone, correspondence, etc. And over time, these relations (although very innocent, at first glance) are progressing, become quite intimate - both of them are reluctant to expand on this topic, but at the same time they subconsciously recall each other: "Look, yesterday he said that ...", "But he thinks ... and I fully agree with him."

Soon you begin to hide communication with your so-called "friend" from your constant partner. You understand that you mention him or her too much and often. And, sort of, it's worth reducing communication, but you do not want to do it at all. And you start to calm yourself with thoughts like: “So what's wrong? We're just friends!"

Agree, the usual friendship is not accompanied by such phenomena. In fact, you immediately understand if this happens to you. Your conscience is the best guide in this situation. If you feel that your relationship with a new friend is causing spiritual discomfort and you begin to google "what is emotional cheating," it's time to start worrying - you are already one foot in the trap.

Even with the preservation of the external good of your "friendship", you cannot deceive yourself and your partner for a long time. Just remember that this is only a temptation dictated by human nature.

If you want to see emotional cheating defined, we can gladly do it for you: emotional cheating is a common cheating, with the only difference - you can still play friends and control the desire to sleep with each other. Nothing more.

Emotional Cheating vs Friendship

Emotional cheating is a very cunning and insidious thing. Its very nature is absolutely two-faced and deceitful. If you compare it with friendship, it becomes clear what kind of self-deception it is. Of course, such analysis is possible only from the side - a person who has fallen into the trap of emotional cheating is not capable of reasoning about his relations. He will carefully guard this connection, even from attacks of his own conscience. I know several people who managed to stop themselves and honestly admit that this connection has nothing to do with friendship, but this is truly a unique case.

The main difference between emotional cheating and friendship is the absence of such a thing as selflessness. True friendship implies a deeper connection between people. When we receive news of the successes of our old friend, we feel an emotional upsurge, connected with deep empathy. You sincerely rejoice for another person, without experiencing the need to be directly involved in this event.

When your connection with another person is vicious, nothing like this happens. Hearing about the good news from your new "friend", you feel the ejection of the hormones. Your subconscious mind signals: "Wow, he/she has a good mood today. Perhaps we will finally have sex." And that's all. You do not visualize the image of a new friend, you start looking for your benefits. Although, in the course of an internal dialogue you can blatantly lie to yourself that you have not experienced such thoughts. Moreover, that very new friend who shared the good news with you thought about similar primitive things - they clearly realized how they just raised their own value in your eyes. Why does he or she need this? After all, friends do not think in such categories.

So that you do not come up with yourself, your new relationship is based on a consumer attitude towards each other. The fact that you manage to keep your thirst to have sex does not mean anything.

The joy that you experience from communicating with each other is based only on the carnal craving for each other. Your chemistry is perfectly matched with his or her chemistry and primitive instincts simply included the necessary mechanisms so that you can quickly plunge into the continuation of the mankind process. The only thing that saves you is the presence of conscience and willpower in the face of the instinct of reproduction, without which no emotional cheating can exist - otherwise, you would just go straight to business and not play friends.

Emotional cheating vs friendship...don’t even try to compare these things - they are from completely different worlds.

Signs of Emotional Cheating

Here are main signs of emotional cheating in a relationship. All this is similar to the signs of some nasty disease. It is a rare case when you face such unambiguous, understandable symptoms. What seems like a very subtle game, in fact, is very visible. A person is spending too much energy on inner experiences and often loses vigilance. You’re lucky if the partner has not yet managed to understand what is happening. You can take this checklist with emotional cheating signs, stand in front of a mirror and honestly answer whether these points are relevant to you and your new "friendship".

• You share with your new friend hopes and dreams, which only your girlfriend/boyfriend could have told you before.
• You try to dress up for this person.
• You are looking for excuses for spending time with this person, and it's important for you.
• If your partner finds you together, you catch yourself feeling guilty. With your better half, you do not say what you would say in private.
• You tell the new person about the problems in the relationships.
• You keep it secret from your partner how much time you actually spend together (correspondence in messengers is also considered).
• Your mood changes depend on what happens in the relationship with this person.
• During your meetings, you feel guilty, but you do not know why.

3 worst ways Emotional cheating affects your life

By now, it is obvious that emotional cheating is very harmful to a relationship, but what about yourself? After all, you have someone with whom you share your emotions and thoughts. Does it mean that there is no harm to you as a person

1. You live A Double Life

You may not even realize that you actually have a double life until it is too late. You see, you live a double life when you have a connection with someone you are not supposed to. In this case, you try to hide the fact that your romantic partner is not a priority anymore.

2. You feel frustrated

A frustration appears when you don't sure exactly what you have in this life. On the one hand, your significant other makes you happy. On the other and, your best friend can make you even happier, but he or she is just your phantasy. This is way too much to handle.

3. You become a liar

As simple, as simple can only be. When you literary in love with two different people, and you simply can't be honest with both of them. A lie always starts small, but it inevitably grows with time.

How to Get Over Emotional Cheating

But how to get over emotional cheating? Is it possible? Well, yes. If your life situation corresponds to the described above in all points, it remains to decide what to do if you want to save the relationship. We propose to talk not only with a therapist but above all with yourself. Explain some things to yourself. Here they are:

1. "Friendship", the right to which you defend, hurts your partner. If you want to save the relationship, it's time to admit that what is bad for a loved one cannot be "harmless".

2. Tell your loved one that feeling insecure in such a situation is normal, and you do not need to think that this is some kind of personal flaw.

3. Tell your partner that you understand how much emotional closeness with another hurts, and in this case, there is no difference from physical: in both cases, it is assumed that some things are kept secret.

4. If in that "perfect friendship" you have found something that you lack in your relationship, talk about it directly with your loved one. Your significant other, perhaps, does not know what you are missing - and you want to clear it out.

5. Explain to your "friend" that you better keep a distance, as this harms your relationships.

Your main weapon is honesty and determination. Forget about yourself and concentrate all your thoughts on the person you may hurt very much. Analyze your new "friendship" - is it really so important to you?

Are you ready to end a serious relationship with a loved one for their sake? As practice shows, the most common reason for such situations is misunderstanding and boredom, which some time ago reigned in your relationship. A person finds someone who is ready to listen to his wishes and nod approvingly. From this point, a game of friendship begins.

All this is treated with a frank conversation with a loved one and adjustments that you make in your relationship. If you do everything right, you will be surprised that you recently seriously risked relationships for the sake of "friendship", which no longer seems so attractive and cool. Now that you know how to deal with emotional cheating, it’s time to make your choice.