Emotional Infidelity: What It Is, Why It Occurs, and How to Overcome It

Having access to the incredible technology we now possess can be a good thing, but it opens other, darker possibilities. The same tools we can use to connect with others across the globe to collaborate on a project can also be used to enter and cultivate an illicit relationship.

People conducted illicit relationships with others long before the invention of the cellphone or email. However, technology makes it that much easier to do so because of ease of access, and the boldness that anonymity online often affords makes taking that step all the less daunting.

An emotional affair can take place in various ways, one of which is digitally and online. However, it can occur between colleagues in the same workspace, fellow attendees at the same church, or strangers who run into each other regularly at a local coffee shop.

Different Forms of Infidelity

Infidelity comes in many different packages, but at the root of it all is the transgression of a boundary that is meant to protect your primary relationship. When you commit yourself to another person in a romantic relationship, especially in a marriage, you are communicating a few important things.

For one thing, you are saying that certain parts and levels of you belong exclusively to one person, your partner. This includes your body, but it also implicates your affections, presence, and time.

To be sure, relationships don’t conform to a one-size-fits-all dynamic. People are different, and the boundaries they draw in their relationships will differ. Some couples place strictures around spending time with members of the opposite sex or having friends who aren’t the same sex.

Some couples place boundaries about how they interact on social media with other people. Thus, each couple will often have their own rules about how they are to act, and breaching those rules and boundaries is what constitutes infidelity.

In the Bible, God tells us that with romantic relationships and marriages, there’s supposed to be exclusivity in terms of sexual activity and affection. Marriage is meant to be a one-woman-and-one-man-for-life union that excludes others from participating (Genesis 2: 24-25; Song of Songs; Proverbs 5-7; Matthew 19:1-12).

We’re told that human marriage is an imperfect mirror of the commitment God has toward His people. That is why the Bible often speaks of unfaithfulness toward God as adultery (Ezekiel 16, 23).

As Dr. Beth Felker Jones put it, “Marriage, created by God as a ‘one flesh’ union, is meant to be a sign of God’s unbreakable covenant with us. This is an important symbol throughout the Scriptures: God is compared to a husband and God’s people to a wife. When, by the grace of God, we’re able to keep a marriage together, we get to be symbols – imperfect symbols, but still symbols – of God’s faithfulness to his people. Marriages are supposed to last because they are symbols of God’s lasting love for us.”

From a Christian perspective, infidelity can thus encompass sexual infidelity. But it also includes emotional infidelity which often entails giving over to another your affections, time, presence, desire, intimacy, and intentionality that rightfully belong to your spouse.

Why Emotional Infidelity Occurs

As with most other things in life, there is no one path toward emotional infidelity. Each couple will have its own story and complex reasons why one spouse ends up committing themselves emotionally and mentally to another person.

Some of the reasons why emotional infidelity occurs include the following:

Your emotional intimacy with your spouse is suffering When communication in a marriage is poor, or the spouses are disconnected from one another, those circumstances open the relationship to emotional infidelity. As relational beings, we desire to connect with others. If the marriage isn’t a conducive space for that, it often takes place elsewhere.

Emotional infidelity occurs in situations of spousal neglect, where couples stop being curious about one another, or because one spouse has had an affair. You look to another person to be appreciated, feel heard, and have an outlet for your affection.

You form a deep connection in an unexpected place When we interact with various people, we’re bound to encounter people with whom we get along well. This can be with a coworker, family friend, or fellow congregation member. When you make these connections, that may be alright.

But if they get nurtured and begin to supplant your primary relationship, that can cause problems. Sometimes, you might get along with someone much more effortlessly than with your spouse. It’s at that point that self-control and firm boundaries are necessary.

You have poor boundaries In connection with the above, if you have poor boundaries and allow yourself to cultivate feelings for someone other than your spouse, you can end up in emotional infidelity. Placing firm boundaries that you don’t cross – such as avoiding intimate discussions with people other than your spouse or family members– will help safeguard you from developing inappropriate relationships.

You’re pursuing a fantasy Our lives can feel dull and uneventful. Sometimes, the gap between our lives as they are and as we hope them to be is filled with fantasy and dreams. “Am I still attractive?” and “Can I still experience a whirlwind romance?” are questions people ask and can try to answer by connecting with another person.

Our emotions aren’t predictable, and they can lead us to break trust. Emotional affairs often happen when people reach out or reconnect with an old flame, and that can trigger thoughts about what might have been. You can unfairly compare the realities of your life now with the fantasy of what might have been.

Signs of Emotional Infidelity

An emotional affair may seem innocent, at least in comparison with an affair that entails either just sexual intercourse or an emotional connection combined with sexual intercourse. However, an emotional affair can be just as devastating to the primary relationship as any other kind of affair.

An emotional affair can take time, energy, focus, and presence away from the primary relationship. The primary relationship can suffer and not flourish as it would with the nurture and care it’s meant to be receiving. The problem with emotional affairs is that they can often migrate and become affairs with a physical component included. When this happens, it’s even more complicated to return to the primary relationship because it’s not just about sex or emotions, but both combined.

Some of the signs of emotional infidelity include the following:

You spend a lot of time thinking about the other person

You think of your next encounter or interaction, you think of jokes you want to tell them or of things you’d like to say to them. They are on your mind and heart often.

You hide the relationship from your partner and others

If you’re in an emotional affair, you may hide messages you’ve exchanged with the person, or not tell the truth about where you’re spending your time. You might buy gifts for them and hide the transactions from your partner. You might justify this by telling yourself, “My spouse would never understand and take things out of context.”

People have asked and been concerned about the relationship

Friends, family, your partner, or your coworkers have asked you about your relationship with this person. They may have phrased it like “Is anything going on between you two?” or even made statements like “You guys seem to be quite close. Anything we should worry about?”

You get uncomfortable, defensive, or angry if people confront you about the relationship

If you find yourself so invested in the relationship that its potential loss makes you afraid, angry, or defensive, maybe you’ve invested too much in it.

You prioritize the other person and not your spouse or partner

If you have good news, or bad news for that matter, who do you tell first? If you have a spare moment while at work, who do you think of calling or texting? When you’re getting dressed or working on staying in shape, who is top of mind as the reason why you’re doing it?

If you have some disposable income, who do you think of getting a gift or surprise for? When you’re feeling low, who do you turn to for comfort? If you turn to another person and not your spouse, that might be a sign that you’re having an emotional affair with them.

Overcoming Emotional Infidelity

Emotional infidelity is insidious and harmful to marriage in subtle ways. Part of why it can be harmful is because it doesn’t seem as bad as having a sexual affair. As such, it can go on for a long time, or a person can have multiple emotional affairs that cause untold damage to their primary committed relationship.

To overcome it, one needs to understand why it’s wrong and harmful. Hopefully, this article has gone some way in showing why an emotional affair is not innocent or necessarily less harmful than an affair that has sex involved. Emotional affairs are often precursors to intense sexual affairs that lead to the entire breakdown of the marriage or primary committed relationship.

When one acknowledges that an emotional affair is harmful, the next step can include a combination of steps that encompass building better boundaries, confessing to one’s partner, and going for counseling.

Counseling can help you better understand the damage caused to the relationship, but beyond that, it can strengthen your relationship, help rebuild intimacy, strengthen your communication skills, and unearth the underlying causes that were the impetus for pursuing emotional infidelity in the first place. Counseling is a safe, non-judgmental space to unpack all these questions and issues and to build a stronger relationship.