Emotional Affair? What To Do If You Suspect Your Spouse or Partner is Having One

If you suspect your spouse of having an emotional affair, it can hurt as bad as cheating. Although your spouse may not be having sex with someone, he or she is sharing intimate moments with someone else that could be spent with you. In this article, you will learn how to sort out your feelings and what to say to your spouse.

Before we talk about what to do if you've found evidence of an emotional affair, let's talk about the complex feelings that we just listed.

• If you respect boundaries, then snooping around in your spouse's cell phone and accounts will likely give rise to guilt. Any good marriage is built on trust and snooping is a violation of that trust, however justified.
• Sadness - although anger is usually the first reaction to finding evidence, some people will feel the deeper emotion and be sad that their partner is sharing emotionally intimate moments with someone else.
• Defensiveness and Anger - when you discover that your partner has betrayed you, it is natural to want to protect yourself. Anger is one way that we stand up to injustice.

What to Do About an Emotional Affair

Before you confront your spouse, it's important to understand that the tact that you want to take is that the emotional affair takes away from the sense of intimacy in your marriage. Your partner is the person that you are supposed to share your thoughts and dreams with and by sharing them with someone outside the marriage, he or she is taking away from some of the most beautiful moments that you can enjoy together.

After all, marriage is about emotional connection as well as physical intimacy. And of course, an emotional affair can eventually lead to sex.

This is a sticky area though and most couples are unsure of what constitutes emotional cheating. The question is where do you draw the line? The two paragraphs above offer some important guidelines.

Understand that when you first bring up the subject, your spouse is likely to be defensive and claim that the other person is just a friend. This is when you need to calmly explain that you feel that the relationship is diluting your emotional connection and that you want to work with your spouse to help him or her meet those needs inside your marriage.

If you would like to share your thoughts on this article or details about the emotional cheating that you've been dealing with, please share your thoughts below.

Emotional Cheating and Related Marital Resources

• Your Cheating Spouse

• How to Forgive a Cheating Spouse

• Affair Help

• Regaining Trust in a Relationship

~ Laura Ramirez

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