Are you having an emotional affair?
It’s difficult to define, but here’s how you can figure it out
Jacklyn Collier, a 32-year-old actor in New York, remembers the moment she realized she was having an emotional affair.
Four years ago, she was in bed with her then-boyfriend. He was asleep, and she was Facebook-chatting with a guy she’d met through friends. At first their correspondence had felt safe, she recalled, just some witty banter. But by this point, they were talking deeply about what they wanted for their lives in terms of career and family — things she and her boyfriend of several years had rarely discussed.
“Oh s---,” she recalled thinking to herself. “I don’t want (my boyfriend), to read this. I feel guilty that I’m doing it, and it’s not appropriate.”
Yes, it is possible to cheat on your partner without laying a hand on anyone else. Although it can be harder to define than physical cheating, emotional infidelity can have the same effect on a monogamous relationship.
How do you know if that friendship with your colleague or high school crush is verging on inappropriate? For Collier, her affair “felt like a freight train that was heading somewhere that was going to have a conclusion,” she said. “It felt like there was this inevitable thing: Am I going to try to be with this person, or am I going to stop talking to this person?”
An emotional affair can start innocently enough, said Stacy Notaras Murphy, a psychotherapist in Washington, D.C. Perhaps one person decides: “I want to protect my partner from the stress that’s happening at work. I don’t want him to know that I might be losing my job or that there might be downsizing, so you start to rely on people outside the relationship,” Notaras Murphy said. “Let’s say it starts off as a fun little ‘I was thinking of you this weekend; I saw this funny thing in the newspaper’ and you text about it.”
That might lead to phone calls or drinks after work. “Over time, it can develop into a full-blown affair,” she said.
Eventually, if you’re constantly reaching for someone who’s not your partner, “your partner stops knowing what’s going on with you,” Notaras Murphy said. The ubiquity of cellphones makes it increasingly easy to reach out to others at all times, she added — prime conditions for an emotional affair to take root.
It’s a myth that a physical affair is more important than an emotional one, Notaras Murphy said, as it leaves little room for the pain that emotional infidelity causes. She has seen cases in which the emotional connection never led to physical intimacy and the offending partner doesn’t understand why his partner is upset. He or she might protest, saying: “I didn’t do anything wrong; I DIDN’T DO ANYTHING.”
“Physically, that person did not do anything. But you’re doing something,” Notaras Murphy said. “When you’re reaching for another person for comfort, that’s what you’re supposed to do with your partner. That’s what bonds us.”
An emotional affair can feel like a “leak of energy between two people,” she added. “Our ability to take care of our partner impacts his ability to take care of us. We are a feedback loop. If you are putting some of that energy elsewhere, there’s less for what you’re trying to build at home.”
This is similar to the dynamic Collier noticed in her relationship. She realized she could have spent the time she chatted with her Facebook friend with her boyfriend; instead, she was “focusing on being witty with this guy,” she said.
Her boyfriend noticed her blossoming connection after her Facebook friend sent her a birthday card and an ice cream gift card, and called her out on it. “There wasn’t a big dramatic conclusion,” Collier said. “My boyfriend was just like: ‘What are you doing? This is super weird.’”
Is it super weird? After all, vulnerability and intimacy are crucial to developing strong friendships. Notaras Murphy suggests that couples ask themselves: “Would you feel comfortable having somebody you’re in a relationship with reading the texts or listening in on the conversation? If the answer is no, you need to play around with why.”