What is Emotional Infidelity?

An emotional affair is an affair that excludes sexual intimacy - but includes emotional intimacy. Emotional infidelity starts when one of the spouses shares intimate details of his or her life with a person other than a spouse or partner. Very often, a spouse goes through a rough part of a marriage and feel like he or she cannot communicate with a spouse, so he or she chooses to receive intimacy from another person.

Is having a friend of the opposite sex a sign of emotional unfaithfulness? Not always. But most people don't plan to be emotionally unfaithful and are not even aware they are doing something wrong. Traditionally, infidelity involves people meeting face to face and engaging in physical intimacy. That's why people think that just because there is no actual physical contact, their behavior can't be considered cheating. In the recent years, internet relationships are more and more popular. Emotional infidelity now begins in chat rooms and discussion groups. There is greater intimacy there because people are anonymous at the beginning - and feel free to share their deepest and most intimate secrets. Infidelity begins with the exchange of personal information. When that information becomes more and more personal, it can lead to a face to face meetings and, possibly, physical intimacy, including one night stands or "real" relationships.

Some people may think that the emotional infidelity is harmless because it is like a casual relationship, but the nature of the communication is very intimate, individual involved in this type of cheating may, for example, lie their partners about the amount of time they spend with their 'friend', there is a betrayal of values about the sanctity of a marriage or relationship based on love and so on. All this places emotional cheating on the same level as traditional infidelity.

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