What's the Difference Between a Close Friendship and an Emotional Affair

We all have friendships and extra marital relationships in the sense that a friendship is technically a relationship, but there are times that a friendship can become more than just a friendship. The classic “boys or girls’ night out” is something that is needed for some relationships in order to conserve one’s individuality.

But when does an extra marital relationship become an emotional affair?
In a relationship you are not supposed to hide anything from you partner, but when a friendship is kept in secret his or her special friend might be more special than you think.

What is an Emotional Affair?
The typical affair tends to be physical; yet there are other types of affairs that could be just as bad or even worse than the traditional concept of affairs.

An emotional relationship basically means that either your husband or wife is “counting” on a “friend” to fill their deep emotional needs. This means that even though they are not physically cheating on you, they prefer to share their deep secrets with someone else.

Generally these types of affairs eventually do become physical, but can go on for an elongated period of time being mere emotional interactions.

Even though you might think “well he/she isn’t really cheating” you would be very mistaken. The fact that your husband or wife trusts someone else over you is a type cheating, and means that your relationship is in serious trouble.

How to know if your husband or wife is having an emotional affair

Guilt is something that can be spotted in the behavior of the cheating party. Generally people tend to “hide themselves” through making themselves smaller in a conversation. By “smaller” I mean that they will be less expressive through their body language. Look for things like crossed arms and legs, lack of eye contact and so forth.
Other signs of behavioral changes may include things like going out without telling you where. When there is an unknown destination regarding your spouse’s “social life” you can definitely suspect that something is up.

This plays into the next behavioral discrepancy which is not being able to get a hold of him/her when he/she is out. Communication is key to a healthy relationship, if you cannot get in touch then there must be something to hide, especially if it is frequent.

What to Do if Your Husband or Wife is Having an Emotional Affair?
The news will definitely shock you and bring up a lot of emotions of your own; anger, resentment, fear, etc. The best thing is to give yourself a couple of days to digest the information so that you do not act out of your emotions.
In this time you can analyze where the emotional lack lies. If you think the relationship is worth saving then this is a crucial step to begin to patch things up. Without understanding the root of the problem you will constantly regress back into the current situation.

To Forgive or Not to Forgive
Finally it will be up to you to decide whether you wish to continue with the relationship or not. Even though he/she may not have physically cheated on you, the result of an emotional affair is quite similar to that of a physical one.
This means that you will have a trust issue as result of the emotional affair. In some cases the cheating spouse might even fall out of love with you, and if that is the case then cutting it off is the best for both of you.

If you think that the relationship is worth saving then by all means work on creating deeper trust and better communication between you and your spouse to avoid any future mishaps.