An emotional affair usually starts out as a simple friendship, but this can quickly snowball into an unhealthy dynamic. Someone feels initially drawn to a “friend,” devotes more time to them, and eventually becomes more dependent on them.
The beginning of emotional cheating is often at a place or situation where you can connect with others on a more personal level. These connections frequently begin at work.
Defining an Emotional Affair
Emotional affairs are characterized by a strong emotional bond between two people who hide their relationship for fear of hurting their spouse or partner. While emotional affairs don't begin with a physical aspect, they can certainly become physical over time.
The period in which a couple feels “in love” during an affair normally lasts six-18 months, but sometimes spans as long as three years. All types of affairs can be very personal for everyone involved. They usually bring with them many kinds of emotions — both the good and the bad.
Affairs usually begin with an attraction to someone you know fairly well, someone you spend time with each week — your friends and co-workers.
50 percent of all first-time affairs happen in the nine months of pregnancy or the first year after delivery. “If you think about your wife and what she goes through with pregnancy, it's very easy to understand.
* Think affairs happen during the evening, you'd be wrong. Married people are typically home with each other at night, if that suddenly changed it would raise too many red flags. The majority of married people will conduct their affairs in the morning, before work.
Emotional affairs are often a result of feeling neglected, misunderstood or overlooked in a relationship. If a person believes that their partner does not value them, or does not have time for them, then they might strike up a friendship with a new person who offers more emotional investment and support.
Emotional cheating typically takes weeks or months of interaction to develop, and it involves mutual or unrequited feelings—which don't just go away after a night of irresponsible sex.
Do emotional affairs turn into love? It's not uncommon for emotional affairs at work to become a long term relationship. This is because the emotional affair is based on a lot of effort and time spent communicating with one another about feelings and ideas.
These types of affairs are increasingly common. Around 45% of men and 35% of women have admitted to having some sort of emotional affair, which is more than 20% more than people who admit to having a physical affair. One reason for the commonality is that many people don't view emotional cheating as cheating.
Micro cheating refers to acts of seemingly trivial, inappropriate behaviors that occur outside of one's devoted relationship, often done unintentionally.
However, emotional affairs can also last years. People even will leave one relationship to begin a new relationship with their affair partner. Though, relationships that develop this way tend to end.
Emotional affairs can be much more nebulous than physical affairs. They can be completely one-sided, where one party has romantic feelings for another completely unsuspecting person. Or, both parties can be engaged in an intense emotional affair that just hasn't turned physical yet.
For the betrayed spouse, stages of an affair being exposed can involve everything from denial, shock, reflection, depression to finally taking an upward turn.
“It's been said that 50 to 70% of all emotional affairs eventually lead to physical cheating and sex.” Why is this so? Why does emotional infidelity so often lead to physical infidelity—a significant boundary violation that can be extremely difficult for a couple to recover from?
Sometimes emotional affairs can also fizzle out. There is no guarantee that your emotional affair is going to be the love of your life. But unlike sexual relationships, emotional affairs are stronger and hence last much longer and have more serious consequences.
Men Need Love and Affection
In plain language: Men often feel most loved by the women in their lives when their partners hug them, kiss them, smile at them, and explicitly offer gratitude, praise, and words of affection. Men also feel loved and connected through sexuality, often to a greater degree than women do.
Research in the field of infidelity reveals that there are three distinct personality types correlated with a higher likelihood of cheating: sociopaths, narcissists, and lonely hearts.
Low sexual and relationship satisfaction, high sexual desire, and lack of love are the most robust predictors of infidelity.
Although infidelity in a relationship is often subjective, there are common signs that point to cheating behaviors in a boyfriend. These may include a change in mood, increased distraction, less importance placed on the relationship, or more time spent on devices, among others.
About 14% of couples under the age of 55 reported adultery in their marriage. Most people who cheat have been married for 20 to 30 years and are between the age of 50 and 60.
How Many Couples Stay Together After an Affair? In one study, researchers found that with instances of secret infidelity, only about 20% of couples were still married after 5 years. However, for couples who revealed infidelity, that percentage jumped to 57%.
Yes, it is possible for someone to fall in love with an affair partner, although it can be a complicated and emotionally fraught experience. These relationships have trust issues due to how they began. In order to make the relationships work, the couple needs to work diligently at trust.