Emotional Affair: 9 Ways it Rocks You to Your Socks
78The emotional affair corresponds to affair #4 of my 7 types of affairs: "I Fell out of Love...and just love being in love."
The emotional affair hits you between the eyes. It rocks you to your socks.
And there are legitimate reasons for this impact. The emotional affair strikes at the core of who you are and what you thought you had. As well, this kind of affair is subtly condoned and almost encouraged in some of our cultural circles.
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Emotional affair - 9 Reasons Why it Will Rock You to Your Socks:
1. It seems as if you have lost control. There is no reasoning with your wayward spouse/partner. S/he seems lost, absorbed and totally locked into his/her new relationship and world. At times it may seem as if you don't exist. Your feelings, thoughts and concerns are minimized, if not ignored.
You can plead, reason, beg, cajole, accommodate, please, stand on your head, make a loud noise, make a soft noise. Doesn't matter. You just can't "get through." Period.
2. You are fighting our culture as well. Romance novels, romantic comedy movies, grocery check out tabloids, all, in essence, subtly convey that there is no better feeling than that of "being in love."
Our Hollywood heroes jump from relationship to relationship, madly falling (in love) time and time again. Media makes millions of dollars tracking these events and sharing the juicy tidbits with us, their readers and admiring fans.
Is there anything better than "falling in love?"
And, now your spouse/partner has fallen. S/he thinks s/he's lucky. S/he's found it. S/he no longer has to "settle." What more could a person ask for?
The major problem: S/he's not finding it with you. However, s/he's convinced that finding it with someone else is better than not having it all. And, who is to argue?
3. You feel terribly inadequate. After all s/he's found the "soul mate" and perfect love relationship - which we all believe we want and believe is the ultimate goal in a relationship.
So, what's wrong with you? What do you lack?
Probably not romantic enough, huh? Don't communicate very well? Have a hard time "letting go?" Not a very tender and romantic lover? Don't know how to really please a wo/man?
S/he found someone else who outshines you, you believe.
And guess what? You almost believe this. Some days you truly believe this, even though the dynamics of an emotional affair portray anything but a healthy love relationship.
How can you measure up that THAT?, you ask.
4. You don't know this person anymore. Did someone do a lobotomy? Were brain wave patterns changed? Did someone else come to inhabit his/her body?
It's as if a switch was flipped and you encounter a 180 degree turn. S/he once was considerate, assumed responsibility and was pleasant to be around.
My how things have changed. S/he's lost interest in you, the family, her responsibilities. S/he may seem sullen where once there was a twinkle. Or, if there is a twinkle now, you guess it's because s/he is thinking about the other person.
And as if to rub salt in your wound, she appears to be gazing or thinking about him in your presence.. and s/he doesn't really care - about your feelings, that is.
5. Change, confusion and upset with roles abound.
You are called upon to pitch in and manage the things of life and family which were once shared. S/he lets things slide or is oblivious to what is not being done or minimizes the tasks.
S/he seems to care less about the children. S/he is often gone, either physically or emotionally.
You have to pick up the slack.
You do so, hoping that s/he will come to his/her senses and this shall pass.
6. Get this... s/he might go to the extent of flaunting his/her relationship with the OP. S/he sticks it in your face.
S/he is not malicious about this. There is no intent to hurt you although it is like sticking a knife in you and twisting it 90 degrees. But, then again, s/he is not aware of, or at least, does not want to recognize, your pain, confusion, frustration, etc.
On top of this, s/he carries a sense of entitlement. S/he truly believes that s/he as found "it" - everlasting love and happiness - and others should be truly be happy for him/her.
I've known spouses who will actually say to their jilted spouse/partner, "Aren't you happy for me?"
This moves beyond reason and propriety, but again, s/he has temporarily lost sight of reality - living in his/her world where the emptiness no longer seemingly gnaws internally.
7. Closely connected is the perspective that s/he is not really doing anything wrong. All rightness and justice flows around the core of him/her finding a way to quell the internal lostness.
Family and friends may argue with her about her morality or the appropriateness of his/her actions, but s/he just doesn't grasp and get it.
In his/her mind, s/he is on the right path.
S/he probably believes and you may hear from his/her lips: "I'm finally living my life with integrity. I'm doing what is right for me, and this is paramount and my guiding star."
There is no arguing with her/his position. S/he has his/her mind made up.
8. A person trying to manage an emotional affair often develops a strong loyalty to the other person.
As a matter of fact, when s/he is with you, you may be aware that when s/he moves close to you, s/he believes s/he is cheating on the other person.
The other person often has a strong jealous streak and the two of them develop a strong collusive agreement whereby they express exclusivity to each other.
You are left in the cold. S/he shuts the door on the rituals and habits that held the two of you together and gave pleasure.
9. It seems as if this emotional affair nightmare will never end.
The days seem long. His/her absence emotionally and often physically seems interminable. The degree to which s/he appears locked into the other relationship seems permanent.
You hang in there, waiting for some sign, waiting for and anticipating the slightest shift and movement. But, they are difficult to see.
You suffer with your pain and it's lack of acknowledgement, in silence, which makes for long nights.
Facing an emotional affair is daunting. It demands character and strength you thought perhaps you did not have.
It will try your soul.
It will rock you to your socks.
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Comments
as usual, a wonderful article!bob, i wish i married a man like you!
This is an amazing article Robert. It's unbelievable how on target you are when it comes to the feelings and thoughts one experiences when confronted with the nightmare of infidelity (especially this type of affair).
This hits the mark. Especially the parts about being entitled and "right" in the affair.
I love your realism. So true. The grass is always greener...
Thank you for your comments. Infidelity certainly is one of the most truly painful (and wacky) experiences most encounter.
Wow--finally someone gets what is happening. One day the light went on--my husband is acting like he's fallen in love, but she's "just a friend" or not even that, just someone he works with. There's "nothing" to talk about or sort out but my issues. No one understands--i"m jealous, controlling, don't want him to have a life.
It is so painful to watch--the staring into space, laughing, not needing to even say her name("boy is she going to freak when that happens haha"), irritability and forgetting, and protecting her and their "friendship" over the family.
Thank you so much. This is the first time I have ever seen my point of view stated.
Oh yeah...I know this drill all too well. In my case it was an ex-girlfriend of the husband, one from 18 or so years ago. I got cluedin when an email intended for her got sent to me by accident (by then most of it was over). Knowing a little bit about hard diskforesnsics I was able to recover a good portion of the earlier dialog between them, and it wasn't pretty. When someone adamantly proclaims "I aman open book", and yet feels compelled to purge all correspondence with someone from their email account, well, you know they are lying.
I was stupid not to see that although I had heard nothing but the negatives about them and their relationship, enduring feelings remained. I foundout that he had been thinking about her fondly throughout the time we have been together (which is nearly 3 times as long as they were a couple). She'smarried with a kid, I thought, later finding out that some of her emails were written when she had her sick kid in her lap. They deluded themselves intothe "we are just friends" routine making everything a-ok, even though it was all secret and they told each other constantly that they loved each other.The husband propositioned her (he said not seriously, but you know..) when she said "talk dirty to me". How could he even think of her sexually, I thought,when all I had heard was that she was a rotten, cold lover with whom he fought constantly. It just did not add up (at least at the time..)
I got to go to her kid's birthday party, one which had their romantic reunion as a subtext, with a vibe between them so thick you could spread it on toast. When someone asked "how do you all know each other" I said naively, "husband and ex used to be together". The reaction was so strange and off, a collective gasp between them...uh, it's the truth...well turns out, maybe not the total truth as they were secretly emotionally/romantically together at the party. Sadly, shelives only blocks from us so I now get to look forward to potentially running into her in the neighborhood. I really wish that we could move.
I was stupid not to put two and two together and link her thinly veiled hostility towards me and their bizarre little magical enchantment when together.But you see, I am tired most of the time, having a disabled kid with sleep problems, working a stressful job as the family breadwinner, getting up at 5am and getting to sleepat 10pm, never having more than an hour to myself alone. I didn't have the energy nor willingness to face the juvenile antics of a 41 year old and 49 year oldwho could not let go of 1987. Not until it got thrown into my face. I stupidly wanted to trust and think that someone had my back. I will never do that again.
Oh yeah, that feeling of knowing that you have been talked about--not in any positives, or conspicuously left out of the dialog, completely omitted. Finding out that the husband was itching to get me out of the house and get back online and keep up the sexy chat while I was working overtime on the weekends to finish a difficult work project. Finding the same sort of tender words he's said to me being said to her (not very creative there, hubby).Finding out that indeed, despite his claiming the contrary, he called her the "long lost love of my life". The phrase "love of my life" means very little to me now, it's cheap, unbelievable filler.
It turns out, they had done this before, email emotional affair--last time with not such a lovey-dovey outcome. And heaven only knows what they said aboutme then, how far it actually went (as I found in the recent dialog she had threatened to blackmail him by showing me his emails).But I also know that if they got back together or had stayed together, they likely would have screwed each other over tenfold in the same sort ofway. They cheated on each other when they were together, and chances are good they would have kept it up.They both seem to have a taste for this sort of thing (and I am wondering if she was carrying on the same sort of thing with other,slightly less constrained exes while she was emailing my husband).
So I have a plea specifically for anyone contemplating an emotional affair with an ex when one or both of you have a current partner, and for thosewho hold feelings of unrequited love for someone for an extended period of time:
Grow the %$#@ up. Give it up. Why? Because you do psychic damage when you hold on to someone without trying to work it our (or failing to work it out), notonly to yourself, but more importantly, to the people you get involved with and those that your love objects get involved with along the way. Life is not a romantic play with you as the heroic/tragic centerpiece. The people who come to trust you and love you are not therapeutic props that fill space and time, they are people with feelings just as strong and important as yours, not shills that can be cast aside when you get back together with your love object and your drama climaxes. If you feel really strongly that someone is "the one" or "the one that got/is getting away", then before your relationshipends, try your damndest to haul your asses into couples counseling, or find some way to work it out. If you can't do that, then learn to be a grownupand let people go. Save the rest of us the pain of involvement and attachment and giving our love to someone who is only halfway there, if at all.
If you can't have a relationship with your ex that isn't secretive and/or hidden from your current partner, then you shouldn't have it, period.
Once a ho always a ho.
Wow-in response to guest, amen sister....As an outside friend I witnessed such similarities to your situation. If there's problems in a marriage, work them out with counseling. don't try to right a wrong by engaging in something inappropriate. It only hurts everyone involved. Including friends
Party Girl says:
17 months ago
Great hub (again!) - Keep up the good work Robert!