Emotional Infidelity - An Overview

Dr. Purushothaman
January 13, 2014

 

Emotional infidelity can be extremely painful for the person who is being cheated. This is because of the fact that every relationship in this world abides by a rule which is not mentioned anywhere! The rule says: "you need to share all your emotional dilemmas, your concerns and everything with the person you are in love with!" However, this rule is often violated and people find someone else, whose sanctuary becomes the ultimate shelter for the person despite the fact that he or she is already in love! What can be done in that case? Is it emotional cheating? Let us find out the same!
When a person enters into an emotional relationship with someone else despite having a partner, it is referred to as emotional adultery. The person then starts sharing his or her intimate feelings not with the already existing partner but with the new person with who an emotional bonding is formed. This definitely affects the quality of existing relationship because the person remains preoccupied with the newly found sanctuary as a result of which, the already existing partner faces emotional unavailability of the unfaithful partner!
As a rule of thumb, it all starts with friendship and then grows to a degree where, this person - the newly found sanctuary - can no longer be called as a friend and the societal rules rule out the possibility of calling the person as someone special. The emotional attachment grows because of prolonged hours of talking either face to face or over the phone leading to the sharing of intimate thoughts and emotions. This new emotional bonding can give a sense of happiness to the person who swayed off to a whole new emotional paradigm but what about the existing partner?
This move by the unfaithful partner will always be considered as emotional infidelity because of the fact that this move puts the existing partner in emotional jeopardy. The partner feels emotional absence of the other person and feels unattended. Apart from this, the partner also goes through the fear of losing the person completely with whom he or she has been sharing intimate emotions and almost everything. This thought alone is enough to give mental trauma which can inflict a pain which will keep haunting the person facing it for a very long period of time. Putting it other words, the guilty person actually kicks off the trust which the faithful partner had put on him or her. Consequently, the faithful partner goes through mental pain and trauma and keeps wondering why this happened and what went wrong to the extent that the other person had to take such a step! Sadly enough, there is just no one to give the answers.
Studies reveal that those who suffer from this mental trauma run in a high risk of affecting their own quality of life as well as health. Thus, emotional infidelity is considered as a crime which affects a person's life in more than one way leading to disasters!

Read Related Recent Articles