An emotional affair can be described as an extramarital affair or extra partnership affair that does not include sexual behavior or intercourse. It is actually a fairly common occurrence in marriages and some experts believe that it can be more damaging than infidelity of a physical nature. In the emotional affair, one member of a couple becomes deeply emotionally invested in a person other than the spouse. The spouse having this type of affair may spend time thinking of that person, anticipating meetings with him/her, and gradually becoming more intimate (platonically) with the person. At the same time, intimacy within the marriage suffers, and the nonsexual and even sexual attention paid to a spouse lessens dramatically.
Some hallmarks of this type of affair include the “cheating” partner’s desire to spend more time with their new “friend” or perhaps an old friend of a long-standing friendship, than he/she does with a spouse. The person may or may not deny sexual attraction to this friend, but it is clearly there, if unspoken. The person having the affair might describe themselves as being in love with his/her friend and from a chemical perspective, many produce hormones like dopamine that give that “in love” feel to meetings with this friend. They could have sweaty palms, excessive interest in personal appearance before such meetings, and a sense of the electricity of each meeting, which tends to deepen the emotional affair.
Another aspect of the emotional affair is that cheating spouses usually know they are behaving wrongly, and they may try to be secretive about meeting the person with whom they have become involved. In some cases this feeling of doing wrong and betraying the intimacy of a marriage leads to excess denial on the part of the cheating spouse. The spouse may insist that he/she is doing nothing wrong but there can be minor to major guilt associated with this type of affair.
While people often have intimate friendships with other people, especially of the same sex, the “affair of the heart” is very different. It really does impact the marriage because of the sexual tension involved and also due to the fact that the person having the affair is sharing intimacy with someone else that best belongs within the marriage. The idea that marriage is a union and that your spouse is the person you would share with the most gets corrupted when a spouse starts sharing this with someone else. The amount of time a spouse thinks about this person outside of the marriage instead of his/her partner is fully out of proportion with how things should be. If a spouse is not the person you are thinking about most and in intimate way, it signifies a marriage with serious problems.
Sometimes emotional affairs begin due to distance that has evolved between spouses, though this is not always the case. Being involved emotionally elsewhere merely contributes to this state of disconnect between spouses instead of resolving the problem. Feeling deeply connected to another person especially in a sexual way is a good indication of marital trouble and the need to get help.
There are some suggestions that people should avoid friendships with those of the opposite sex to avoid getting emotionally entangled. This may not be practical advice, since spouses or partners may have an emotional affair with a same sex friend. Instead of limiting friendships based on gender, spouses should be aware of tendency to treat any friendship as more important than the one had with their spouses. When friendship feels too much like love, it is an indication of emotional disconnect from your spouse.