Emotional Affairs: Still Cheating?

Cheating is the biggest crime when it comes to interpersonal relationship. Loving someone is all about opening towards a special one and revealing the inner lining of your soul, packed with weaknesses and uncertainties. When that grant of trust fails to echo back or gets a negative feedback, emotional drama takes place, usually involving some form of cheating.

Yes, you heard right. There are many forms of cheating out there and contrary to the most widespread idea; they do not have to include the psychical side, in order to be labeled so. Sex is not always the great denominator when it comes to a couple and a bond reaching far more planes of existence can hurt even more if it’s breaks the rules established by society.

Emotional affairs are currently seen as a guilty pleasure for married couples. Everything is fine as long as a certain register of psychical contact is not breached. But emotional affairs are still a form of cheating and they occur as a serious crack in the structure of a marriage, giving signs that imminent failure is somewhere close. But what’s the definition behind emotional affairs?

A life shared by two puts on the table a large array of problems and dealing with them is usually done in the intimacy of the marriage, without involving someone from the outside. When that someone is briefed more often about the status of the problem and is being repeatedly asked for advices, the couple is already facing a civil war which tends to disrupt the marriage as a whole. Its inability to handle internal strives can be seen as a lack of cohesion.

Many tend to minimize the impact brought by the emotional level.  Pragmatic individuals fear other more pragmatic reasons of discontent inside a marriage. Emotions are seen as an inevitable companion for the road, while financial and psychical aspects are raised on a pedestal. Turning upside-down the pyramid of true necessities often leaves a marriage empty of content and happiness. From there on, the road leading towards deception and eventual separation is a short one. Emotional pain can sometimes be harder to bare than that perceived by our senses. Emotional pain can go away repressed and hidden under the rug until it erupts in episodic events that can break any lasting bridges between partners in marriage.

The lack of communication is the main reason that leads to emotional affairs. The need to express feelings and open towards someone else can be triggered by the partner’s lack of receptivity. If less time is spent together, the need to fill that void with the presence of someone else is much stronger and harder to resist. It is educative to look at cheating not as you look at a personality flaw, but more as you look at an effect of time.

Emotional cheating is the substance feeling the empty cavities left by the erosion of time. The same way wind is able to transform stone into dust; time can scare away the matrix holding together the two individuals. Although marriage has travelled a long way across time as a social institution, the same can be said about the reasons generating its failure.

Emotional cheating usually leads to holding to an emotional lie. But doing so can drain your energy and give you the feeling you are living a worthless and barren life. Emotional cheating is not about being caught in the act with solid evidence, but more about revealing yourself one step at a time, by undergoing behavior and personality change. It is common for us to ignore what’s inside someone’s mind and emphasis the action and the word, as sculpting forces in our society.

We are still free to think and our thoughts are still personal. Technology has yet to invade this last frontier, which means we are still allowed to fake at least some parts of our lives. The question if emotional cheating is moral or not is addressed on a false premise. It is more safely to use it an alarm signal that things are working out well and that even worse things will come if proper action is not taken. Emotional cheating should never be put on trial if it leads to a better understanding of one’s intentions and needs in life.