Emotional Affair: How To Move On

Has your partner been receiving lots of text messages, their work phone active during evenings and weekends with no mention of any additional problems at work? Have you been tempted to check the phone while your significant other is otherwise occupied? And finally, what do you do if you discover that your spouse has been secretly in touch with someone you've never heard of and the messages are anything but work related? If you can answer yes to any of these questions, then there is a strong possibility that your partner is having an emotional affair.

When you actually find out that your partner has developed a close friendship with someone and their relationship has apparently progressed from friendship or a working relationship to something more, you will probably feel a wide range of emotions, some of which will very likely be:

Anger that your partner evidently does not value your relationship enough to avoid the temptation of becoming intimately involved with someone else.
Sadness that your partner has found a close bond with someone other than you
Guilt for prying into their personal account
Neglect as you realize that you and your partner appear to be sharing only general things such as what to buy for dinner
Defensive because your partner has attacked you for going through their personal things.

Very often when one spouse develops an intimate bond with someone other than their husband or wife, there is conflict as to what this is actually called. But if your partner has developed an intensely personal relationship with someone, it has probably progressed into an emotional affair.

In most cases, the person accused will argue that it's perfectly possible to have a friend of the opposite sex and of course, in some cases it is. But if one of you seeks sexual or emotional fulfillment outside of your marriage then a line has been crossed.

But is your partner truly involved in an emotional affair?

To help identify whether you really do have cause for concern, ask yourself these questions:

Has your partner hidden the intensity of the relationship from you or do they willingly tell you when a message has come in; perhaps even reading to you? Unfortunately the odds are very often against the latter.
Does your partner indicate that they feel special with this person, much more so than with you?

In nearly all cases the spouse doing the concealing knows that what they are doing is wrong, if only in the fact that they are communicating intimately with someone outside of their marriage. This is why they go to such pains to hide the evidence. When the deception is discovered they are likely to go on the attack to avoid facing the unpalatable truth by claiming that it's perfectly acceptable to have a best friend of the opposite sex or accusing you of being underhand.

And what about the agonizing possibility that your partner is actually having a physical relationship with the other person.

The sad and often unpalatable answer is that you may never know for sure, but the one thing that is certain however, is that your relationship has gone through a breakdown in understanding and intimacy and it's these areas that you must concentrate on. If your partner has admitted to having an emotional affair then this can be the first step to restoring the bond between you. If you truly want to rebuild the intimacy that you've lost then the following steps are a good beginning:

First of all, think about your emotional connection to each other. There is no excuse for a husband or wife to cheat either emotionally, sexually or both. Of course very often the first question asked is why? Unfortunately there is hardly ever a clear reason. Perhaps it happened because the person doing the cheating began to feel dissatisfied in the relationship, harboring resentment that they chose not to talk about.
Secondly, think about your relationship. Were there signs of discontent or neglect? Did you communicate with each other or was it confined to banal news?

If you look at your relationship candidly, you will see the times where you could have made your partner feel special or you could have been more communicative. If neither of you are working at it, it is very probable that your emotional connection with each other has suffered badly in some areas.

Thirdly you need to understand the different types of communication. While talking to each other is hugely important, verbal communication is only one part of a whole. Non-verbal communication can be equally important. For example, spending time with your partner, sitting and watching a movie together or leaving notes around saying "I love you". If your partner went outside of your relationship to get that special feeling, then that's something that you need to provide.

If your verbal communication has dwindled to almost nothing, perhaps your first step could be to think about things that are non-confrontational such as an idea for a holiday or an idea for the house. Gradually you can work up to discussions about your relationship and future plans and ambitions.

If you really want your relationship to survive, you will need to learn to communicate with each other intimately again, both verbally and non-verbally. This may not be easy, particularly if you're both out of the habit of being open and honest. However, it's vital that you persist, even if your partner begrudges your efforts at first.

Make no mistake, these steps are only a beginning in the long struggle to a deeper intimacy between you and undoubtedly, there are other fundamentals that you will both need to work on, but if you really do want to move beyond your partner's emotional affair, strengthen the bonds between you and rebuild the trust in your relationship then this is a very good place to start.