Ronald Potter-Efron - The Emotional Affair: How to Recognize Emotional Infidelity and What to Do About It

We humans are a species of bonders. From birth onward, each of us makes a concerted effort to find people with whom we can connect. Once we locate those individuals, we work hard to keep close to them, often for the rest of our lives. We form deep, powerful attachments with parents, partners, children, friends, teachers, spiritual leaders, and so on. These bonds make our lives meaningful. Theres one catch though: a personal responsibility accompanies every significant attachment we make. The name for that obligation is commitment. A commitment is a promise to those we have bonded with that we will honor our mutual relationship. We wont just walk away from a serious relationship as if it means nothing.

This book revolves around the concept of honoring our commitments. Actually, were only focusing on one area of commitment, namely, the relationship between two adult partners that used to go by the name of marriage. Nowadays its wiser to speak of committed relationships though, so thats the term well use herein. Were referring to long-term, usually sexual, usually heterosexual, multifaceted attachments. Partners in committed relationships also commonly want to be each others best friend, at least in typically romanticized American courtship scenarios.

Unfortunately, sometimes one partner strays from the path of mutual commitment. The result may be a sexual affair. Who hasnt seen many a good marriage founder on the shores of that rocky shoal? Hundreds, if not thousands, of books have been written about the causes of sexual affairs, the damage they do, and attempts to repair relationships damaged by these occurrences.

Affairs are the subject of this volume but not sexual affairs. Our interest is in something far subtler than sex. Our concern is with emotional affairs. An emotional affair is defined as an intense, primarily emotional, nonsexual relationship that diminishes at least one persons emotional connection with his or her committed partner. Intentionally or unintentionally, participants in these affairs act like sneak thieves. The difference is that, instead of money or jewelry, these thieves purloin feelings of trust, openness, and emotional connection. Worse yet, they proceed to hand over these family treasures to someone new. They share their important thoughts and feelings with special third parties instead of with their committed partners. And then they return home and act as if nothing is wrong! They pretend, sometimes to themselves as well as to their partners, that nothing is missing in their relationships. Furthermore, they hope their partners wont notice that anything is missing. From the partners perspective, that would be like coming home after a thief has made off with your computer, television, bed, and kitchen table and saying that everything looks fine.

Each chapter in this book is designed to answer a major question about emotional affairs. Of course, the first question is, exactly what is an emotional affair? Weve already defined that term but will go into more detail about these affairs, as well as contrast them with sexual affairs, total affairs, and friendships, in . Well also include a questionnaire to help you decide if your partner might be having an emotional affair.

Its very stressful to realize that your life partner has become emotionally overinvolved with another. Stress is hard on both mind and body. In well examine how your partners emotional affair may be negatively affecting you. For example, your ability to think straight might be compromised because of worry and obsession. Your emotions also might be affected, causing you to struggle with anxiety or depression. Another possibility is that youve started getting sick more often as your immune system has become overtaxed by this stressful situation. A fourth area of concern is your behavioral choices. Its easy to say and do things you later regret under these circumstances. Finally, even your spirit can be deeply affected by an emotional affair. If so, youll find yourself becoming more pessimistic and feeling pretty hopeless about things.

addresses this question: why would my partner have an emotional affair? Why is a difficult but important question for which there may be no single answer. We approach this issue from a commonsense perspective, namely, that apparently your partner wants something that he or she feels is absent or lacking in your relationship. Well describe several of these desires, a few examples of which are the need for more emotional connection, understanding, praise, and emotional intensity. The idea here is to identify whats missing in your relationship, at least in your partners eyes. Later in the book well describe how to use that information to benefit your partnership.

Chapter 4 addresses a particularly painful question: whose fault is it that this emotional affair is occurring? Well look at (but reject) the most obvious responses: its all your partners fault, its all your fault, and its all the third partys fault. Instead, well ask you to take whats called a systems approach. In that view, whatever happens in a system, such as your committed relationship, is about us as well as me and you. Well examine seven negative emotional patterns that may have developed in your relationship, any of which couldve increased the emotional distance between you. Three such patterns are mutual anger and hostility, lack of emotional commitment, and focusing on the family to the point of neglecting the couple bond. Again, this information will help you improve your relationship in the long run, after the emotional affair has ended.