How to handle Emotional Cheating In A Relationship

  

While physical infidelity is pretty easy to define, emotional cheating can be a tricky situation. What constitutes emotional infidelity can vary from person to person and the line between platonic friend and romantic connection can be a slippery slope if you're not careful. 

What is certain is that emotional cheating can be just as damaging to a relationship as a physical affair, depending on how your partner handles the aftermath. That's why it's important to understand what exactly emotional infidelity is and what some of the signs might be. That way, when it comes to handling this situation, if it ever comes up in your relationship, you can feel confident in how you conduct yourself and move forward. 

Emotional cheating can be tough to define because each person has their own boundaries of what they would consider acceptable in their relationship. In short, however, emotional infidelity happens when you establish an intimate connection with someone who's not your partner. 

Unlike merely being attracted to someone else or having a harmless crush, with emotional cheating you start turning to someone else for emotional support instead of your partner. While it's totally fine to lean on friends in times of need, in an emotional infidelity situation there's usually some romantic connection or sexual tension that pushes a relationship into affair territory.

These are some clear signals that indicate your partner has established an intimate emotional connection with someone else. 

• something just doesn't feel right. You know in your gut that something just feels off in your relationship even if you can't quiet explain it. 
• your partner keeps bringing up another person: When someone is emotionally intimate with another person, they often can't help themselves and mention this person all the time through little anecdotes and stories that seem way more interesting to them than they do to you.
• your partner always seems to be on their phone: if your partner is constantly texting or DMing without being open about who they are in contact with, this may mean that they don't want you know what's really going on. 
• your partner doesn't share much with you anymore: Since your partner is being emotionally intimate with someone else, they don't need to share their highs and lows with you anymore - so they don't. 
• your partner seems less interested in you physically: if the emotional affair is turning into a crush or a romantic situation, your partner will likely pull away from sexual intimacy and be less affectionate with you. 

Emotional cheating doesn't need to be a relationship death sentence. However, depending on the nature of the affair, it could be necessary to move on. 

- iannmarie