I’m pretty sure that when you hear the word ‘infidelity’ the first thing that comes to your mind is a sexual affair, am I right?
And in a way, it is understandable.
Having sex with a person who is not your partner can be seen as the ultimate form of cheating and one that is difficult to overcome.
But here’s what I’m struggling to understand.
How come we live in a world where physical touch (at times completely innocent and purely platonic) can be considered more damaging than sharing your innermost thoughts and feelings with a person who’s not your partner?
How is seeing your partner touch another person more infuriating to you than, let’s say, finding out they have formed an extremely close friendship with another woman who can potentially detach him from you?
Now, I’m not implying that physical cheating is something you should EVER condone.
All I’m trying to say is that emotional infidelity can be just as heartbreaking, if not more!
You are the one your partner should be sharing the most vulnerable part of himself with.
You are the one he should vent to and air his frustrations with when he’s at his lowest.
If he has found another woman who in a way provides him with all the emotional support a person could need, then where does that leave you?
How does this affect your relationship with him?
What’s important to understand here is that finding out there’s another woman who is giving your partner everything he needs (other than sex) that he should be getting from you can create a wedge between you.
And over time, he might realize that he no longer belongs by your side.
And you can’t even be mad because it’s not like he had sex with her or anything, right?
And that’s the hardest part about being emotionally cheated on.
These are the 5 most hurtful examples of how emotional infidelity can be more damaging than the physical one.
1. You are slowly losing the core of your relationship
Your relationship used to be based on trust, honesty and complete transparency.
You respected each other, shared absolutely everything with each other and loved each other through it all.
And now you keep seeing excuses from him not to be around you anymore.
You know he’s lying but you don’t confront him because there is nothing actually going on, right? Only there is.
Now he is sharing his innermost thoughts and fears with her.
Now he spends more and more time having deep conversations with her and connecting on every single level.
The way he used to be connected with you.
And now, your connection is withering and the one with her is thriving.
2. You constantly feel that you’re competing with her and losing the battle
You just can’t keep up anymore.
She seems to be everything your partner needs and wants.
He even mentions her all the time.
He doesn’t even see how torturous this is for you.
He doesn’t understand that by constantly mentioning her, he is making you feel less and less significant.
You are the one he should be spending Saturday night with, curled up on the couch with a bottle of wine and a movie, not her.
And yet, somehow, he’s not by your side.
And you’re supposed to be okay because they’re ‘just friends’.
You keep feeling like you’re in a competition with her and you seem to be losing battle after battle.
He may not realize it now but by spending so much quality time with her, he is cheating on you in a way a woman should never be cheated on.
3. You are slowly realizing that you don’t know him the way she does
The things you (and only you) used to know about him are no longer just yours.
Now, she knows about them too.
They’re so close that suddenly she knows his embarrassing vacation story from last year.
Now she knows that he didn’t learn how to swim until high school, which used to be a secret only you knew.
Every little thing that made your relationship cute and special is now hers too.
How does he not see that this is painful for you?
How does he not understand that just because there is no physical intimacy it doesn’t mean it’s not wrong?
He should know this and deep down, he probably does.
4. His head is always in the clouds and you know it’s not because of you
He always comes home with a glistening smile on his face.
Whenever he’s texting, you can just see how chipper he is.
He may try to downplay it but it’s too obvious.
Sometimes you’ll be calling his name and it’s like he’s not even there.
Physically he is but in his mind, he’s probably having the time of his life with her.
And you don’t even want to bring him back to real life because you know he’d rather be with her.
And that’s the most hurtful part.
You are no longer the reason behind his smile.
You are no longer the one he spends hours on the phone with talking about nothing and everything.
It’s her. She’s the one making him happy and she’s the one he goes to.
Not you.
5. It makes you feel you’re not enough
After having gone through all of the above, it just makes you feel useless.
It makes you feel like you don’t have what it takes to keep a guy.
If you did, he wouldn’t go to another woman, would he?
You’re left feeling deserted and insufficient.
The one you shared the deepest emotional connection with has detached himself from you one day at a time.
You watched it happen and there was nothing you could do.
And what are you supposed to think now? How are you supposed to feel?
His emotional affair made you feel not good enough and he cannot begin to fathom how much he hurt you and how long this is going to take to recover from.
