Can a Relationship Work After Emotional Cheating?

What is Emotional Cheating?

What defines an emotional affair? This largely depends on the relationship. In one survey, 76% of the people said that having a secret emotional relationship is considered cheating, even without anything physical happening between them. 

What Is Considered Emotional Cheating?

Emotional cheating, like all forms of cheating, requires boundaries to be discussed. For example, is flirting back when someone flirts with you considered cheating? Most couples would say yes, but that doesn’t mean that the boundary should be assumed. Other couples think that verbally flirting is fun, and they delight in their partner receiving attention from others. Don’t assume your boundaries are the same as your partner’s, or that the boundaries of your previous relationship will be the same for this relationship.  

Depending on your boundaries, emotional cheating may look like: 

1. A secret emotional connection: Engaging in intimate conversations, sharing personal details, or seeking emotional support from someone outside of the primary relationship. This is different from having a close friendship. For one, it is done in secret. Also, there is an element of romanticism that is absent in a platonic relationship. 
2. Excessively sharing with someone else: Confiding in another person about relationship issues or personal struggles that are not being shared with the partner, creating a sense of emotional intimacy outside the relationship.
3. Prioritizing outside relationships: Spending excessive time, energy, or attention on maintaining emotional connections with individuals outside the relationship, leading to emotional neglect of the partner.
4. Fantasizing About Another Person: Engaging in romantic or idealized fantasies about someone else, including sexual fantasies. Also includes imagining a deeper emotional connection or romantic relationship with this person.
5. Growing distant from the current partner in favor of someone else: Withholding emotional investment, support, or vulnerability from the partner while seeking emotional fulfillment or connection from someone else is something called “monkey branching” and is very common in emotional cheating. 
6. Flirting with other people: Participating in flirtatious conversations, sharing inside jokes, or expressing romantic interest through text messages, emails, or social media interactions with someone other than the partner. In an emotional affair, the cheater will be highly secretive about these messages and not want their partner to find out. 

Are all of these examples of emotional cheating? It depends on your relationship! Sitting down and talking to your partner about what constitutes an emotional affair is important. 

Relationship therapist Esther Perel describes emotional cheating as requiring three elements: a secret relationship, an emotional connection, and sexual chemistry. 

There are some things that we can’t control, like how we feel around other people. However, we can control our actions. You can have an emotional connection with someone and still not form a secret relationship. Your feelings are always valid, but that doesn't make your actions always so. 

Signs of Emotional Cheating

Signs your partner is forming a connection with someone else and not telling you about it can include:

1. They have been emotionally distant. 
2. They’re acting secretive by hiding their phone or leaving the house at strange hours.
3. They’ve become defensive or are avoiding you. 
4. They’re constantly talking about someone else and prioritizing that person’s opinions or validation over your own. 
5. They’ve begun hiding things from you by deleting messages, concealing social media activity, or being evasive about their whereabouts. 
6. They compare you to someone else, usually idealizing that person’s qualities
7. They may act guilty and try to placate you with gifts and praise. 
8. They show less investment in your relationship, like putting in less effort or talking about the future.
9. They’ve become very defensive about their feelings and actions. 

If you’ve noticed these signs in your partner, sit down and have an honest conversation with them. 

What To Do If Your Partner Emotionally Cheats

Maybe you caught them in the act. Maybe you uncovered some suspicious texts. Maybe they came clean and told you. However you found out of your partner’s emotional affair, the looming question now is: What next? 

Here are some steps you can take:

1. Get the details. The time for secrets is over (and never should have happened in the first place). If the relationship is ever to heal, then you need to know what happened, how far it went, and where your partner’s head is at now. 
2. Decide if you can forgive them. Emotional cheating is a red flag, but is it one you can work through? This is only a question you can answer. 
3. Talk about boundaries moving forward: If you decide to work through this, then you’ll need strict boundaries, especially around your partner’s communication with the person they were cheating on you with. If they were a coworker or someone your partner interacts with on the regular, what boundaries do you need to feel comfortable with that? 
4. Forgive them (if you decide to stay in the relationship): Deciding to move forward requires both parties to be committed to healing. This means not holding the emotional cheating over your partner's head; forgiving them doesn’t mean excusing what they’ve done or being okay with it, but it does mean that you do your best not to resent them for it. Obviously, we are all human and can’t always control what we feel. But a commitment to healing and moving forward is paramount in recovery.  
5. Tell them what you need moving forward: Don’t be shy about your own needs. Consider why this emotional cheating happened. Was there a gap in your relationship’s emotional intimacy? What do you, as the victim of this affair, need from your partner? Remember, now is the time for honesty. 

A therapist can help navigate the aftermath of emotional cheating. It can be difficult to have these conversations and be honest with one another, especially after a period of mistrust and dishonesty. A couples and marriage counselor can help you navigate it. It is possible to heal from infidelity. 

How to Make Up for Emotional Cheating

What do you do if you were the one who had an emotional affair? Maybe you never meant for it to get this far, or you did not realize what you were doing until it was too late. Maybe you feel indignation at being called a “cheater” when nothing physical happened. Regardless of your situation, you have to make a decision: Will you stay and fight for this relationship? 

If the answer is yes, then, like your partner, it is time to be honest. Why did you cheat? What drove you to form outside connections? What do you need to move forward in this relationship? Can you successfully break off the connection with the other person? 

Here are some steps for the perpetrator of an emotional affair to take if they want to stay in the relationship:

1. Be honest with your partner. 
2. Cut off the emotional affair. 
3. Commit to the relationship.
4. Help your relationship grow stronger.  

There is no “making up” for emotional cheating. Whether or not the boundary for cheating was defined, the truth is that your actions hurt your partner. There is nothing you can do to take away that pain, only become a better partner for them in the future. Together, you and your partner must commit to ways to grow stronger together. This can include spending more time together, attending couples therapy, and communicating better. 

Can a relationship work after emotionally cheating?

Yes, a relationship can heal from an emotional affair. However, it will take effort on both sides and a commitment to one another and the health of this relationship. 

Couples Therapy After Emotional Cheating

Couples therapy is one way to heal from an emotional affair. A couples therapist can help you both decide if staying in the relationship is the right decision for you and how to move forward from the pain caused by an affair. They will help you communicate your wants and needs to one another, get to the bottom of why this affair happened in the first place, and help you heal any wounds that it caused. 

If you are looking for a couples therapist near you, contact Lifebulb’s team. We have therapists available to see you and your partner this week. Browse our couples therapist here. We accept most major insurances. 

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