The friendship between guys and girls are appropriate as long as it doesn't risk any ongoing relationship. This type of friendship can start from just a random online friend, work mates, or long term friendship. But, who can tell where to draw the line between these two people? Do they even know what they are doing? Do they know what they share together might lead to something else? Is it pure platonic friendship or it starts to branch to emotional affairs?
Emotional affair is the non physical affairs between two people. It is the emotional tendency that grow between two people that started off from being friends. It also describes as the relationship between people other than their own partner. It is the affair at heart where your heart is This damages the relationship of one's with their partner. It is emotional cheating, and this easily leads to physical affairs.
Emotional affair is usually hidden from one to their partner, which means they try to hide this kind of feeling by masking them as friendship. Those who are involved in emotional affairs tend to hide the special friend from the partner which involves telling limited or false information to the extend of hiding the communication and conversation from the partner.
Emotional relationship happens to those who aren't really satisfied with their primary relationship. It mostly starts from workplace. Nowadays people spend so much time at work, online and investing their non-tired time less to the relationship. The main relationship is becoming the "leftovers". After from work, people come home tired and irritated and prefer to rest at home. Work is becoming their hang out occasions where they can have have lunch and talk about their problems. This people tend to dress nicely for work and show their best behaviour. They share common things and speak the same language like how tired they are, work pressure etc, therefore this type of emotional affair sparks. This leads to affairs between two coworkers aside of their personal life and relationship problems.
Here are some signs that you are an emotional cheater:
- You keeps aspects of your intimate life for your "friend" and do not share it with your partner.
- Your friendship shifts from platonic to romantic therefore you feel less connected to your real partner.
- You think about your "friend" most of the time and you fantasize about them.
- You feel recognised and appreciated and loved by your "friend" therefore you do not feel the need to bond with your real partner. You feel a distance between you and your partner.
- You withhold and "cut off" valuable aspects of who you are, particularly your intimate time with your partner. You are not sexually interested and stop having sex with your partner.
- You discuss about the things that you do not like about your partner or your relationship with your "friend".
- You tell more things to your "friend" about what goes on regarding your work and your life than you do with your partner.
- You feel that your "friend" has taken your heart.
- You are dishonest about the extend of friendship and feeling for your "friend" to your partner.
- You would be embarassed if your partner read your emails, notes or eavesdropped your conversation with your "friend".
- When you are with your "friend" your body language communicates stronger than the friendship.
When a relationship where one partner has emotional affair with others, the relationship tends to have these characteristics:
- Deception and secrecy. This includes not telling your partner about how much time you spend with your affair and inappropriate things that happen between the two people. They manipulate the situations. They may tell the partner that they are going to work or doing things in a group while in fact they go out with someone else. They also may not include the real partner in the conversation or trying to hide the real relationship to the affair or other people. The deception clearly shows that they are doing something wrong that undermines the existing relationship. In other words, if the meeting with your friend has no harm to your relationship, both parties should be able to tell their partners the truth about who they meet, what they do outside.
- Fight more. When someone involved emotionally with a third party, they almost forget their primary partner. This person blame everything on the real partner therefore it leads to fighting and distant in the relationship.
- Denial. The cheating partner tend to deny the affair and becoming offensive. They try to deny the sparks that grow in the friendship and becoming defensive.
