The 7 Stages of Emotional Affairs & How to Recover

What Is An Emotional Affair?

An emotional affair is different from other affairs as it occurs when someone turns to someone outside of their romantic relationship for emotional support. Everybody needs support in their lives, but emotional affairs are an example of how looking outside the bounds of consensually monogamous relationships to meet certain needs can take an ugly turn.

Some examples of emotional infidelity include:

• The work spouse: A special, initially platonic relationship that comes along with privileges, such as flattery and validation. Increased attention and dependence on work spouses are commonplace and may even be well known throughout the office and in their respective marriages.
• The gaming buddy: Typically part of a larger group at first, the gaming buddies would become increasingly demanding of each other’s time and emotional attention. They become the priority over time and may begin to outweigh their spouse in terms of attention and time.
• The best friend: The best friend may have been around longer than the primary relationship, but it has been mostly platonic. However, this best friend is a consistent challenge to the prioritizing of the spouse, especially if their partner feels like the best friend knows more about their significant other.
• The reconnection: The reconnection may look like bumping into a childhood friend or reconnecting through a Facebook friend request with an old classmate. This starts as innocent nostalgia, but can quickly progress to flirting that deepens into emotional intimacy that overshadows the primary relationship.¹

Signs of Emotional Affairs

We tend to tie the idea of having an affair to physically cheating. When physical cheating is absent, it can be difficult to recognize that you are having an emotional affair. In their book, The Emotional Affair: How to Recognize Emotional Infidelity and What to Do About It, Ronald and Patricia Potter-Effron provide an inventory of 20 items to help recognize if your partner is having an affair.² Some of these can be adapted into a list of eight signs that can help you understand if you are the one having an emotional affair.

Signs you are having an emotional affair include:

• Thinking about them frequently: You often catch yourself daydreaming or thinking about someone other than your partner.
• Secrecy and defensiveness: You feel secretive about your connection with this person or get defensive when asked about it.
• Frequent contact: You regularly text, call, or share personal experiences with them instead of with your partner.
• “Not dates”: You find yourself having frequent lunches, dinners, or outings with them—situations that may not technically be “dates” but feel significant.
• Fantasizing about the future: You imagine a life with this person or consider leaving your partner to make that a reality.
• Putting them on a pedestal: You idealize this person, believing they have no faults and that they are a perfect match for you.
• Feeling guilty: You feel guilty about the relationship, even if you can’t pinpoint exactly why.
• Physical attraction: While attraction alone doesn’t mean you’re having an affair, strong physical attraction—paired with these other signs—can indicate deeper emotional involvement.

7 Possible Stages of Emotional Affairs

Emotional affairs may look different depending on the relationship, and there are some common signs of emotional affairs and their progression. For instance, one person’s work-wife may not seem the same as an online gaming buddy, but the different contexts do not change that these relationships are meeting emotional needs that would otherwise be fulfilled by their significant other. Both may start out innocently but develop into a dynamic that crosses the line into infidelity.

The seven possible stages of emotional affairs are:

1. Just Friends

The ‘Just Friends’ stage of emotional infidelity looks just like any other friendship. You may click with a coworker or gaming buddy, reconnect with an old classmate through a Facebook friend request,¹ or find yourself being more attentive to one of your long-standing friendships. This can tap into your self-worth and you may find yourself thinking, “It really is nice how they just get me and pay attention to me.”³ Most friendships do not lead to affairs, but some people do go from being just friends to engaging in an affair.

2. Crossing the Boundaries

At this stage, you begin engaging in behaviors that cross the boundaries of your primary relationship.³ This is often when the connection starts to resemble infidelity. You may experience emotional attraction and your friend may begin sharing emotional experiences—conversations and feelings—that you would typically reserve for your partner or spouse. This can create a sense of being deeply understood by your friend and may start fulfilling emotional needs that feel neglected in your relationship.³

3. Commiserating

A common step from moving from “just friends” to affair partners is commiserating about marital or partnership problems with a friend.⁴ Complaining or venting to each other about your partners becomes commonplace as the emotional affair continues to become a relationship that fulfills one’s unmet needs. At this stage of emotional infidelity, it isn’t enough that this relationship feels nice; it becomes about what you are not getting at home.

4. Fixation & Flirting

Flirting and attraction may become more of a driving factor as you fixate more on your friend and less on your spouse or partner. You may begin to notice parts of your friend’s personality that you feel your partner is missing or you may find yourself more physically attracted to your friend. You may also notice you are thinking about them more.² You could spend more time thinking about your friend, dressing up more, or making sure your profile picture looks a certain way as you wonder how your friend perceives you.

5. Valuing The Affair Partner More Than Your Primary Partner

In this stage of emotional infidelity, you have likely put your emotional affair partner on a pedestal.² The emotional affair and the opinion of the emotional affair partner becomes more important to you than your primary relationship and your primary partner’s opinion. You may find that your affair plays into most of the decisions you make in everyday life. Even something as simple as mealtime with a spouse can be interrupted to spend time with the affair partner instead.

6. Disillusionment With Home Life

Life at home in the primary relationship becomes particularly depressing. Nothing is as good or as important as it is with the emotional affair partner, and it seems like everyone can tell. In this stage, the emotional affair is consuming most of your energy, and your ability to care about other relationships feels limited. You may even develop resentment in marriage or relationship burnout.

7. Separation

The desire to leave has overtaken your desire to stay with your primary partner and you may find yourself fantasizing about a future with your affair partner.² You may also find yourself emphasizing all of the reasons you can think of to justify leaving your primary relationship. Without help, there isn’t much hope for the relationship at this point, because you feel like you could be happier elsewhere. Unfortunately for you, without outside intervention, these patterns are likely to repeat in your new relationship.⁵

How to Recover From Emotional Infidelity

There are many ways to recover from an emotional affair, individually and as a couple. Direct and honest communication, setting healthy boundaries in the relationship, and reaffirming your commitment to one another can help if you want to save your relationship or marriage after an affair.

Some ways to recover from an emotional affair on your own include:

Remember Your Commitments

Your relationship did not begin like this. At some point, your partner was a great fit for you, enough so that you committed to being their partner. Why was that? Separately and together, reflect on those times and factors that brought you together, and remember the commitments that brought you closer. Are you and your partner still willing to uphold and prioritize those commitments? Do these commitments need to change?

Identify Needs

What did you or your partner gain from this emotional affair? It may be hard to think about the positives, but this is important. Your affair met emotional needs that weren’t fulfilled in your relationship–what are those? Was the attention flattering? Conversely, your partner may have new needs based on the breach of trust from the affair. The first step to building a blueprint for your relationship is to meet those needs and name them. Try asking your partner questions to increase intimacy and build a better understanding of each other’s needs.

Find Resolution for the Needs

Once both partners have identified their needs, it is important to make a plan to resolve those needs. How can your spouse meet these needs? This is not about comparing your spouse to the affair, but about repairing the relationship’s trust and addressing the root cause of the emotional affair.

Emphasize Communication

The way we talk about our needs and boundaries can be just as important. Try to avoid using “you” statements, such as “You ignore me,” and opt for “I” sentences, such as “I feel ignored by you, which makes me feel alone.” Start by reminding yourself and your spouse about the goal of meeting needs. Assume that they want to meet them. In turn, they may identify needs of their own you could be meeting more effectively as well. Healthy communication enhances your romantic relationship, so it is essential to establish good communication habits for the sake of your relationship.

Be Open

This process will be difficult, and you or your partner may notice how the option to close down keeps coming back into your mind. Push past it, even if you’re worried it will make things harder. Remember that closing off and separating yourself from your partner led to this situation, so being open is a good way to behave differently and work through any issues openly.