How can you and your partner recover from an emotional affair?
An emotional affair can be detrimental to a relationship. The guilt, shame, and heartache of an emotional affair can be overwhelming and challenging to overcome.
Here are some of the most frequently asked questions and a guide on recovering from an emotional affair as a couple.
Table of Contents
What is an emotional affair?
Emotional affairs are when one develops an emotional connection and emotional closeness to someone outside their marriage or relationship. An emotional affair is a relationship that does not involve physical intimacy. However, it can be just as destructive to a marriage as a sexual affair.
This side relationship may have all the feelings of a partnership and can be used to meet the emotional needs typically fulfilled in a marriage.
Emotional attachment
When people become emotionally attached to a person outside their relationship, they usually start sharing secrets, confiding intimate details, and leaning on their affair partner for support more than their own partner.
Unlike time spent with friends, the relationship with the emotional affair partner may become secretive and intense with emotional intimacy.
Emotional infidelity damages the trust in a marriage and can even lead to a breakup if ignored.
What’s the difference between an emotional affair partner and a good friend?
In a close friendship, sharing intimate thoughts and personal details is typical. Also, a good friendship is based on mutual admiration, respect, and understanding.
However, emotional infidelity is about intention and secrecy. In a friendship, you don’t keep secrets from your person or cross boundaries.
Emotional infidelity will likely take shape if a friendship fulfills the romantic needs of the partnership.
Are emotional affairs hard to get over?
Emotional affairs can be complicated to move on from, but it’s possible. When emotional needs are met, a bond can become almost unbreakable.
But if you’re committed to working on your current relationship and willing to break unhealthy attachments, it is possible to get through it with time and understanding.
Although the relationship with the affair person can be intense and meaningful, it lacks the longevity of marriage or long-term commitment.
Related Article: Surviving Infidelity
Can you recover from an emotional affair?
Yes, emotional affair recovery is possible. It may not happen overnight, but healing happens if you both remain committed to affair recovery.
In many cases, a sense of security and emotional safety is needed.
Also, the betrayed partner needs space to express their painful emotions, such as anger and sadness.
Affair recovery is building trust back into the relationship.
Taking small steps, such as being honest and seeking couples counseling, can help build a foundation of trust again.
Do emotional affairs ever end?
If you’re wondering how long do emotional affairs last, the answer varies.
It’s important to note that emotional affairs can end.
However, you and your person may need to have tough conversations about what went wrong in the relationship.
Commit to change.
Sometimes, a commitment to working through trust issues and resolving underlying issues can be enough for the emotional affair pattern to end.
Working with a marriage counselor can help provide a safe space for couples to discuss their issues and move forward.
Having these conversations can be difficult, but they often lead couples to greater levels of understanding and compassion for one another as they progress toward repairing their bond.
Related Article: Does Couples Counseling Work For Cheating?
How do I stop obsessing over an emotional affair?
It’s normal to obsess over an emotional or physical affair. However, moving forward in your current relationship requires breaking away from obsessing over what happened.
Understandably, infidelity takes a lot of emotional energy.
But taking the situation one day at a time, staying present in the moment, and talking with a professional counselor, can shift your perspective.
Above all else, accepting that healing takes time should be your biggest priority if you are serious about freeing yourself from this mental anguish.
How long does it take to heal from an emotional affair?
Emotional affair recovery can be a long process. It may take a few months or even years to process what transpired and come to terms with the feeling betrayed.
During this time, remember that the healing after infidelity moves at its own pace.
Affair recovery doesn’t just happen on its own.
Healing from emotional infidelity takes work from both of you.
To speed up the affair recovery process, get support. Relationship coaching can guide you through the steps to heal and ensure the deep-rooted negative cycles of betrayal are not repeated.
With a free consultation, we can help your relationship heal.
Why is it so hard to get over an emotional affair?
Emotional infidelity can feel devastating, overwhelming, and confusing. Emotional affair recovery requires a tremendous amount of self-reflection and restoration.
Relationship experts and research show there is a process for mending affairs.
Emotional affair recovery requires dealing with your current feelings, managing triggers, and addressing the underlying issues.
It’s never easy to face painful circumstances, no matter how deep they run, but going through them is essential to move on from the affair.
Can a couple recover from emotional cheating?
Recovering from an affair is possible, even if there was sex involved.
Even taking one step towards resolving the issue – whether having an honest conversation or talking to a couples therapist – can alleviate tension.
You can learn tools and strategies to recover from emotional infidelity and build healthier relationships by creating a safe environment for open communication.
Ultimately, infidelity doesn’t have to mean your relationship is over. There are steps you can take to repair your relationship and rebuild trust.
Can emotional cheating be forgiven?
Cheating emotionally is a betrayal of trust – but it doesn’t necessarily have to be a relationship-ending offense. Whether or not couples can forge ahead depends on multiple factors.
Both partners must be willing to set boundaries, find forgiveness, and seek understanding.
Couples can find common ground again with effort, dedication, and love.
How do you forgive an emotional cheater?
Forgiveness is not always an easy task, especially when it comes to infidelity.
If your wife or husband cheated, address the situation head-on when both of you are ready.
Hear them out and listen carefully to their side of the story without judgment or reactivity. From there, identify your needs and work together towards a solution.
Have support.
Have a third party such as a marriage counselor, join the conversation to help arrive at mutually agreed-upon resolutions.
Be willing to take responsibility for your part in the situation, even if it’s resolving differences in perception, communication style, or expectations.
Also, remember that forgiveness isn’t only about repairing the relationship. Forgiveness frees you from the pain and allows you to build healthier relationships moving forward.
Related Article: Disappointed When Someone You Love Hurts You
How do you forgive yourself for emotional cheating?
Forgiveness is not a one-time event. It often takes time and patience.
Forgiveness starts within.
Self-forgiveness is the same – it requires an ongoing commitment to understand what happened, realize how you’ve impacted your partner, and take responsibility for your actions.
Above all else, be gentle with yourself. This journey may be difficult but ultimately resolves in increased self-love and acceptance.
I emotionally cheated. How to fix it?
A serious betrayal, like emotional infidelity, can be challenging to repair. If you’re feeling guilty and regretful, the best thing you can do is, to be honest with yourself and your partner about what happened.
Reflect on why you cheated
Start by reflecting on why you felt tempted to cheat emotionally in the first place.
Did something in your relationship trigger this behavior?
Acknowledging your feelings can help you recognize areas for growth and improvement within your relationship.
Share your reflections
Help your partner understand what led up to this moment.
While it may be uncomfortable, don’t try to put the blame on your spouse or make accusations. Instead, focus on how you contributed to the situation.
Ask what they need
Ask your partner what they need from you so they feel safe with you again.
Practice self-care
After you hurt someone you love, it can be tempting to beat yourself up. Instead, aim to be gentle with yourself.
Prioritize self-care so you can stay composed during difficult conversations and have the capacity to hear them fully.
Rebuild trust
Restoring trust between you should take precedence over all else. Start rebuilding trust between you. This may require changing how you communicate or setting boundaries for yourself.
Reconnect
Spend quality time together doing activities that bring positive emotions, such as laughter or joy.
Change the conversation
Talk about things outside of the affair to help build emotional intimacy between you and your spouse. Such as positive memories, current interests, future goals, or active listening.
Get counseling
Reach out for additional support if either of you feels overwhelmed. Counseling can provide valuable insight into each partner’s feelings and allow space for constructive dialogue without judgment or criticism.
How to recover from emotional cheating?
Recovering from emotional affairs and sexual affairs is a similar process. Having your marriage recover can be a difficult and lengthy process, but there are steps you can take that are proven to mend relationships.
Step 1: Get relationship coaching
You and your partner need a guide through the recovery process. Marriage counseling is almost always required for your partnership to have any hope of repairing.
Find a marriage counselor you can trust with proven results and that you and your spouse both feel comfortable with.
Book a free consult
At Lasting Love Connection, we even offer a free consultation for couples to see if we’re a fit working together.
Take the first step to repair and book a complimentary couples consultation today.
Step 2: Open Communication
The next step is to establish open communication about what happened during the emotional affair and why it occurred in the first place.
We recommend having these discussions during marriage counseling sessions for you both to feel heard and understood.
This will help clarify why the person strayed from their relationship and the impact the affair had. Discuss what led to the incident to understand each other’s perspectives better.
Related Article: Questions To Ask An Unfaithful Spouse
Step 3: Acknowledge the Hurt
Emotional affair recovery isn’t possible without acknowledging the hurt it caused. This may include personal details, feelings of betrayal, insecurity, and anger.
Both partners must recognize these feelings and understand how this situation emotionally impacted them.
Utilize your marriage counselor.
With an online marriage counselor, one partner at a time can share their needs to move forward together.
In addition, when feeling emotionally safe, it’s easier to acknowledge the hurt, stages of anger, and emotions that come up for your partner.
Understanding your partner and having them understand you will show commitment to rebuilding trust in the relationship.
Step 4: Establish Boundaries
One essential step in recovering from an affair is establishing boundaries so emotional or sexual affairs don’t happen again.
This includes setting expectations between both partners, such as telling your partner where you are going, who you are with, etc.
Have complete transparency.
Also, the boundaries could include having complete transparency about who you’re talking to outside your relationship.
For example, if you’re going out with friends or a co-worker, let your partner know who you’re going with and where.
These boundaries can help create trust and security within your marriage or relationship so that you can move forward together without fear of another emotional affair occurring again.
Step 5: Create emotional safety
Creating emotional safety is essential for infidelity recovery. Emotional safety is regained through transparency and understanding. Allowing each other to be vulnerable will help rebuild trust over time.
In addition, regularly communicating emotions creates an environment of understanding.
Practice emotional intelligence.
Also, handling disagreements maturely helps your partner feel safe with you.
Constructive conversations free of anger and bitterness are key to creating emotional safety after an affair. Conflict resolution skills can help strengthen the connection between you.
Join the Save Your Marriage Course for tools for infidelity recovery and creating emotional safety.
Step 6: Forgive
Another component of recovery is forgiveness.
Forgiveness may seem impossible if you’re struggling with feelings of betrayal, but forgiveness is essential for healing and growth in the relationship.
Acceptance for what happened.
Forgiveness doesn’t mean condoning what happened or forgetting it ever took place. Instead, it means accepting that mistakes occur and not letting them define your future together.
When both partners forgive one another, they can focus on strengthening their bond instead of dwelling on past pain or mistakes.
Emotional affair recovery can start today
Recovering from an emotional affair can be difficult, but it is possible with patience and dedication from both of you.
Things can repair by acknowledging hurt feelings, discussing what happened, establishing boundaries, and getting support.
Get online marriage counseling.
With online marriage counseling, you can rebuild trust and recommit. Book a free consultation for your relationship.
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