Recovering Your Marriage After An Emotional Affair

Is marriage a serious thing? Marriage brings two people together and unites them in a profound way that can rightly be called a ‘mystery’. The Bible talks about marriage saying, “That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh” (Genesis 2:24, NIV).

In the context of Genesis, ‘one flesh’ communicates more than just sexual union; after all, the woman is created from the side of the man, and so marriage brings together these two separate beings in a union that is almost like coming home to yourself.

The Bible goes on to say that “Adam and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame” (Genesis 2:25, NIV), and this alerts us that the man and the woman were brought into a relationship where they were meant to live life together, being vulnerable to each other in every way possible.

A marriage is an intimate relationship between two people, and so the involvement of any third parties undermines that intimacy. Part of why marriage is this profound mystery is that marriage is one of the powerful images that the Bible uses to describe the relationship between God and God’s people.

When God’s people are unfaithful by giving ultimate worth and value to things that aren’t worthy of them, this is called idolatry and it is often described as a form of spiritual adultery against God (James 4:4-5; Jeremiah 3:20, 9:2; Isaiah 1:21, 57:8; Ezekiel 6:9, 16:30,32; 1 John 2:15-17; Romans 8:7-8). That may seem pretty intense, but it is a helpful reminder about why God cares so much about marriage, and why we should take marriage seriously too.

Understanding emotional affairs.

When we get what marriage is about and why it should be taken seriously, it helps us to understand why anything that undermines a marriage ought to be problematic. Many people, married or not, would take an affair that involves sexual intercourse as a serious problem for a marriage.

When it comes to emotional affairs, there isn’t as much of a public consensus on whether it’s an issue or not because there is no physical contact involved. While some people may believe that an emotional affair is harmless, most marriage and relationship experts view it as a form of cheating because of what it involves and the damage it causes to relationships. Emotional affairs can act as gateway affairs because they pave the way for sexual infidelity.

An affair historically involved two people meeting and then having a sexual relationship. However, with advances in technology, people can meet virtually and never have physical contact, but that doesn’t mean they cannot form an emotional connection. Being unfaithful can include having intimate correspondence with someone over the phone, or meeting someone over the internet.

An emotional affair can also happen in person when people meet at work, and it’s about maintaining a close emotional relationship with someone other than your spouse or partner.

Emotional affairs don’t have a physical sexual component, at least not always or at first. How can you tell if you’re in an emotional affair? An emotional affair may look like a good friendship, but the difference is that an emotional affair is a significant threat to the primary relationship in a way that a good platonic friendship isn’t.

Some of the signs of an emotional affair include the following:

• Consistently turning to the other person for comfort or connection instead of your spouse.
• When you talk to your spouse about your day, you avoid talking about your interactions with this friend.
• Oversharing inappropriate details about your marriage with the other person.
• Sharing your thoughts, feelings, and problems with your friend instead of your spouse.
• Making comparisons between your spouse and the other person.
• Becoming defensive of your relationship with this other person to others.
• Feeling the need to be secretive about the relationship, and this includes choosing to hide it completely or consciously reducing its significance. You may even hide your phone from your spouse so that they don’t see the correspondence between you and this person
• Responding to questions about the appropriateness of the relationship with, “We’re just friends.”
• You find that interactions with the other person lead to a diminished or complete loss of interest in being emotionally or physically intimate with your spouse.
• Withdrawing from your spouse, and being with the other person contributes to a lack of desire to spend time with your spouse.
• Eagerly anticipating alone time or communication with your friend.
• Believing that your friend understands you better than your spouse does.
• Giving your friend personal gifts.
• Being preoccupied or daydreaming about your friend.

What causes an emotional affair?

It is important to note that a married couple ought to look out for one another, but each spouse is responsible for their own actions. Emotional affairs can start up suddenly, or they can take time to develop. If you and your spouse are going through a tough time and your conflict isn’t being resolved amicably, it’s possible to form an emotional bond with another person.

When a couple is disconnected from each other, that too can open the door to an emotional affair taking place. Sometimes, an emotional affair can happen not because you’re unhappy in your marriage, but simply because you’re caught up thinking about the life that might have been.

For example, Denise reconnected with Jeremy, an old boyfriend from college, on social media. She knew he was in a particular line of work from his profile and thought to reach out to ask about something. To be honest, she also wondered what he’d been doing with his life, and that was another reason for reaching out.

The two started messaging back and forth, and soon they found themselves sharing intimate details about their lives, and that included some of the problems they were having in their marriages. As they supported each other and prayed for one another, they found themselves drawing closer.

It didn’t take too long before Jeremy and Denise began walking down memory lane and wondering why they ever broke up because they were so comfortable with each other; things just seemed to click when they were together, and they connected seamlessly. They began looking forward to the many messages they exchanged during the day, and to their daily FaceTime chat over their lunch break.

They sent one another gifts on birthdays and looked forward to finding little ways to surprise each other. Not long after that, they both said they loved each other. Both Jeremy and Denise were spending a significant amount of time, effort, and emotional energy on each other, more so than with their spouses. Now, Jeremy and Denise may not be cheating in the traditional sense of having sex with each other, but they are engaged in an emotional affair.

An emotional affair can occur through circumstances lining up a certain way and without any intention of entering into one.

The impact of an emotional affair on a marriage.

Are emotional affairs harmless? From what’s been said above, it seems emotional affairs are just as dangerous as traditional affairs that involve sex. They can have many negative effects on a marriage, and these include causing one’s withdrawal from their spouse and having no or little energy for one’s current life commitments because the emotional affair is taking up space.

The intimate nature of an emotional affair draws a significant emotional investment that threatens the emotional bond between spouses and causes a disconnect in the relationship. Additionally, emotional affairs can often be a gateway to other forms of infidelity, and they are just as likely to lead to divorce or a breakup as affairs with physical intimacy.

Recovery from infidelity through Christian counseling.

Marriage is a serious thing, and so it’s wise to recognize that an emotional affair is not harmless; it does damage to a marriage. It takes from the marriage and invests in the affair what doesn’t belong there. That damage needs to be acknowledged and responsibility for the emotional affair needs to be taken. For a marriage to flourish, it requires both spouses to be present – body, heart, and mind.

To protect the marriage, both people in the marriage need to work together to build a marriage on a strong foundation of intimacy, friendship, and trust. It is possible to recover from an emotional affair and to emerge from it with a stronger relationship. However, it requires work to address the underlying reasons why the emotional affair happened and to develop healthy boundaries to avoid forming inappropriate emotional bonds.

Some ideas for how to strengthen a marriage include being supportive of each other, having regular quality time such as weekly dates and setting aside time for conversation to discuss daily issues and deeper issues, being respectful of one another, learning how to engage in healthy conflict that you both walk away from still loving each other, and learning how to repair hurts and relational damage quickly and genuinely.

With the help of a professional such as a couples counselor, and using therapeutic techniques such as emotionally focused therapy and cognitive behavioral therapy, a couple can find their way back to each other. Your counselor can help you unpack your relationship and the dynamics there that undermine trust and emotional intimacy.

If your marriage has been rocked by an emotional affair, it can be restored and strengthened. Reach out to a couple’s counselor today and make an appointment so you can begin to find healing and wholeness in your marriage.