What Is an Emotional Affair?

Clinical Conversation with Matthew Russell, MA, LPCC
Begin Again Institute

Greg (00:08): Thanks for being with us. My name is Greg with Begin Again Institute. And I’m here again with one of our therapists, Matthew Russell. And we are talking today about the concept of an emotional affair. What is an emotional affair and is it cheating? Matthew, thank you so much for being with us. I’m gonna dive right in. You know, I think this is one of the most complicated, painful conversations that I have with people who reach out to us who are inquiring about what we do and the treatment that we offer. You know, when couples have a situation where there isn’t an affair that is physical, but one that is involved a lot of conversation, texting, maybe even time together, where one of the partners in the couple is spending that time with someone else and engaging in an emotional affair of sorts. That’s a really challenging conversation and it’s a challenging thing to navigate. What I would love is if you could spend some time walking us through what an emotional affair actually is, why it can be just as devastating as a physical one, and what it tells us about a relationship.

Matthew Russell (01:24): Yeah, and those are all great questions. Emotional affairs, whether they’re physical or purely emotional, are damaging. So let’s take the word cheating and we’ll just set it to the side for now because that has a lot of stigma, a lot of things connected to it, and I don’t want to make the water murky. So let’s replace it with the word investment, you know, a relationship. You’re investing your time, you’re investing your emotions, you’re investing into that person and it’s reciprocated. It’s a natural give and take, right? So you’re investing all your vulnerabilities, you’re being known and getting to know, into your spouse. And that’s what a healthy relationship looks like. 

An emotional affair is taking that investment into that person that you chose and they chose you into something else. And oftentimes the emotional affair is secret, right? It’s now a separate entity. And now you’re divulging all that energy, that time, that emotional connection with something or someone else, whether it’s pornography or another person. Well, what’s that doing to the other person? Now we’ll take that cheating back into play. Well, you’re cheating that person of that investment that you initially gave to her or him. And you’re giving it to somebody else. And so that you’re cheating her, depriving her, starving her, is, and going into somebody else, that’s that’s that’s an affair. That’s cheating, right? And so she feels a betrayal. She feels something before she discovers it. She knows something’s going on because you’re emotionally not there. She doesn’t know why, but when she does discover, that’s when the betrayal hits. And so I think that’s a good way to really describe what an emotional affair is.

Greg (03:08): Yeah, that’s really clarifying for me. I mean, what I hear you saying is that the word robbing came to mind that when you’re engaging in something that we might call an emotional affair, you’re really robbing your partner of that attention, of that time that you’re giving elsewhere. In the same way that you might be doing with pornography use. And either way, a partner feels that as cheating, whether we call it that or not. Yeah, I’ve often heard people minimize the concept of an emotional affair. You know, ‘I didn’t have sex with this person. I didn’t physically cheat on you.’ Talk to us a little bit about minimizing and and how that can be problematic.

Matthew Russell (03:49): Yeah, minimizing is a very efficient defense mechanism. And it’s almost a twofold thing. And the first thing is they minimize because they know it’s wrong. They know what they’re doing essentially is wrong. Whether they want to admit that or not, you know, is a kind of a different matter. But they minimize it to themselves. So the first thing the first person they’re telling a lie to it’s themselves. ‘It’s not a big deal. She’ll never know. She’ll never find out.’ Whatever lies they want to tell it to minimize the damage they know that’s occurring not only to their partner but to themselves. And so they have this dissonance inside that they have to reckon with and minimizing it is a way of doing that. The other reason why they minimize it is because they have to minimize it to make the other person feel crazy. Like, ‘no, it’s not me, it’s you.’ Right. And that temporarily, you know, puts a pause in all the questioning. Puts a pause in everything and lets them get a little more slack to do what they want to do. So that’s kinda like the twofold reason why they minimize and it’s damaging the relationship.

Greg (04:58): That makes a ton of sense to me. the word dissonance stands out. And also, you know, if one of the things that happens when you’re minimizing something like an emotional affair is that you’re essentially gaslighting your partner, which is unhealthy. You know, it may not even be intentional. That’s not all, you know, when a person might be minimizing that they’re protecting themselves, but it’s inadvertently gaslighting their partner and further creating distance in the relationship.

All right, let me ask you something a little bit possibly uncomfortable, you know, because this keeps coming to my mind. Could an emotional affair almost be considered worse in some ways than a physical one? I’ve heard women say that.

Matthew Russell (05:43): Yeah, and I’ve heard that also, you know, emotional affairs, women have a harder time with it. And, you know, some do, some don’t. But an emotional affair can be described as like that slow fuse of emotional burn. There’s no hard point to point at, like a physical affair. The physical affair is like, okay, you cheated on me on this day or these days, this time. But with an emotional affair, it’s like an enduring blur. An enduring emotional blur. You invested these weeks, these months, all these years into this person, and you neglected me. What does she have or he have that I don’t? And it goes back to them again. And so an emotional affair many times can be viewed as more damaging. Because again, the word robbed is coming into play. You robbed me of this. You promised me that I would be that person. And now it’s somebody else. And so there’s this huge void of despair is what they’re feeling. And so even though the the physical is like a transaction, it there’s a there’s a start and an end, it’s really finite, you could definitive, an emotional affair is very blurry and messy. And so I can understand how it could be viewed as more damaging for some people.

Greg (07:02): Yeah, that makes sense to me. Sort of the unknown of it, the uncertainty of it, and this just this is a personal comment, but you know, like the feeling that like the like you gave love elsewhere. That can be a hurtful feeling. You started to talk a little bit about where I wanted to go next in that you started to describe what a partner might think about and feel when an emotional affair is discovered. For example, can you lean into that a little bit? Tell me a little bit more from your clinical experience, working with men and with partners. Well what’s going on in the partner’s mind?

Matthew Russell (07:38): Yeah, oftentimes this is again that slow burn metaphor. You know, they feel long before they know it. You know, they feel that emotional distancing. This man or this person that I married is no longer that person. Not showing up for me. You know, the intimacy level is not what it used to be. But also they see it in the parenting. They might see it in the professional work. They just seem checked out. And so there’s something, they know there’s something wrong. They just don’t know it yet.

And then they find out, and that’s when their whole world is turned upside down. Everything they once knew was true is now a complete lie. And this could have been going on for months, often cases it’s years, and that’s devastating. And they just feel alone and they feel isolated. And a lot of times the partner feels like that’s their fault. And all the shoulds and should have’s scenarios come up. And you know, they blame themselves and then the anger. And it’s a really big monster. Betrayal trauma’s a big monster. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg of what a partner may feel upon discovery.

Greg (08:44): Yeah, thank you for diving into that. I mean, obviously we’re men, A, but we’re also, you know, not in the place of the partner who has been betrayed. But your clinical experience has allowed you to see what you’ve just coined as betrayal trauma. I mean, that’s what happens when an emotional affair is discovered, is that a person feels betrayed. And that’s really, really painful. I’m gonna talk to the viewer of this for a moment and say, I think that this is the part of the conversation that probably matters the most because whether you’re a person who had the emotional affair or the one who discovered it, an emotional affair doesn’t happen in a vacuum, right? It grows in the space left by unmet needs and unspoken disconnection in the primary relationship. Understanding that doesn’t excuse the behavior in any way, but it is the beginning of a real conversation about what needs to change. And I think that’s where I want to go next, Matthew, is kind of explore, okay, so there’s been a discovery of an emotional affair. We would consider that at Begin Again Institute a reflection of an intimacy disorder or or a sex addiction. So can you talk to me a little bit about the connection between emotional affairs and this concept of intimacy disorders?

Matthew Russell (10:10): Yeah. So whether it’s pornography or a real person or persons, what they’re really doing is replacing meaningful relationship, a healthy relationship with something that’s I don’t know, they’re getting their needs met somewhere else. And it usually starts with porn, but not always. And it’s an endless, overstimulized kind of version of intimacy. But without vulnerability. They don’t have to be their full selves. They don’t have to disclose. They don’t have to put in the effort. And so you it’s hijacked. And usually this starts years before their marriage and relationship. They bring it in. But it’s a replacement, you know, and it feels real because they’re getting what they need, but it’s not real. And that’s a pseudo description to this to answer that question, right? They’re just replacing it with something that’s easy, accessible, secret. And something that’s theirs and so it feels real to them.

Greg (11:11): You said something that really stands out to me. And you basically alluded to the concept that an emotional affair is a symptom or a result of this issue that the offender, that the person who had the emotional affair has had, that there’s a in other words, that there’s a reason why somebody started an emotional affair. And it probably has nothing to do with their partner, that their partner isn’t isn’t that they don’t love their partner anymore, that they aren’t attracted to their partner anymore, all the things that a partner might think in this situation, but rather that the man seeking that emotional affair is wounded themselves, is is is there’s a why behind that type of behavior. And that sort of forms the whole philosophy of our approach to care. It offers an explanation. It doesn’t offer an excuse. Right? Like a person who engages in an emotional affair has done wrong and they’ve harmed their partner. And they need to be held accountable for that. They need to hold themselves accountable for that. But what we know clinically is that there’s a why behind that. Typically, what we believe is that that why is an unmet need, is a psychological wound, is a trauma of some kind that’s manifested itself in that person seeking out a meeting of needs that that feels like the right answer to the problem, but really in the end, as we know, is problematic in itself. I lay all that out because at Begin Again Institute, that’s our focus of care, right? Like when we start talking with a couple who’s in this position, we want to focus on the man and help him understand the why behind that behavior, treat him therapeutically to root that why out, so that those behaviors never happen again. And we want to focus on the partner, the betrayed partner, and help her heal from what from the consequences of his actions. All of that oriented at the hope of the relationship having a chance to move forward in a healthy way, if possible.

Matthew Russell (13:25): Right. And that’s a great point. It stems usually from childhood, right? Some adverse events or event, usually events, that a person learns that feeling emotion is painful. And so how can I learn to numb them out and distance myself from that experience? And over the course of time and experience, that’s reinforced. Well, it’s really reinforced when we stumble upon pornography or sex. And you know, we can have this exchange, this huge enigma experience without any consequences, without any real effort and without strings, right? And they learn to manage their nervous system. There’s no emotions involved. There’s no investment in vulnerability. There’s no I don’t have to be my affected self. Heck, I could be somebody else when I do this. And that again is reinforced. Like emotions are painful. I’m not going to deal with it. So if I shun my emotions, if I’m not emotionally available, I don’t feel any pain. Well that’s carried over into the relationship, right? And  that’s what we have to get, that’s the roots, what we call the roots of the problem. 

What happened to you? How did this all involve? It didn’t just happen overnight. You just didn’t suddenly decide to go cheat on your wife, right? This happened a long time ago. And I think that’s a great point for both, you know, the person that has the addiction and the betrayed partner to understand that create space to have compassion on that broken person. Because essentially that’s what it is. They’re just a broken person that’s doing the best they can, but they found some really maladaptive coping strategies that has now compounded and turned into an addiction.

Greg (14:58): I love the way you put that. I mean, I think the last few decades of research into all of this stuff supports what you just said. That the person who’s offending, the person who’s a sex addict, a porn addict, who’s been unfaithful, is really just a broken person in pain. There’s a why behind those behaviors, and that needs to be treated if they’re going to change. The really unfortunate thing is that those behaviors hurt someone else.

And that’s our betrayed partner. It’s a very complex and challenging situation. I think you know, what I’ve witnessed is that both individuals in a couple who’s dealing with this can heal, both from the why behind those behaviors and stopping those behaviors and the consequences of those behaviors, the betrayal and the trauma that comes from that. You know, that’s what we do here at Begin again Institute.

Matthew, thank you so much. I hope this this conversation has been helpful for others. I’ll tell you what I learned. I think emotional affairs are cheating. The word cheating can be construed and it’s stigmatized and it means maybe something different to each listener. But what I heard you say is that if a person is engaging in an emotional affair, they’re robbing their partner of love, time, attention, authenticity, and intimacy. And that’s cheating. It certainly felt that way by the partner. Well, thank you again for your time and look forward to talking to you again.