In Defense of Unspoken Emotional Affairs
No one declares this rule, it’s just known.
I know it’s happening, she knows it’s happening, but we can deny it if anyone says anything because we haven’t said anything.
All week I’ve thought about her, because of our job we still haven’t seen each-others full faces, just the bridge of the nose up. From our first interaction the twinkling crow feet smiles and attention she gave me brought the rush of new, undeniable lust.
When we crash into one of the ones, finding out they have a partner should determine the type of relationship we go after, not deter us from enjoying one of the best relationships we might ever have.
A Very Unfortunate Coincidence
I have always been attracted to and had chemistry with people already in relationships, and hand on heart I only find out they’re spoken for after I’ve fallen for them. It’s ridiculous. My friends have joked about it since school and it’s always been a bad joke.
Almost every time I meet someone I have a spark with, they have a partner. And now I’m in my late 20’s, a lot of the people I find connections with are married.
This doesn’t mean I avoid this person and have given up on romance. I‘ve just learned how to best navigate a very real and rocky situation that a lot of us find ourselves in; the emotional affair.
My Defence of Unspoken Emotional Affairs
The purpose of this piece is to defend emotional affairs by confirming what people privately know about them and to explain the course of action which experience has taught me is the best course to take, for everyone involved.
What You Already Know
What people know about affairs but might not admit to their partners is this; we can’t stop them from sparking if the sexual attraction and chemistry is strong enough.
This doesn’t mean we’re compelled to act on it or do anything that violates trust; we’re still in control of our next actions. It just means that we’ve both had a physiological response of arousal to each other. It’s not bad, it’s natural.
My Controversial Approach
My approach is to pursue and enjoy the connection like the honeymoon phase of a real relationship but one that is never verbally confirmed or physically acted upon.
All honeymoon phases come to an end, so these will too:
“Most of the time … repeated exposure to a stimulus (the hot crush) will actually dull your attraction. The novelty wears off and you can begin to see the faults a crush has that were “invisible” during the early stages of attraction” — Psychology Today
I don’t think emotional affairs are a bad thing, I think they’re natural responses that need to run their course a little to be overcome.
There are two ways harmless emotional affairs, that we can’t prevent from sparking, go on to cause destruction and pain. One is by developing into physical affairs and the other is by being verbally confirmed by the people involved.
Here’s how to execute the approach without breaking anyone up or causing anyone to feel like a cheat.
1. The Unspoken Rule
Instead of the physical act, which leads to destruction and pain, the mutual attraction and longing are instead limited to open body language, subtle flirting, prolonged looks & private jokes. We can indulge in long, meandering conversations about any and every subject so we can stay in each other’s company for longer, satisfying some of our desires.
That is, any and every subject other than two, her relationship with her partner and our relationship. Never go near these. This is the rule.
No one declares this rule, it’s just known.
For it to work, those two conversations can rarely come up. Every emotional partner I’ve had instinctually knew this golden rule. We’re making play-pretend, we don’t ruin it with reality.
It acts as a Safety Word too, if she breaks the rule and start’s mentioning her partner out of the blue a lot, there is no clearer sign to me then that whatever we are, the relationship with her partner trumps us, and I’m out of there, end-game.
2. No Sins — No Confessions
Emotional affairs don’t require confirmation. Meaning no damning internal confession which rips people and their relationships up.
There’s no denying we’re having an affair when we keep physically hooking up or saying we think we’re falling in love with each other. If we avoid this mistake, everything flammable to the rest of our lives is left unsaid and burns passionately inside the two of us, letting us sleep soundly in self-denial and the reassuring lie that nothing has actually happened.
We’re just close; a warm and vague term that doesn’t completely sell us out to ourselves.
Emotional affairs should be felt, engaged in silence, and never confirmed to be the romantic purge that doesn’t change and tarnish a life like conscious cheating does.
The Benefits of This Approach …
To the One Cheating
The key benefit to the person emotionally cheating on their partner is that they get to explore their romantic emotional needs, that aren’t being fully met, without losing their relationship or anyone’s respect for physically cheating.
It sounds like I’m trying to make something wholesome out of a dishonest, secret betrayal. I’m not, I’ve just learned through experience that people are complex and will follow their sexual attraction into an affair a lot of the time. These infidelity statistics suggest people will delve into an affair around 35% of the time.
This unspoken emotional route is the least damaging path for this 35% who are going to cheat.
I believe it’s in this person’s best interest to give the emotional affair enough rope for it to reveal the relationship changes their seeking.
To the One Being Cheated On
I understand the point of view that emotional affairs can be just as bad as physical affairs, maybe worst, but I personally don’t think unspoken, emotional affairs are as bad.
All I know about this is how each betrayal made me feel. I found out an ex-girlfriend had been cheating on me with her new boyfriend for months, 6 months after we broke up.
When we broke up she swore there was no one else, and when she and her new boyfriend were public she swore there had been no “cross-over” between him and me.
It was my first and only relationship where there were only two of us.
The break up was hard but I was coming to terms with someone falling out of love with me, it hurt more than I’d felt before but this was a natural part of life that no one could help.
When I found out she’d been cheating, the sick feeling of betrayal, emasculation, and anger dented me more permanently than the thought that she’d just fallen out of love with me. She’d been regularly sleeping with someone whilst I’d been planning my future with her. Simply put, that hurt more.
To the Single Affair Partner
The benefit to the single affair partner is that they’re not forcing an irreversible, negative change to somebody else’s relationship over something that won’t last.
According to this article, about 1–3 couples out of every 100 who start as affair partners will stay happily together — my own experience has taught me that no affair partners stay together. The bottom line: affair romances hardly ever last.
This way, the single person can enjoy the scraps of a beautiful honeymoon phase without tearing anything down to experience it.
The Unspoken Emotion Is Enough, For Me
The felt, unsaid and unspoiled romance is enough for me.
Every time my emotional affairs have been acknowledged or acted upon, my time with that person has come to a bitter end soon after.
That’s the truth from which I’ve written this article, confirming an emotional affair either physically or verbally never panned out well for me, it actually always went badly.
I’m content with the twinkling crow feet smiles and attention she gives me when I’m around, catching her gazing when she thinks I’m not and her catching me doing the same. Having “natural” conversations where I’m telling jokes that I thought of days ago and made up specifically for her, then beaming behind my mask as it lands even better than I hoped.
Whenever I set them up she knocks them down and it makes me so pathetically happy. There’s only so many excuses I can make to be around her but when I can’t think of any, she comes up with ones of her own.
This unspoken emotional thing we’ve got going on is enough. I might just be getting the scraps of her real relationship, but it’s still one of the best relationships I’ve ever had.
