Episode 9: The Other Affair- Emotional Cheating

Lets talk about Emotional affiairs and what they do to you, your marriage and your spouse…devastation. We will address how to protect yourself and your marriage from making this seemingly harmless no sex mistake before you realize you may have just made the biggest mistake of your life or repair your marriage if you have already made the mistake.

Please visit the resources page with direct links to books I recommend. On the show I talked about the Covenant Eyes application, you can get it here: www.convenanteyes.com

Also the book “Not Just Friends” 

The screens, filters, and accessibility to social media are making temptation harder to resist and cheating easier. Reality is, what you’re going to get is a lifetime of regret and anguish. People are flawed, just like you and your spouse, often more so, if you think about it.

Even though you find excitement in those brief forbidden moments, it's not going to last long and the price you will eventually pay will not even come remotely close to being worth it.

The damage an emotional affair has on a marriage is far more devastating than a casual sexual affair or a one night stand. The reason for this is because emotional connection is far deeper than any purely sexual relationship can ever be. It ties you to that person in ways that sex can never accomplish. Emotional connection is what triggers love, closeness, intimacy and yearning far more powerful than sex alone. Again, listen to the episode “foreplay before the foreplay”.

Episode Transcript  

Thank you all for joining me today. It has been a long time since I have released an episode. So if you're all wondering what happened to Jessica. So, as I've mentioned before, in my podcasts, I don't receive any revenue for my podcast. I do all of this out of the goodness of my heart. 

Well, we ran into a little bit of a financial snack and I had to cut some corners financially. And unfortunately one of them had to be my podcast. That's a quite a few hundred dollars a month out of our pocket. And so I willingly. For the family, uh, put it aside. But the good news is with it came a brand new website that I am very excited, just launched last week. 

If you want to check it out, it's the same domain, www.thecompetentmarriage.com. And I have resources up there now with quick links to Amazon. So you could just click on the book that you want and it'll take you to Amazon. You can put it in your cart and purchase it. Tons of really good resources on my website. 

Be sure to check it out and, um, I'll be adding more. So keep updated. I also have my podcast streaming on my website. So if you don't want to sign up to a podcast, uh, application, you can just go to my website and listen. There are just lots of great tools. All the links to our social media. I say it like it's a whole lot. 

It's not. It's uh, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. So if you're having a hard time liking or following me on social media, all the links are right there. You just click on the one you want. It'll take you straight to my page and you can like, or follow me. So speaking of social media, I just launched a really cool contest this week. 

So you'll win a $10 Starbucks gift card. If you share. One of my posts that has one of my podcast linked on it on your page. Now, remember the qualifier here is that it must have my podcast on that post. A lot of people are sharing other posts and it doesn't have my podcast link on it. That does not count. 

So I'm really excited to see how many of you actually take me up on this contest. And, um, maybe you could be the one that wins a $10 gift card to Starbucks. I know, I love my Starbucks. And so, like I said earlier, I am super happy to be back. You guys are just amazing. The amount of emails and messages. And the welcome back that I got, I, I think I'm going to cry right now. 

I am so happy. You guys are getting so much out of this and enjoying it that warms my heart more than you guys could ever know. And I'm so glad that me and my family are in a position that we're able to bring the show back. I appreciate all of your guys's support. I was especially happy. Be to do a couple of pro bono calls and help a few people out who are really struggling right now and walk them through a couple of the processes that they could take and steps that they could take to really try and bring their marriage back. 

It made me so incredibly happy to be able to offer that to them. And I'm more than happy to do that here and there for you guys. Like I've said so many times, I'm not in this for money. I won't be able to coach people all the time for free, but I'm more than happy to step in here and there, especially when there's a crisis and do what I can. 

So thank you guys. All for the warm welcome and the support. I am so, so happy to be back. As a matter of fact, I took one of my listeners suggestions and she had asked that we do an episode this week on emotional affairs or emotional cheating. The other affair, we really do underestimate the severity of it. 

And worse yet it is on the rise. You know, I have a love, hate relationship with social media. It can be super beneficial and an amazing tool to keep in touch with friends, family, learn new things, share your life and meet new people. It's unlike anything before it. Social media has proven to open doors, to support people who need it. 

There is a huge downfall to social media, though. We all have probably heard the studies showing the damaging effects that has on those who become too wrapped up into it. Everything in moderation. Right? One of the funny things about connecting with people electronically is that it's been proven that we lose our sense of boundaries. 

People who are interacting electronically are much more likely to express more and deeper personal things and feelings with others are self-disclosure boundaries are inhibited and we tend to say and do things we wouldn't consider doing. Face-to-face. Self-disclosure is the leader in building deeper relationships. 

And this is becoming a huge problem for marriages. So a little personal story. A few weeks ago, I was out to dinner with my family and we were all sitting at the table and just chatting, having a great time. And I made a comment to my sister. This, we were talking about sister stuff about how. That up I was of my hair. 

So my sister says to me, well, wigs are very popular right now, you know? And I laughed and I said, really well, I don't doubt it. Almost everything is fake. Now. I just, I can imagine the dating scene, a guy brings home a hot girl, her wig, eyelashes and nails are on the nightstand. Her eyebrows have been wiped to oblivion. 

Her boobs are sitting on the floor and her push-up bra and her ass is sitting in her jeans at the end of the bed. The woman lying next to him is a completely different person than the one he took home. And I bet most of those women are more beautiful without all that. Anyway, not to mention all the respect that we lose from guys when we do that stuff and chances are, we probably could have met. 

That guy without all that, or probably even a better one, you know, there's the whole Instagram scene too, where you're meeting someone for the first time after flirting on Instagram and she shows up and she looks nothing like the filtered beautiful model version she's been posting, what is up with us women and the exaggerated need to look perfect, ladies. 

You're beautiful. Just the way you are. But my real point with all this is that social media and online networking have been linked to the increase of narcissism. And I know we're not all narcissistic, but what is narcissism? It's pretty much her self esteem on steroids. People are posting self-focused images of themselves filtered to stage and edited. 

We collect superficial artificial and disingenuous friends home. We've never met or know anything about. We rarely even interact with them on social media. And we all know those posts. How many of you will like this post? How many of you will share this post? How many are my real friends? It's because we're all aware that no one is really paying attention to us. 

The only reason the stranger is on our friends list is because somewhere inside us, We want to show off. We want to have more people. See it. Social networking sites have become the breeding ground for narcissism, but the damage, it doesn't stop there. It's also becoming a world wide hub for cheating, emotional and physical affairs. 

Just about every single one of us who have connections online, have tampered with this fine line, a timer too. How many of us pull back? And how many of us feed on it even? Yeah, no. We might find excitement in those brief forbid moments. It's not going to last long and the price you eventually will pay will not even come remotely close to being worth it. 

I'll put money on that. Not that I have any. At least not right now. Cause I'm bringing you this podcast back on topic, emotional affairs, physical affairs and porn addiction have if not many, one big thing in common, you think it's going to be great. Maybe even awesome. The fantasy, the playout in your head, the new person, all the possibilities, the what ifs, the excitement. 

It's crazy. I know, but study after study and stuff, after story proves another reality and it's never the one that we have in our head, it's almost never like. You imagined it and the oddest thing, something happens to us and it's not what we expect in these situations. The guilt, the shame, the let down at home drives you to keep doing it over and over and over again, hoping to fill that fantasy you had in your head of what it would be like. 

It's weird how we do things like that. You would think that we would learn our lesson, but for some reason we don't, meanwhile, every time you pursue it, the guilt and shame will build. And build and build and eat away at you like gain grain in your heart. There will come a point where in hindsight, you will look back at all of it. 

It'll stop you dead in your tracks, and it'll be a, what the fuck moment. It's when you realize all you've done, the pain shame, anger and regret will swell over you. The worst part about it is. It's a done deal. You can't escape it. You can't change it. You can't go back and fix it. What's done is done. 

Emotional. Cheating is rampant in society. Thanks to social media and the internet. For the most part, we're all just seconds away from an emotional affair. Browse your app store and you'll find application after application for secret conversations, social media, dating services, and pornography. They're a dime. 

A dozen marriage is threatened every day by the sources all around us. Those tempting Instagram pictures, the lonely Facebook posts, and the quick little, how are you chats at work? Lead us into emotional affairs within seconds. And that's all it takes as just seconds. First. Let's define emotional cheating, emotional. 

Affairs is a non-sexual relationship with another person whom is not their partner, that we are emotionally intimate with such as deep personal conversations about ourselves, our spouse, or desires or wants or needs what we're getting, what we're not getting, all of those kinds of things. And emotional fair, pretty much mimics our emotional relationship that we have. 

Had, or we should have with our spouse only put all that aside. And let me sum this up for you, ladies and gentlemen, if you're hiding your friend or the conversations that you two are having, it's an emotional affair. Taking the words from my grandmother, something I live by. If you can't talk about it, if you can't tell your husband or wife about it, As if they were right there watching the whole thing. 

Without a single objection. You shouldn't be doing it. Not ever. If you ever want to know where the boundaries are, there's no need to question it. Ask yourself that one question and you'll have your answer. And these relationships are not just friendships. These are emotional affairs, and you're just telling yourself and your spouse that see, you can hope to not feel guilty about it. 

It's not gonna work no way, no matter how much you try to lie to yourself, you know, the truth, a really, really good book about this is we're not just friends. I highly suggest that if you or your partner have experienced this, read it, go to my website and all my resources page it's right there. It's an amazing book and goes into a lot of detail about this. 

What happens over time and it's not a long time. It could just be a few weeks as you start to develop an attachment to this person and they start being the person you turn to, you feel comfortable with, safe with and who you think. Of when, when good things happen, when bad things happen, you find yourself anxious or excited to talk to them or see them again. 

You're looking forward to telling them about your day stories, experiences, trials, and successes. This is when the lines between you and your friend. And you and your spouse are now blurred. You, my dear have crossed the line. You're now having an affair. You don't need to have physical contact to call it an affair. 

It's still a full blown affair and won't be long before the first kiss. Or touch takes place and watch as those emotional connections, the two of you have created starts to burn a hole through your pants, yearning to touch one another and be physically intimate with them. It'll eventually happen. 

Emotional connection. It's one of the first steps to physical intimacy. We are emotional creatures. If you don't believe me, go back and listen to my podcast foreplay before the foreplay, the deeper we get emotionally with someone, the stronger, the physical pull becomes emotional connection as the main driver in love, lust in our sexuality and men, they're not immune to this. 

Even though they're typically more physical creatures than women and can have a physically intimate relationship without strings attached, easier than women can they're by no means immune to this physical pull that emotions can have on them. As a matter of fact, recent studies have shown men crave more emotional connection than we once thought. 

They just don't know quite how to vocalize it. Not like women because men aren't quite taught as women. When they're growing up to tap into that the same way women are. Don't ever underestimate the damage and emotional affair has on a marriage. It's far more devastating than the casual sexual affair or even a one night stand. 

The reason for this is because emotional connection is far deeper than any purely sexual relationship can ever be. It ties you to that person in ways that sex can never accomplish our emotional connection is what triggers love closeness, intimacy and yearning far more powerful than sex alone. Let's not try to full ourselves. 

We can't possibly split ourselves emotionally between two people. None of us have this kind of emotional capacity and time. There comes a point that our energy has taken from our spouse to put into this other person or thinking about them often taking that space from our spouse. Or sharing with them, leaving our spouse out of our emotional and even physical life or spending time with them taking that time away from our spouse in our marriage. 

It won't be too long before they have taken you over mine, body and soul. Your spouse becomes the enemy. They're getting in the way, asking questions, too many questions, untimely interruptions and bothersome questions about your new behavior. They see it, the change in you. And no matter how hard you try to hide it, your spouse knows you, they know your daily behaviors and activities better than you do your spouse as outside of you. 

And they see and observe you in a light that you could never see yourself in. Often spouses won't say anything about the change either because they don't want to rock the boat, or they know that in due time, whatever is going on will come to the light. Often we think we're being so cool and chill and they suspect absolutely nothing. 

Your clueless as to what your non-verbal actions are doing. No matter how hard you try to hide it, you're giving yourself away in ways you aren't even aware of. And as your new friend, Takes the limelight. You need to know that your spouse will never be able to add up to them. Why? Because you don't live with your friend. 

You don't know them intimately, like you do your spouse. And just like when you and your spouse first started dating, they couldn't make the huge mistakes in your eyes that your spouse does. Their imperfections seem minor. If there are any at all, and they seem more manageable than your spouses. Their good qualities look like a million bucks and you will start to compare your spouse to them, which is an unfair comparison since no matter how well you think, you know your friend, you don't know them at all. 

In episode three, lost love. I talked about this very phenomenon. There are stages to our relationship. The stages I'm talking about here are stages one and two stage one is widely known as the popular name, the honeymoon phase, which I prefer to call the discovery phase. In this stage, we're still wearing our clown suits. 

We're still really good at hiding some of our faults, disguising our behaviors, holding back some of our negatives as not to scare the other off. We're still on guard and we're holding back. We're more patient. We're more understanding, forgiving. We are putting in some major effort to impress and woo. The other person. 

We're afraid that they won't accept her. Love us as we are, that they might abandon and leave us as stage two as when we start to get comfortable. And the things that we thought we once could live with, start to infest areas of our relationship. We didn't think it ever could. We can't continue to be an amplified revisions of ourselves. 

And our true character starts to seep through the cracks, the qualities that we once wanted. To magnify our hitting closer to true levels. And the quality is we want to direct repress start to also hit closer to our true levels. We become less mindful and more comfortable and things start to slip. And before we know it, we are in full blown self mode with all our faults and our wonderful qualities. 

This is where the other person one day looks at us and says, this isn't the person I fell for. But as I sat in my other podcast. Oh, but it is my dear. It is, it is your partner in true form and always was the person you thought you loved was there airbrushed version. And yet there they are still that person, they haven't left. 

You're just exposed to all of them as they are you. We went through these very same stages with our spouse and you will go through them with your new friend as well. Remember when you felt that way about your spouse and just swayed until you really get to know this new friend, just the way that you do your spouse. 

It's not going to be so pretty. Their imperfections will magnify their great qualities. Won't seem so magnificent. The place you are in with your partner will be the exact same place. You'll end up with your friend. But guess what? The worst news about this chances are it'll be worse than it is now with your spouse and you'll regret every single second. 

I encourage you to listen to the episode, lost love. I talk about the masks we wear and how we pretend to be someone we aren't. We all do it. Let's talk more about your friend though. Don't forget. They're people too, and people change their minds as they start to get to know you and see you for who you really are. 

Your spouse loves you. They've stuck by you regardless of the flaws. They want to work on things in your marriage that aren't working this friend of yours more times than not, will never be as committed to you or love you the way that your spouse does right now. Sure. There are a lot of people out there who would be interested in dating you. 

The truth is there's a very small chance. There'll be willing to stick it out with you and you, them marriage doesn't seem so rare. I know, but it really is. It's not as common. As we think the chances of finding someone to love are ugly and cheer us on for a lifetime is actually really, really rare. So why in the hell would you give that up for the very unlikely chance that this friend will want you later down the road or you'll want them, where is your spouse and all this anyways? 

Do you think that because it never got sexual at won't be as bad of a blow. That is a huge mistake. You're making a huge mistake. The emotional damage is worse than that. Physical fare. The trauma is long lasting and one of the hardest types of affairs for a married couple to get over, you want to call bullshit on that. 

Again, we have to turn to studies and stories told time and time again, to prove this. Spouses of partners who have had an emotional affair suffer from depression, anxiety, PTSD, their self-esteem is ripped apart. They struggle with never feeling like they're ever going to be good enough. Does that not sound familiar? 

Does that not sound like your typical affair and the effects, the partner who has been deceived suffer from. The two of you are going to face major trust issues, just like you would a sexual affair. If you want to go through all that for some flirting and chatting, we've got a second guess where our priorities are at that point, because that's not a lot to gain for a lot to lose. 

Don't underestimate the power of emotional affairs and the effects they have on your spouse and your marriage, just because there was not sex involved. And the episode lost love. I talked about the eternal effects of divorce. If you haven't listened to it, take 30 minutes this week to do so. I think you'll be quite surprised at how ugly divorce actually is. 

I talk about how, even if the marriage is bad and one or both spouses are happy to get out of it, what isn't talked about is once it is all said and done, they are miserable after the divorce and wish they could have tried harder to fix the problems. I want to share something with you from a book called psychology in everyday life by David C. 

Myers and see Nathan dwell. I quote even when bad relationships break, people suffer in one 16 nation survey. And in repeated us surveys, separated and divorced. People have been half as likely as married people to say they are very happy. Divorce also predicts earlier mortality in an analysis of 755,000 divorces in 11 different countries. 

Divorce was associated with dying earlier, after much separations, loneliness, and anger, and sometimes even a strange desire to be near the former partner linger. For those in abusive relationships, the fear of being alone sometimes seems worse than the certainty of emotional and physical pain. That's pretty insane that we miss our ex spouses after a divorce, even when the relationship is bad. 

So enough of the sad stuff, there are definitely things that we can do to protect our spouse and our marriage from emotional affairs. One of them is password and account sharing. There shouldn't be an email or social media account that your spouse doesn't have immediate and direct access to at any given moment. 

So no hidden accounts. Why not? What do you have to hide? That's one of the rules in our marriage. As a matter of fact, we both agreed no social media. I have one Facebook page that I've had for 20 years. And he is 100% part of that. I have my business pages and that's all that really exists. Another idea is email account sharing. 

We share an email account. We really don't have separate ones. We closed both of them and made a joint one. When we created this role back when we were. Laying some boundaries down during our difficult time. Another idea is no passcodes on phones or electronics. I understand that our phones are very private and we have a lot of personal information on them. 

If someone were to find it or a sneaky family member or friend were to open them, it can be done stating. So passcodes are pretty common. Just make sure that your spouse knows the code. Another thing you could do is. Keep all cell phones. When at home, in a public place, we keep ours on the kitchen counter. 

We don't sneak around with our phones. Meaning no phones are put down when someone walks up or sits down next to us, no phones go in the bathroom. As a matter of fact, we're both now in the habit of using our phones only when the other. As present there have been times where we have put restrictions on each other's phones. 

Sometimes this is necessary, especially in the beginning of dealing with pornography addiction or continuous acts of betrayal. So phone restrictions would restrict it. The phone from being able to download or delete apps, doesn't allow you to do private browsing, at least on the iPhone, not so much the Android. 

And it also keeps a user from being able to change any important settings that would be able to hide their behavior. This is something that you would need to talk to your spouse about. Don't just do it. You both need to agree on it. And again, this is more in the. Extreme situations. This isn't something that I would do to just kind of protect your marriage from any kind of affair or a use that would hurt the marriage. 

So this is something that you might want to take caution with. Another idea would be to not call her texts with the opposite sex, if they're not family. So an example is if you need a babysitter for the night, maybe your wife would call her, text her. If the gardener needs to do some extra work in the yard, maybe your husband should call or text him. 

Maybe the kid's soccer coach texted. The wife was some questions about the upcoming game. One way to. Divert that without being rude is Cheryl. Let me have my husband follow up with you on that. Unless it's family, we don't really need to interact with the opposite sex. And that's one way that these emotional affairs start to take places by short, quick little conversations like that. 

My husband and I don't always follow this rule. Sometimes it's not completely necessary, but we also don't delete the text and we don't keep the conversations going either. So what about coworkers or friends that are of the opposite gender? You have to be accountable to your spouse there. The second things are starting to move even just a tad bit towards the blurred lines. 

You need to change that immediately and if necessary and. The friendship always make sure you're being open and honest with your spouse about it though. There are programs out there to ensure a spouse accountability. One would be covenant eyes. It works on Android and an iPhone computers and tablets. 

I'll post the link in my show notes. It's a really good program, uh, to keep accountability, especially when there's pornography addiction or again, repeated attempts of affairs or portrayal. Emotional affairs are brushed off way too easy. Having a healthy understanding of what they really are and the damage they have on you, your spouse, your marriage, your family is highly advisable before you rationalize that there was no physical intimacy and make a really huge mistake. 

So the next time you're complaining about how unhappy you are in your marriage, how your wife or my husband doesn't do this, or you hate that they do that. And you're yeah. Use it as a reason to indulge and little harmless conversation. Remember that your spouse, isn't going to think it's so harmless. 

When you notice that you're starting to look or crave for attention from others. You need to turn around, grab your spouse and fix the ship between YouTube before you ruin your life, their life and your children's lives. Whatever you do do not take for granted that it's just talking and that now, and turn to your spouse again. 

I'm here. If you need some guidance. We can talk one-on-one or we can do a couple of chat, call a therapist, just choose wisely, make sure to check out our resources page on the website, grab one of the books that jump out to you or your spouse, whatever you do, do not take for granted that it's just talking and that now and turn to your spouse. 

I hope you all enjoyed the show again. I'm so, so happy to be back. Don't forget to subscribe and rate me if you can. I love the feedback. Everybody was amazing with my comeback. So I can't wait to hear what you guys have to say about the episode. Don't forget to send me suggestions on things that you guys would like to hear in future episodes. 

Our next episode will be on lingering eyes. I'm going to talk about what is acceptable and what isn't when taking notice of others who are attractive is looking at someone once, twice or three times, really that big of a deal. And what is too far. So that's it for today, by the way, this is my most favorite time of the year. 

Happy fall to everybody. I hope you all have a fantastic week. And I look forward to seeing you back here for the next episode and bring a friend or two, just make sure your spouse knows about them. This is the confident marriage podcast. And I'm your host, Jessica.