Emotional vs Physical Cheating- Which is worse?

Cheating. There used to be a time when this word meant having sex with someone other than your spouse or significant other. And to find out that you'd been cheated on, was one of the worse feelings in the world. Just the thought of your man/woman having sex with someone else, crushed you. But these days, cheating can come in different forms, one of them being emotional.

Say, you've been married for a few years. The thrill is gone with your significant other, the sex has become mediocre, there is little to no conversation between the two of you, and everything has become all about going to work, paying bills, taking care of the kids (if you have them). You no longer feel that physical or emotional attraction to your mate that you once felt. But alas, you have your 'work' boyfriend (a male co-worker or just a male friend in general) that you can always count on to pick up where your husband has left off. The 'work' boyfriend makes you laugh, calls you beautiful, buys you lunch on the regular...he sends you cute texts/emails, which you quickly delete after reading them, because you don't want your husband to know about your friend...not that you're doing anything more than talking to the guy. You find yourself thinking about him, sometimes even during those rare occasions when you do have sex with your husband. That smile on your face...he put that there, not your spouse. However, you're not having sex with the guy, he's just a friend you turn to, to make you feel better, because you no longer have this connection with your husband. So, that's not cheating, right? Wrong! 

According to Gail Saltz, MD, this is exactly how emotional affairs start. And emotional affairs can lead to physical ones.“Many of these emotional affairs do move into a sexual affair,” Saltz says. “If they don’t, it’s easy enough to say to yourself that you’re not doing anything wrong.”

The problem, she says, is the attachment to this other person impacts the marriage.  “Ultimately it ends painfully one way or another: Your marriage ends, or you’ve got to give this person up.” Often, people who become involved in emotional affairs feel something is lacking at home. “It makes them feel good to feel understood, to feel desired. It’s like candy. You go home and have your vegetables, and you go to work and you have candy.”

For some spouses -- more often women, Saltz says -- learning of an emotional affair can be worse than discovering sexual infidelity. “Everybody understands a sexual act need not necessarily contain affection or intimacy. It could be literally about a sexual act. Whereas the emotional affair feels like it’s much more about being connected, about loving or liking.”

Signs You’ve Crossed the Line:

According to Saltz, these seven red flags suggest you may have entered into an emotional affair:

You spend a lot of emotional energy on the person. “You end up sharing stuff that you don’t even share with your partner -- hopes and dreams, things that would actually connect you to your partner.”

You dress up for that person.

You make a point to find ways to spend time together, and that time becomes very important to you.

You’d feel guilty if your partner saw you together; you are doing things and saying things that you would never do or say in front of your spouse.

You share your feelings of marital dissatisfaction.

You’re keeping secret the amount of time you’re spending with the person (including emailing, calling, texting).

You start to feel dependent on the emotional high that comes with the relationship.

So armed with all this info, is emotional cheating worse than physical cheating? I'd say, YES! In this day and age, people view sex as just that, SEX! I can't count how many times I've heard men who've been busted cheating say, "But baby, it was just sex; it didn't mean anything!" That's because, it doesn't mean anything anymore. The world has become so sex-crazed, that the physical act has just become another normal thing to do: Get up, brush your teeth, eat breakfast, have sex, go to work...it's very nonchalant, and people will give their bodies to a man or woman freely, giving it no second thought afterwards. According to Marie Claire writer, Abraham Lloyd: For men, physical cheating is more painful than emotional cheating because we, as a gender, relate to everything in a physical way first. This is our nature. We are possessive and protective of our partners in a way that is reminiscent of cavemen protecting cavewomen with spears and clubs. Sure, we don't mind if you take a male friend shopping (secretly, some of us are thanking him). If we are out, though, we are always watching other men and aware of who is paying attention to you. When we leave you alone at an event, we scan the room to take an inventory of the men who noticed you, speak to you, and come close to you. Does it seem a little silly? Possibly. In our defense, though, we can't help it; it's instinctual. The reality is that while we don't care with whom you shop, talk, eat, or text, we do care deeply about who looks at you, smells your hair, holds your hand, and takes you to bed. For men, the act of learning about our partner's infidelity is, simply put, emasculating — and the rejection that comes with this realization is painful. This pain, in turn, is only magnified by how much we care for our partners.

I remember watching the romantic comedy, Two Can Play That Game. The female character Shante, was at a party, trying to make her cheating man, Keith, jealous by talking to another guy. Keith was also trying to make her jealous, by dancing with a beautiful woman. Shante found a guy, went to a corner, and they engaged each other in conversation for quite a while. Keith mentioned to his friend that he was concerned she'd lost interest in him, not because Shante was ignoring him and his shenanigans with the female he was fawning all over, but because she was actually talking to the guy, laughing with him...seemingly genuinely interested in what he was saying, meaning, she was really trying to get to know him, which was worse than if she'd been dancing and grinding all over the guy...as he'd been doing with his female companion. It's almost like he was saying, he could handle her being physical with the guy in an attempt to make him jealous, but the fact that she was having an actual conversation, meant that she was more emotionally connected to him...and that was a problem. This is exactly how some people view emotional cheating. 

So, which is worse? Associate web editor Diana Vilibert says, "In the end, the reason that physical cheating is so painful is that we can envision it. We can play back the rendezvous in our mind over and over and relive our partner seeking comfort or escape in the arms of another. When you compare this to emotional cheating, it is clear why physical cheating is more painful to deal with, and why physical cheating leads to the end of so many relationships. Without a doubt, when it comes to cheating, sexual indiscretions are the lesser of the two evils — not because it's necessarily easier to forgive a partner's one-night stand, but because an emotional affair generally means the cheater has already thrown in the towel on your relationship. 

So it seems that one form of cheating is not more forgivable than the other. In the end, it's all cheating, whichever way you slice it. If you haven't crossed the line from emotional to physical cheating, there is still a chance to save the relationship. As hard as it may be sometimes, communication is key. You have to find the time to actually sit down and tell your spouse what is missing, what has gone wrong in the relationship, and discuss ways to fix it. Go to counseling if you have to. If the relationship means anything to you, you'll do whatever it takes to fix the problem. If you have already physically cheated, the trust is already gone, and once trust is lost, it's very hard to get back. If you do decide to stay after you or your mate has had a physical affair, good luck. I've been there, done that, and you'll constantly be giving each other the side-eye every time you think something doesn't add up, and that's not healthy, not to mention miserable. And life is just too short to constantly be wondering what he's doing when you're not around.Whatever you do, just don't go all Lynn Whitfield from A Thin Line Between Love & Hate on him, girl. Nothing is worth you going to prison for.

Information in this blogpost found online at:

 http://www.marieclaire.com/sex-love/advice/a3155/emotional-physical-cheating/

http://www.webmd.com/sex-relationships/features/emotional-cheating-guilty#