An emotional affair is a heart-wrenching experience for any person to go through. It is hard to imagine the person that you love finding solace and comfort with another woman, even if it never reached a physical level. You find yourself consumed with emotions ranging from sadness to hurt to anger to guilt and everyone in between, and what’s worse is that you can be made to feel as though you are the one overreacting simply because your guy feels like he did nothing wrong since he did not physically assert himself with the other woman. When you talk to other women about this sinking feeling of betrayal, you are met with similar attitudes. Women who have experienced infidelities tend to scoff at your pain with phrases like “At least he didn’t actually cheat on you!” or other equally hurtful phrases, while women who have not walked in these shoes at all look at you as though you are incapable of understanding that platonic friendship exists, and must be some kind of clingy, overbearing wife or girlfriend who doesn’t “allow” her partner to have friends of the opposite sex.

First, if this applies to you, let me assure you that you are not, by any means, overreacting. Nor are you overbearing or clingy. Emotional affairs may not get the widespread acknowledgement that physical affairs receive, but it doesn’t make them any less painful or difficult to recover from. While identifying an emotional affair (EA) is harder because boundaries are often so loosely defined in relationships and can be so dependent on individuals’ comfort levels, there are still some tell-tale signs that your husband or boyfriend is caught up in an EA.

As I mentioned, individual comfort levels play a huge role in what is and isn’t acceptable as far as boundaries in relationships, so you will have to first really understand what your personal boundaries are. What are you comfortable with your boyfriend or husband participating in when it comes to female friends? Are phone calls and texts okay on a regular basis? If so, is there a line that can be crossed into too many calls or texts? Are you okay with your guy meeting a female friend for lunch or to hang out without you present? If so, are there guidelines that may apply to that rule as far as to what they are doing or where they are hanging out? These, along with many other questions, are ones that are rarely discussed in relationships, much less defined, and may not ever come up until there is an issue. It’s important to be honest with yourself, as well as your partner about how you feel about boundaries, and let him know what is “too much” for you. By discussing these when you first notice those pangs of jealousy over his female friend, you can be certain that he is aware of what has caused the initial jealousy, as well as what is likely to cause further problems in the future. Hopefully, this can halt the descent into the affair in the first place.

If you have had a long talk with your partner about your discomfort, and there are still things about the female friend nagging at you, it could be that he has already started on the slippery slope to an emotional affair with his friend. You may notice that he brings up his female friend frequently in conversation with you. Maybe you were watching TV and a commercial about pizza came on, and your partner makes a comment about his friend liking pizza, or has a funny story to tell about her and pizza. Of course, once in a while, this is going to happen. We all mention our friends in conversation. But, one of the first signs that a guy has become enamored with a girl is that he talks about her all the time. Remember when you first started dating, and you found a way to mention his name to your friends and family at every possible opportunity? That is usually a sign that he’s starting to really “dig” his friend, even if he isn’t fully aware of it at that point.

Another sign is that he may start caring a little more about his appearance when he is going to see her. Maybe he takes an extra few minutes choosing clothes for work, or styling his hair. It’s natural to care more about his appearance to her if he is beginning to develop feelings for her. It could also be a signal to you that he’s having an emotional affair with the woman.

Does it seem like you hear the words “we’re just friends” a little too often? If there is nothing more than friendship between two people, there is no need to justify that by constantly reiterating that. You might point out to him that you have male friends that you have never once had to remind him are “just your friends”. He probably feels guilty about the time he is spending with her, or realizes that he is developing feelings for her despite not having that intention, and is being defensive, not only to you, but to himself. Sometimes it isn’t just you that he has to convince of that he and this woman are “just friends”.

As the relationship escalates, he will find it important to spend more time with her, and make it a point to do so. In fact, you can tell that he looks forward to the time that they share together, even if it interferes with quality time that the two of you would normally have. He will take her calls, no matter what he is doing with you at the time, even leaving the room “so he can hear” or so that he “isn’t bothering you with the call”. He probably has several excuses disguised as reasons as to why it’s important he be a good friend to her at this point in her life. She may be down on her luck, or going through a rough time and he will insist that she “has nobody else to talk to” and that he’s just “being a good friend” and “trying to help her”. It’s okay for him to want to help a friend, but it shouldn’t be an all day every day endeavor that takes away from your relationship.

By the time you are raising questions and complaints about his attachment to his friend, he’s probably already showing the signs mentioned, and becomes irritated, or even angry with you for questioning his intentions. You may notice him becoming more secretive with his phone, perhaps changing the password that you have always known and refusing to share it, hiding the screen when he texts, and even deleting call logs and text messages between him and her. He is probably also keeping secret the amount of time that they are spending together. This can include emails, phone calls, texts, or even meetings that he has kept from you. It could be that he is becoming “addicted”, in a sense, to the emotional high he gets from spending time with her, or even to the feeling of “getting away with something”.

With so much energy being invested in another person, you probably feel your partner’s disconnected from you. He could be relishing in the fantasy of this other person, or inadvertently putting you off in order to make time for her, but either way, it is affecting the connection that you two once had. If he’s not discussing his days with you anymore, or coming to you with his stresses, and seems detached from you emotionally, physically, or both, then he is more than likely having his needs met elsewhere. He may also seem agitated or irritable when you bring your daily stresses to him because of the extra energy he needs to be the sounding board for both you, and her. This can cause him to seem overly critical of you, especially if you say anything negatively about his friend.

This is when it’s important to really trust your gut instinct. If something is amiss in your relationship, you will know. If his behavior has completely changed, or his mannerisms are not at all what you are familiar with, then you are going to notice. Even if nothing in your daily routine has really changed, there is an obvious feeling of distance that nags at you, and you have to confront the situation. It’s as simple as letting him know that you don’t feel as close to him as you did before she entered his life, but you can’t continue to ignore it. The sooner you open the discussion with him, the sooner you will be able to discuss the issues and clear the air between you, and either make strides toward repairing and rebuilding your relationship, or dissolving it.

You’re not losing your mind or overreacting. You know your partner better than anyone, and you can see the subtle changes taking place in front of you. You sense that he has not been completely himself around you, you start to find out that you’re no longer the first to hear about his day, and he seems to lash out at you for even asking for his time, all uncharacteristic for the man who professes to love you, and has been by your side for years!

It takes a combination of these signs to really conclude that an emotional affair is the problem. Be sure that you have the reasons why you believe your partner is becoming, or already involved in an emotional affair, and stick to your guns when you confront him about the “other woman”. Dealing with his initial reaction may be extremely difficult, and frustrating, because, as I mentioned, often times, the slope has already caused a slip, but he hasn’t yet realized that he’s actually sliding down the spiral yet. You may face a stubborn, unmoving person at first, who feels like you are acting too jealous for no reason because she is “just a friend”. You have to be prepared to discuss the lack of connection between the two of you, and you have to be ready to really sit down and go over all the things that have led you to the conclusion that he is replacing you, at least in some sense, with this other person, and why the rejection is hurtful to you, as well as extremely damaging to your relationship.

In some cases, an EA is worse than a physical affair, especially when it comes to a man having the affair on his wife or girlfriend, whereas, a woman who has been guilty of an infidelity will be more pressured about physical acts of intimacy. For men, their jealousy lies in sexual contact, or physical intimacy, and it is harder for them to recover from an affair that has been physical. For women, it is harder to get past the feeling that another person could take our place in any capacity for our partner. Speaking from personal, very recent experience, I think I would rather my husband have actually had sex with his co-worker/friend, than to replace me as his sounding board or go-to person to talk to, and to take precious time away from our marriage, especially with his job being so time consuming at the time that our time together was very minimal. I will share more of my personal story in a later article in this series.

Knowing what to look for, and understanding that your feelings are natural and it’s OKAY to feel hurt, betrayed, or even devastated are perfectly normal. Everything you would expect to feel from an actual physical affair will consume you over an EA, just as badly, if not worse, because of the many breaches in your trust over simply talking to, or hanging out with a girl that he wasn’t being physically intimate with. The next step is dealing with the confrontation that you must have with him in order to bring it to his attention, and resolve the problem.

*(For more about dealing with the confrontation, please read the next article in this series!)