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The term emotional affair describes a type of relationship between people. The term often describes a bond between two people that mimics or matches the closeness and emotional intimacy of a romantic relationship while not being physically consummated. An emotional affair is sometimes referred to as an affair of the heart. An emotional affair may emerge from a friendship, and progress toward greater levels of personal intimacy and attachment.
Examples of specific behaviors include confiding personal information and turning to the other person during moments of vulnerability or need. However, nearly all friendships serve these roles to some degree. The intimacy between the people involved usually stems from a friendship with confidence to tell each other intimate aspects of themselves[ clarification needed ], their relationships, or even subjects they would not discuss with their partners. It is disputed whether this is inappropriate. Indeed, forbidding your partner from maintaining and participating in close friendships is a common feature of coercive control. High levels of platonic emotional intimacy in adults may occur without the participants being bound by other intimate relationships or may occur between people in other relationships as a normal course of life. [1]
An emotional affair can be defined as:
"A relationship between a person and someone other than (their) spouse that affects the level of intimacy, emotional distance and overall dynamic balance in the marriage. The role of an affair is to create emotional distance in the marriage." [2]
In this view, neither sexual intercourse nor physical affection is necessary to affect the committed relationship(s) of those involved in the affair. It is theorized that an emotional affair can injure a committed relationship more than a one night stand or other casual sexual encounters. [3]
Such closeness can also be a reaction to separate injury in the relationship, and indeed can be utilized to resolve the injury and heal the primary relationship.
Research by Glass & Wright found that men's extramarital relationships were more sexual and women's more emotional. For both genders, sexual and emotional extramarital involvement occurred in those with the greatest marital dissatisfaction. [4]
Chaste and emotionally intimate affairs tend to be more common than sexually intimate affairs. Shirley Glass reported in Not "Just Friends" that, among those who claim to have had an affair, 44% of husbands and 57% of wives indicated they had a strong emotional involvement with the subject of the affair without intercourse. [5]
In University of Chicago surveys conducted by the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) [6] between 1990 and 2002, 27% of people who reported being happy in marriage admitted to having an extramarital affair. The meaning and definition of what infidelity constitutes often varies depending on the person asked. Sexual feelings in an emotional affair may be denied to maintain the illusion that it is just a special friendship. Affair surveys are unlikely to explore what is denied. Many people in affair surveys are not honest with themselves nor with the interviewer. [7] [8] Along with the possibility of these phenomena being underrepresented, this raises the possibility that it is being overrepresented, and the actual prevalence may be lower than indicated.
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![]() | This section may be confusing or unclear to readers.(January 2022) |
This type of affair is often characterized by:
In Casanova's Chinese Restaurant , the composer Hugh Moreland, talking of an unlikely couple experiencing love at first sight, denies that they are having an affair: "You can have a passion for someone without having an affair. That is one of the things no one seems able to understand these days...one of those fascinating mutual attractions between improbable people that take place from time to time. I should like to write a ballet around it." [11]
The entrance of a therapist into a couple's dynamics may be problematic. It may be experienced by the non-client partner as the client having an emotional affair with the therapist if the client is perceived as granting the therapist a greater degree of intimacy and confiding than they grant the client's partner. [12] The tendency to create a mate-substitute out of the therapist may be especially acute in incest survivors. [13]
An internet relationship is a relationship between people who have met online, and in many cases know each other only via the Internet. Online relationships are similar in many ways to pen pal relationships. This relationship can be romantic, platonic, or even based on business affairs. An internet relationship is generally sustained for a certain amount of time before being titled a relationship, just as in-person relationships. The major difference here is that an internet relationship is sustained via computer or online service, and the individuals in the relationship may or may not ever meet each other in person. Otherwise, the term is quite broad and can include relationships based upon text, video, audio, or even virtual character. This relationship can be between people in different regions, different countries, different sides of the world, or even people who reside in the same area but do not communicate in person.
An affair is a sexual relationship, romantic friendship, or passionate attachment in which at least one of its participants has a formal or informal commitment to a third person who may neither agree to such relationship nor even be aware of it.
Romance or romantic love is a feeling of love for, or a strong attraction towards another person, and the courtship behaviors undertaken by an individual to express those overall feelings and resultant emotions.
Infidelity is a violation of a couple's emotional and/or sexual exclusivity that commonly results in feelings of anger, sexual jealousy, and rivalry.
Open marriage is a form of non-monogamy in which the partners of a dyadic marriage agree that each may engage in extramarital sexual or romantic relationships, without this being regarded by them as infidelity, and consider or establish an open relationship despite the implied monogamy of marriage. There are variant forms of open marriage such as swinging and polyamory, each with the partners having varying levels of input into their spouse's activities.
An open relationship is an intimate relationship that is sexually non-monogamous. The term is distinct from polyamory, in that it generally indicates a relationship where there is a primary emotional and intimate relationship between two partners, who agree to at least the possibility of sexual or emotional intimacy with other people.
An intimate relationship is an interpersonal relationship that involves physical or emotional intimacy. Although an intimate relationship is commonly a sexual relationship, it may also be a non-sexual relationship involving family or friends.
The triangular theory of love is a theory of love developed by Robert Sternberg. In the context of interpersonal relationships, "the three components of love, according to the triangular theory, are an intimacy component, a passion component, and a commitment component."
Couples therapy attempts to improve romantic relationships and resolve interpersonal conflicts.
Sexual jealousy is a special form of jealousy in sexual relationships, based on suspected or imminent sexual infidelity. The concept is studied in the field of evolutionary psychology.
John Mordechai Gottman is an American psychologist, professor emeritus of psychology at the University of Washington. His work focuses on divorce prediction and marital stability through relationship analyses. The lessons derived from this work represent a partial basis for the relationship counseling movement that aims to improve relationship functioning and the avoidance of those behaviors shown by Gottman and other researchers to harm human relationships. His work has also had a major impact on the development of important concepts on social sequence analysis. He and his wife, psychologist Julie Schwartz Gottman, co-founded and lead a relationship company and therapist training entity called The Gottman Institute. They have also co-founded Affective Software Inc, a program designed to make marriage and relationship counseling methods and resources available to a larger audience.
Self-disclosure is a process of communication by which one person reveals information about themselves to another. The information can be descriptive or evaluative, and can include thoughts, feelings, aspirations, goals, failures, successes, fears, and dreams, as well as one's likes, dislikes, and favorites.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to interpersonal relationships.
Extramarital sex occurs when a married person engages in sexual activity with someone other than their spouse.
A sexless marriage is a marital union in which little or no sexual activity occurs between the two spouses. The US National Health and Social Life Survey in 1992 found that 2% of married respondents aged 18 to 59 reported no sexual intimacy in the past year. Comparatively 92% of married respondents aged 65 to 80 reported no sexual intimacy in the past year. The definition of a non-sexual marriage is often broadened to include those where sexual intimacy occurs fewer than ten times per year, in which case 20 percent of the couples in the National Health and Social Life Survey would be in the category. Other studies show that 10% or less of the married population below age 50 have not had sex in the past year. In addition less than 20% report having sex a few times per year, or even monthly, under the age 40.
The social penetration theory (SPT) proposes that as relationships develop, interpersonal communication moves from relatively shallow, non-intimate levels to deeper, more intimate ones. The theory was formulated by psychologists Irwin Altman of the University of Utah and Dalmas Taylor of the University of Delaware in 1973 to understand relationship development between individuals. Altman and Taylor noted that relationships "involve different levels of intimacy of exchange or degree of social penetration". SPT is known as an objective theory as opposed to an interpretive theory, meaning it is based on data drawn from actual experiments and not simply from conclusions based on individuals' specific experiences.
Terminology within polyamory looks at the evolution and meaning of the word "polyamory" itself, as well as alternative definitions and concepts which closely relate to it.
A one-night stand or one-night sex is a single sexual encounter in which there is no expectation that there shall be any further relations between the sexual participants. It draws its name from the common practice of a one-night stand, a single night performance by an entertainer at a venue. The practice can be described as "sexual activity without emotional commitment or future involvement".
Sex surrogates, sometimes referred to as surrogate partners, are practitioners trained in addressing issues of intimacy and sexuality. A surrogate partner works in collaboration with a sex therapist to meet the goals of their client. This triadic model is used to dually support the client: the client engages in experiential exercises and builds a relationship with their surrogate partner while processing and integrating their experiences with their therapist or clinician.
Consensual non-monogamy (CNM), and its subset ethical non-monogamy (ENM), are the practice of non-monogamous intimate or sexual relations that are distinguished from infidelity by the knowledge and consent of those involved, and from polygamy by the various partners not being in a single marriage. Forms of consensual non-monogamy include swinging, polyamory, open relationships, cuckquean fetishism and cuckolding fetishism.