What Is Emotional Cheating? How to Spot This Painful Type of Infidelity?

We tend to think of cheating as sexual, whether it’s a one-night stand, virtual sex, or an ongoing affair. But in committed love relationships, “cheating” isn’t always about a sexual encounter, secret flirtation. Fundamentally, it’s about breaching trust.

“Emotional cheating” is a particular type of secretive, nonstop closeness with someone who isn’t your main partner. It’s one person making an independent decision to cultivate nonsexual intimacy with someone other than their main romantic partner in a way that weakens or undermines the relationship.

Many see this type of connection as having an erotic factor to it. Though there often can be an underlying romantic or erotic energy in emotional cheating, it can also occur without the element of romance present. I’ve talked with couples who feel “emotionally cheated on” by partners who share too much with friends, work colleagues, or even family members. Nonetheless, they’ve experienced it as “emotional cheating” because their partners have engaged in an inappropriately deep, sustained closeness with someone else in a way that excluded them.

Because this type of cheating can look “healthy” from the outside, it can be hard to name and confront: non-erotic emotional cheating a powerful spiritual friendship with a pastor or teacher, an idealized mentor with whom you have an ongoing passionate phone exchange about poetry or art, flattering DMs from a well-known business coach on Instagram that have been getting increasingly personal. The advent of the internet and the abundance of ways to connect with people all over the world has opened up the number of channels available for different forms of cheating to take place outside of a primary relationship.

Many who cultivate this type of closeness defend it with phrases like, “They’re just friends,” or “They listen to me when you’re too busy.” For this reason, emotional cheating can go undetected while silently tapping energy away from a relationship and leaving you and your partner disconnected.

How to know if someone is emotionally cheating.

One way to “identify” whether you or your partner are engaging in emotional cheating is to look at the impact. Does the outside connection strengthen or weaken your bond with your partner? Does the intimacy you have with someone else a co-worker, Facebook friend, trainer at the gym support your closeness with your partner or erode it?

Another way of assessing whether emotional cheating may be taking place—particularly if you’re the one doing it—is to tune in to how you feel. Does this outside person temporarily relieve a sense of loneliness but leave you feeling lonelier in the long run? Is your closeness with them something you crave—like a sugar fix—that comes with a lingering sense of guilt when you get home to your significant other?