Rahul Mukherjee *, a 32-year-old advertising professor in Mumbai, remembers the moment he was having an emotional affair.
A couple of months ago, he was in bed with his wife. It was her birthday but she hated being disturbed at 12:00 AM, and he didn’t mind it so much because he was occupied texting this girl he had met at an art class. For the first impression, this girl was quite charming – polite, delicate hands, stunning hair and engulfed in mystery. They hit it off instantly but never in person. Just on text. Rahul recalls how their initial conversations felt safe, peppered with compliments and insane amounts of wit. But soon they were talking to each other about what they wanted from life, future plans, regrets. Suddenly, Rahul wanted to run to this girl and tell her about his day then his wife.
“It was the moment when I was awake texting this girl all night and the realization hit me that I never want my wife to see these texts, ever. I was consumed with guilt,” Mukherjee added.
Is this cheating then?
“Well, yes. It is possible to cheat on your partner without getting physically intimate with another person. It’s known as emotional cheating. And they can be as traumatic and disturbing as physical affairs,” Dr. Shilpi Kapoor, a marriage therapist in New Delhi, told Indiatimes.
Some couples consider flirting as cheating. Some who are in open relationships don’t have a problem with their partner having sex with multiple partners, till the time they don’t develop feelings for others. So how can we define emotional cheating?
“That’s tricky. Emotional cheating significantly differs from couple to couple and relationship to relationship. But mostly, if you feel guilty of hiding any conversations from your partner, you are not in the safe zone. Signs of emotional cheating are but not limited to, not mentioning your partner to your crush, constant communication via texts or phone calls at odd hours, the awareness that it’s not really friendly,” adds Kapoor.
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And how does emotional cheating feel?
“You know I would have probably forgiven my husband for sleeping with someone one time and never seeing her again. But what I can’t get out of my mind and heart is how he chose his mistress to provide him with comfort and not me. There’s not much to hold onto in a relationship after that,” Saina Mehra *, a 33-year-old, event manager, told Indiatimes.
Emotional cheating might not entail something that can be quantified, in comparison to a physical relationship. But developing an emotional connection with someone beyond your partner is a form of intimacy that transgresses physical intimacy anyway.
And Rahul Mukherjee* provides us with the perfect conclusion. “I used to comfort myself over how I never physically cheated on my wife. But after a few months, it hit me that emotionally cheating on her is probably worse than even a one night stand. It’s also so complicated to make anyone understand why our marriage fell apart.”