Emotional Affairs While in a Relationship: Can My Marriage Survive It?
Relationships are intricate tapestries woven with threads of love, trust, and commitment. But what happens when a thread unravels, not due to a physical infidelity, but an emotional affair? A new question arises: Can your marriage survive an emotional affair, and how?
Esteemed relationship therapist Esther Perel once insightfully remarked, “Love is messy; infidelity, more so. But it is also a window, like none other, into the crevices of the human heart.” Perel’s stance on emotional affairs acknowledges the complexity of the human experience, as she delves deeper into why these affairs happen and how they can be mended.
But first, let’s decipher what an emotional affair actually is. Unlike a physical affair, an emotional affair involves forming a deep emotional bond with someone outside your relationship, a bond that may or may not be sexual. This can include sharing personal thoughts or emotions that should ideally be shared with the partner. It often leads to the establishment of intimacy, a sense of betrayal, and the erosion of trust.
Why do emotional affairs occur? Perel suggests it often stems from an unfulfilled need. It could be a desire for emotional intimacy, excitement, novelty, or even just the urge to feel desired. The person embarking on an emotional affair isn’t necessarily seeking to replace their partner, but more to reclaim a lost part of themselves.
Emotional affairs certainly rupture relationships, creating a wound that is often harder to heal than those of physical affairs. As Perel emphasizes, “When you love someone, you have a lot of shared history. It’s not just about losing your partner. It’s about losing your history.” The emotional affair rewrites this shared history, leading to a breach in trust and secure attachment.
As daunting as it may sound, couples therapy can be instrumental in recovering from an emotional affair. Psychobiological Approach to Couple Therapy (PACT) creator Stan Tatkin provides a useful perspective on how to repair these ruptures. According to Tatkin, it’s crucial to move towards creating a secure-functioning relationship where both parties understand their mutual responsibility for one another’s safety and security.
A secure-functioning relationship, as Tatkin describes, is characterized by a number of key principles. This includes fairness and justice, sensitivity towards each other’s needs, the ability to repair quickly after conflict, and maintaining a shared sense of reality. It also includes protecting each other in public and private, keeping each other informed about all things that can affect the couple, and staying focused on distressing issues until they are resolved.
At The Love, Sex, and Gender Center, our couples therapy sessions utilize techniques drawn from both Perel and Tatkin’s approaches to foster resilience and help couples reinvent their relationships post an emotional affair.
Our therapists aid in creating an environment conducive to open conversation and understanding, giving each partner the chance to express their feelings, frustrations, and fears. We delve into the unmet needs, trying to unpack the underlying reasons behind the emotional affair.
Moreover, couples therapy allows partners to navigate through the pain, guiding them to rebuild trust. Tatkin emphasizes the importance of a ‘couple bubble’, where partners ensure the safety of each other, creating a shield against external threats. The goal here is to regain a sense of security and attachment that was lost in the wake of the affair.
Emotional affairs are undoubtedly complex. The journey to recovery is neither linear nor easy. But it is possible. As Perel so eloquently puts it, “Affairs have a lot to teach us about relationships—what we expect, what we think we want, and what we feel entitled to.”
At The Love, Sex, and Gender Center, we strive to explore these expectations, these desires, and these entitlements in our couples therapy sessions. We believe that it’s not about the journey back to how things were, but rather the journey forward to how things could be – a relationship with renewed trust, deeper intimacy, and stronger bonds.
Visit us at www.lovesexangendercenter.com, and take the first step towards healing and rediscovering the resilience of your relationship. Because sometimes, the most profound growth stems from the deepest wounds.
