Cheating can be sexual and emotional

Cheating may not mean just sneaking in and out of the hotel. Your husband’s friend has just phoned again-for the third time this week. While you’re slaving away in the kitchen or putting the kid to bed, you hear them laughing on the telephone and your hackles rise. Are you being unreasonable and petty, as you know they are only friends and nothing more?

Not really. When your spouse starts keeping others company and his interest is diverted elsewhere, it is perfectly normal to feel betrayed in some way. Infidelity is not necessarily only sexual – it can be emotional too and yes, this can make a marriage suffer. A strong emotional connection between your spouse and a friend/colleague, with whom lots of emotional intimacies are shared, will eventually drive a wedge between spouses, whether there is a sexual relationship between them or not. Very strong emotional attachments elsewhere could be very dangerous for your relationship or marriage. Is there much to choose between emotional infidelity and sexual infidelity or is one worse than the other?