Is emotional infidelity cheating?
By CAROLYN SUSMAN
Cox News Service
Monday, August 15, 2005
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — Well, it was about time.
Were we really supposed to believe that the reason Jen and Brad split was that she didn’t want to have his babies?
Get real.
When Jennifer Aniston finally let her truth be known, she was honest: Brad Pitt “emotionally exited” the marriage months ago when he met Angelina Jolie.
Although Aniston chooses to believe there was no sexual relationship when her husband first met Jolie, she told Vanity Fair that he just wasn’t there for her anymore.
He was gone emotionally. He didn’t even attend the final taping of “Friends,” her long-running sitcom.
There’s a term for that kind of fracture — emotional infidelity.
Miami Beach psychotherapist M. Gary Neuman even wrote a book on the subject in 2002, “Emotional Infidelity” (Random House.)
“When we think ‘affair’ we think sex,” Neuman has said. “But an emotional affair can be just as dangerous to a marriage. When a spouse places his or her primary emotional needs in the hands of someone outside the marriage, it breaks the bond of marriage just as adultery does.”
Those fun e-mails you send to your friends and not your spouse? That could be emotional infidelity, even if the e-mail goes to someone you’re not emotionally involved with.
Why? Because, Neuman believes, you’re directing a special energy elsewhere that should go toward spicing up your marriage.
And you could also be opening the door to a romp on an African beach, which is where Pitt and Jolie eventually ended up.
But heck. The Internet has made emotional infidelity a daily occurrence for some because of easy access and relative secrecy. And so has the workplace — whether it’s an office or movie set. People have lots of opportunities to seek emotional comfort from the person at the next desk or from someone who shows up online at the same time each day.
With today’s technology, you can be “chatting” online with someone and using a Web cam while your spouse is in the kitchen dicing celery.
No big deal? Or is it?
“It was for me,” says Susan (not her real name) of West Palm Beach.
“I noticed we were talking less and less, especially about important issues. And he was spending more and more time on the computer and away from home.”
Eventually, she found copies of messages between her husband and his online “lover.” He swore they never met in person, but it was still devastating.
“He was telling her about me and I couldn’t take it,” she says.
Even though her husband said there had been no physical contact, that didn’t matter to her. She felt betrayed.
Like Brad Pitt, her husband was directing his emotional needs toward someone else and being less available to help and support his wife.
That’s the classic definition of an emotional affair, says Dr. Deborah Layton-Tholl, a psychologist.
“The person is making a decision to change their primary relationship, going from the spouse to someone else.
“The emotional affairs don’t have to become physical. If it’s interfering with the primary relationship, you can categorize it as an affair that can do harm. The other person in the marriage is feeling they’re being rejected.”
And secrecy is a magic ingredient in this mix, the way it would be with any affair.
That’s why author and therapist Neuman — who is also a rabbi — tells his wife of 18 years about everyone he meets or talks with. The couple have set specific rules to avoid falling into the emotional affair trap.
“You really do have to draw the line and talk about it openly with your spouse, what you are comfortable and uncomfortable with,” he says.
It’s hard to keep a marriage going, especially when there are difficulties. But when all the conversation at home is about bills, kids and money, and all the fun, fascinating stuff is being directed outside your relationship, you are cheating and your marriage is in trouble, Neuman says, whether or not there is any sex going on.
“It’s much more about what’s in the heart than the sex.” he points out.
Carolyn Susman writes for the Palm Beach Post.
