Infidelity: Not Just Adultery

Many people believe that infidelity only involves cheating on your spouse physically, but it can be so much more. It is also possible to cheat on your spouse emotionally and this is perhaps an even worse form of cheating. Cheating on your spouse emotionally can come in two forms: attached and detached. Detached emotional cheating involves fantasy; the cheating spouse will look at other people or images of other people and desire to be with them. They will not act on any of their thoughts, but this causes them to become distant from their spouse as they long for the fantasy and not reality.

Attached emotional cheating is probably the worst form of cheating. It involves another person whom the cheating spouse actually knows and spends a lot of time with. They become incredibly close with this person and start to go for them for support, advice, comfort, and other things that they should be going to their spouse for. Now this does not happen all at once. It is a slow process, but one that takes place on a very slippery slope. It typically starts out with the cheating spouse befriending someone of the opposite gender. They may do so through work, church, school, Facebook, etc. They may have met this person before or after they were married. It really does not matter how, when, or why they are friends with this person, what matters is that they spend alone time, or perhaps text regularly, with this friend of the opposite sex and begin forming bonds that really should only be shared with their spouse. After all, isn't that how must marriages begin? With two people talking and getting to know one another, one on one, in person and over text? Your spouse is supposed to be your best friend, whom you share everything with, so having someone who is not your spouse filling this role, is emotionally cheating on them. Even if you do not realize it.

That is the most dangerous part of emotional cheating; often times people do not even realize they are doing it. It is not so obvious like adultery is. When you are doing physical, sexual things with someone who is not your spouse, you are bound to realize that this is wrong. However, when you go and get lunch, one on one, with a coworker of the opposite sex, you may think you aren't doing anything wrong. You may think they are just a friend and it does not mean anything, but to your spouse it absolutely does. They deserve your undivided affection and emotional support.

Now the question is, how do you avoid emotional cheating when most of the time it is not obvious? The first step is to build your marriage on loyalty and commitment. If you are loyal and committed to your spouse and nobody else, you will not find yourself vulnerable to cheating. You also must love them with all or your heart, might mind, and strength. Someone who is totally and completely in love with their spouse would not even consider cheating on them and so they would be more aware if they were to find themselves emotionally cheating. Better yet, they would not find themselves in such a situation to begin with. Finally one of the best things, albeit also one of the hardest things, you can do when you get married is cut out all friendships with those of the opposite gender. If you have no friends of the opposite gender, there is no vulnerability to having your friendship with that person become stronger than your friendship with your spouse.

Your marriage should be the most important thing in the world to you and if it is, you will not be afraid to do everything you can to avoid not only physical, but also emotional infidelity.