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Emotional vs. Physical Affairs: Are They Equally Damaging?

Stanley Parker
5 min readNov 30, 2024

I’ll never forget the night my friend Angel called me, her voice shaking. “I just found out he’s been texting her for months,” she said. Her husband wasn’t physically involved with anyone else — not yet, anyway — but those messages hurt her just the same. That got me thinking: Are emotional affairs just as damaging as physical ones?

Emotional vs. Physical Affairs

What Are Emotional Affairs?

An emotional affair happens when someone forms a deep, intimate bond with someone outside their relationship.

Think about it this way: if your partner is sharing their secrets, dreams, or struggles with someone else, you might start to feel left out.

It’s not always about physical attraction. Sometimes, it’s just about finding emotional comfort elsewhere.

Take John’s story, for example. He wasn’t meeting up with his coworker, but their constant texts about his personal life made his wife feel ignored.

She said, “It’s like he saved his best self for her and left me with the scraps.”

Ouch, right?

Signs of an Emotional Affair:

  1. Frequent secret communication — texts, emails, or calls.
  2. Hiding details about conversations with…

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Stanley Parker
Stanley Parker

Written by Stanley Parker

I write about Relationships, Love and Growth. Enjoying my articles? You can support my writing by buying me a coffee at https://buymeacoffee.com/stanpark

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