Emotional Affairs: What Are the Clues?

What do you need to watch out for when you suspect that your partner is having an emotional affair with someone?

The following is a compilation of information gathered from the comments on the newsletter received by our subscribers – men and women –  who have experienced and observed the changes in their partners as they went through emotional affairs, as well as from their emails and responses to the various articles and blogs posted on our website.

And here is what they had this to say about clues to emotional affairs:

1. My husband started coming home late a lot. (This is one of the most common clues of emotional affairs.)

2. Our sex life changed. It wasn’t what it used to be.

3. We started having fights and arguments over little things.

4. I noticed that she pulls away when I try to kiss her or touch her.

5. She started to make more of an effort with her appearance and clothing for work.

6. Another common clue of emotional affairs that almost everyone experienced: He would get phone calls late at night and he would always answer them in a different room. The calls usually lasted for hours.

7. He set up a password on his computer, and there were files that I couldn’t view.

8. My wife always had excuses to get out of the house, usually at nights and during the weekends.

9. He suddenly started to work more and more, or always had a work-related outing he had to go to.

10. I was shocked when he said all of a sudden that he “cares for me a lot but isn’t in love with me anymore.”

So have you experienced any of these things recently from your partner? Or is he or she doing something else that you just find odd? What other clues of emotional affairs can you add to the list that you think is important and that people have to watch out for? And what should you do when you notice these changes from your partner? Don’t hesitate to leave your comments or thoughts.

Keeping Secrets: Why They Can Ruin a Marriage

Is it alright for you to be keeping secrets from your partner? In what instances or situations is it okay to do so? And in when is it not? Read on to see why secrets in a marriage can break the trust you’ve worked hard to build, and what you can do to fix it.

Keeping secrets from your partner, no matter how little you think they are, can be very damaging to your relationship. Which means that you have to be very, very careful about this.

Most of the time, your partner will be able to sense that you are keeping secrets, or at least something, from him or her anyway, and although he or she may not ask you directly what it is, there could be hints that will be sent your way asking you to divulge whatever it is that you are hiding. And the more you avoid answering or divulging what it is, the more your partner will suspect you of doing something wrong, and he or she will start losing trust in you.

Usually in extramarital affairs, what hurts your partner most is the fact that you betrayed his or her trust, kept things from him or her and lied constantly to cover things up. These things — the keeping of secrets — more than the fact that you had sex with another person, is what is most damaging for relationships.

But this does not mean that you have to talk about every single detail of your affair with your partner, that you have to describe in full detail what you and the other person did, where, when and how. No, it does not mean that at all. Your partner may ask you to reveal some details of the affair but you don’t have to be very specific about it.

What you need to do, though, is to resolve these things and find a way to forgive yourself because it’s the first thing you need to do before you can really move forward with your relationship.

After the Affair: Barriers in Saving the Marriage

What do you need to know to save the marriage after the affair?

Rebuilding a marriage after the affair is very difficult, even with all of the information you can have, because no matter how much you read on the matter, it will still be your personal barriers that will keep you from making any real changes.

The following are three most common barriers that people encounter while going through this situation after the affair:

1. Your partner refuses to open up and talk about the affair. You try to get him to talk, you ask questions, you try to peel back the layers your partner is hiding from, but you don’t get anywhere. And it seems that the more you ask about it, the more your partner pulls away. You have a hard time trusting him or her, or getting past the betrayal, because you imagine all these things that he or she did with the other person. And the worst part is that you don’t know for sure what happened because your partner refuses to answer your questions about it.

2. You are afraid. You’re scared to demand anything from your partner after the affair for whatever reason, and you try to stay out of his or her way. Maybe you don’t want him or her to feel pressured or stressed by you because you don’t want him or her to find comfort outside your marriage again. You only try to analyze what his or her actions mean and you are never sure if what you think is right or wrong. You keep your struggle inside rather than opening up to your partner what you really feel.

3. You are focused on the other person, and how he or she compares to you. You want to be able to be the person you were before the affair, but you’re just always unsure of yourself now. And it’s worse when your partner isn’t giving any indication of what he wants – whether it’s you or the other person – because it just makes it all the more confusing.