If you thought the only way you could be labelled as a cheater is if you slept with some other woman, then allow us to introduce you to the concept of emotional infidelity. An increasingly common phenomenon in today’s multi-cultured workplaces, the term is used to signify having a deep connection with someone, even if its platonic, other than your partner.
Consider this: Your female colleague is the first person you confide your deepest worries or your latest hobby before you share it with your partner because you feel your colleague understands you better. Or that your female colleague’s problems connect with you deeper than that of your partner. If you identify with any of these signs, then you well might be cheating on your partner emotionally. Still confused?
This is potentially dangerous to your relationship even though there is no physical act involved. Because we are judged by our intentions, your partner will eventually feel that you disconnected from your relationship by sharing an emotional zone of comfort with someone other than her. Mind you, she has every right to feel slighted. Relationships comes with the pact of sharing the deepest insecurities and caring for the partner more than anyone else. If you fail in doing either, then your emotional infidelity can be easily established.
Most men, especially Indian men, do not understand the hoopla around this. If they help their female colleagues regularly without making them feel insecure, they expect to be given awards of chivalry and be seen as a safe guy. But if have effectively turned your female colleague into an office wife then it is difficult to justify your faithfulness to your real wife.
Men need to understand that women expect them to be emotionally available all the time. She will tolerate your physical imperfections because those come second to her. Your mind and state of mind both must belong to her. This is why emotional infidelity may be harder to forgive than physical infidelity. Because a woman can understand the sudden desire for sex and the sense of macho achievement it gives to her man but she will never be ever to fathom why her guy drifted away from her mentally.
A physical connection lasts a few minutes if it’s a one-off thing but an emotional bond takes time to cultivate. Men look at their female colleagues as buddies or friends and start sharing intimate stuff that eventually leads them down the road to emotional infidelity. Because the lines in such a relationship are difficult to draw as compared to a physical encounter, most men tend to get carried away into this sort of infidelity pretty quickly.
Here are a few signs that you watch out for that indicate your emotional infidelity –
- You begin to trust your female colleague more than your partner
- You crack jokes with each other and are comfortable in each other’s company
- You are not craving to sleep with your colleague but cannot imagine her taking a day off
- You feel grumpy and disinterested on the days she does not come to work
- You secretly wish she had met you earlier and you two could be living together
- You care for her needs more deeply than anyone else
- You protect her from fire from all sides at work even if she’s guilty
- You get irritated when colleagues good-humouredly rib you off about her
Gentlemen, if forewarned is forearmed, then this article will have made a case for itself by now. Emotional commitment is the most important thing in a relationship. Do not stray and give it to anyone else apart from your partner.
Arrange by dearJulius.com Team
