# Emotional infidelity ? it's worse



## David Baxter PhD (Nov 25, 2008)

Emotional infidelity ? it's worse
by SARAH HAMPSON, _The Globe and Mail_
March 13, 2008 

In her fitted pale blue jacket, a double strand of pearls at her neck, Silda Wall Spitzer looked crestfallen as she stood beside her husband, New York Governor Eliot Spitzer, while he made a public apology in Manhattan on Monday after being named as Client 9 in a high-end prostitution ring. 

Bad as the news was, and it was a devastating blow to his career and to the couple's family life, it could have been worse for her. 

He could have been engaged in an emotional affair. 

Emotional infidelity is a relationship in which you are involved in an intercourse of words. There is no sex. You are getting naked only with your feelings. It may feel harmless, but counter to what common wisdom would suggest, it is far more painful for the wronged spouse.

"As a marriage counsellor, I have an easier time healing a couple where someone has had a one-night stand than in a situation where someone is having an emotional affair and never had sex with the person," says M. Gary Neuman, a psychotherapist in Florida and author of several books, including the Oprah-endorsed Emotional Infidelity.

The prevalence of emotional affairs is unquantifiable - who is going to admit to something they feel is harmless? But many therapists suggest that the Internet age of easy online communication encourages people to seek and find emotional outlets outside their marriages. The workplace can also promote emotionally intimate relationships.

"The trend has been that the more women are out in or connected to the world, the more likely they are to have affairs of any kind," says Mira Kirshenbaum, a couples therapist, author and clinical director of the Chestnut Hill Institute in Boston, whose new book, When Good People Have Affairs, will be published this spring. "Women are more likely to have emotional affairs than men, because for many women emotional connection precedes sexual connection," she adds.

Some therapists warn about the dangers of the emotional affair by pointing to the secrecy that can be involved. Say you encountered an old flame online and started a torrid 

e-mail exchange with him, would you be likely to tell your spouse? The very act of keeping something from the other in a marriage suggests there is something shameful or wrong. 

But a far more damaging effect of an emotionally intense liaison is the energy that is drained from your marriage, says Mr. Neuman, a husband and father of five. Secrecy is not the issue, he explains. One spouse could know of the existence of the "special friend" and still be devastated to discover how much emotional entanglement exists. 

"What people need to understand is that we only have so much emotional energy, and the more emotional energy put outside the marriage, the less emotional energy we have within our marriage. It's a simple equation. Once the balance has shifted to where it seems that the majority of your emotional self is outside the marriage and the immediate family, as in spouse and children, then you are playing with fire." 

The stress of modern life in a dual-career family, especially when there are children, minimizes the time couples spend with each other, which in turn encourages emotional attachments elsewhere. "It becomes easier to be overwhelmed and never stopping to be really connected to our spouses," Mr. Neuman says.

Mr. Spitzer - a 48-year-old father of three - had the ultimate in what is termed "meaningless sex." It was purely transactional, only worth the thousands he paid for it. When informed by the booking agent for the Emperors Club VIP that Kristen would be the woman who would come to his room at Washington's Mayflower Hotel on Feb. 13, he is reported to have responded, "Great, okay, wonderful."

And then, investigators said, he asked to be reminded what the petite, pretty, 5-foot-5 and 105-pound American looked like. If he had had an assignation with her before, or perused her picture on the club's website, clearly he could not remember. He apparently didn't care who would be his pre-Valentine treat. 

"Meaningless sex is a problem. Don't get me wrong," Mr. Neuman says. "But it's far easier for the wife to get over it than if she thinks her husband is in love with another person. And it's easier for the guy, too. He can move on and stop the behaviour more easily than when he is in love with someone else." 

Thankfully, when sex is involved, there's the required admission of guilt, which can be cathartic. The cheater gets to express remorse. The wife, in this case, can try to understand why he did it. 

"The pain goes down because it becomes more just about the sexual content. It's the emotional content that really hurts," Mr. Neuman says. To recover, the spouse who was sexually unfaithful should tell the other "how and when he did it ... and details that would help her feel secure in the future." The rebuilding of trust may require the one who cheated to make himself or herself available constantly by cellphone. 

An emotional affair is far more difficult to verify and police. What counts as evidence? More than half an hour a day of conversation? Up to three e-mail exchanges a night? An added problem is that the spouse who worries that the other is too emotionally engaged with a member of the opposite sex may not want to force a confrontation about the relationship, out of fear of appearing jealous.

Reportedly, Ms. Spitzer was encouraging her husband of 20 years not to resign his position when he was hunkered down in their Manhattan apartment earlier this week, trying to decide on a course of action. Perhaps she understands the significance of his transgression. 

After all, in her husband's infidelity, it wasn't his heart he unzipped. It was just his fly.


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