8 Unmissable Signs Of Emotional Cheating You Should Never Overlook

We hear a lot about physical cheating, but what is emotional cheating? And, why does it feel like your world has come crashing down?

Cheating in any form is devastating. It takes your trust and rips it into shreds. It causes you to question every single moment of your relationship. It makes you reassess how you feel about yourself and how you feel about love in general. Put simply, it has the power to completely ruin someone’s life.

The problem is that the line between what one person classes as cheating and what someone else considers to be cheating, can often be extremely blurry. You might think that kissing is cheating, but your partner might think that’s fine as long as no sex is involved. This is why so many issues arise.

One of the blurriest issues of them all is emotional cheating. What is emotional cheating and how can it be one of the most devastating types of cheating?

Now, I should point out that I’m certainly not deeming physical cheating as not as devastating. It is. It’s terrible. However, when someone forms an emotional attachment to someone else, it has the power to question the love you shared to an even greater degree. Someone can have sex and not feel a thing, but when emotions are there, that’s when serious questions arise.

# Sharing secrets with the other person

When you talk to the other person about things you haven’t even told your partner, that’s questionable. Of course, you don’t have to tell your partner every single thought that pops into your mind. But if you feel the need to share something with another person and it’s not your partner, why do you want to do that? What makes you not want to tell your partner?

# Irritability with their partner

A person who seems happy when they’re around the other person but super irritable with their partner, is probably cheating in an emotional way. Put simply, they want to be around the other person and spending time with their partner is jeopardizing that.

# They cancel plans to spend time with the other person

Cancelling plans happens sometimes, but it should only be for a good reason. Someone who is cancelling plans with their own partner, only to do things with the other person, should probably look up ‘what is emotional cheating’ in a dictionary.

In this case, they’re putting the needs of the other person before their partner’s, and they have to ask themselves why they think that’s okay.

# They make contact with the other person ‘out of hours’

There are certain times which are for couples. This could be late at night, early in the morning, in the middle of the night, on date nights, and on vacations together. If someone is messaging and texting another person constantly during those times, or hiding their communication during those times, you have to ask why. It’s a clear sign of emotional cheating because they’re not ‘in the moment’ with their partner.

# They talk about their relationship in negative terms with the other person

There is never an excuse for talking negatively about a partner with someone else. If you have issues with your partner, talk to them and try and solve them. When a partner talks to another person and ‘badmouths’ their partner, explaining what’s wrong and why it’s not working, are they doing so because they’re trying to make it look like they could be available?

# They’re hiding messages from the other person

If nothing is going on, there’s no reason to hide messages, right?

If someone is hiding messages from a particular person, it’s because there’s something clearly going on between them. It doesn’t have to be physical, but they feel their connection important enough to hide from their partner and probably because they know how it would make them feel.

# They start to compare their partner and the other person

If you want to know what is emotional cheating, this is the biggest definition. When someone starts to compare their partner to someone they’re spending a lot of time with so-called platonically, something has changed. It means they’re looking at the other person in a different way, and there’s nothing platonic about it.

# They’re detached and moody

They simply don’t want to be around their partner, and they want to be around the other person. This is devastating for their partner because they have no idea what they’ve done wrong or what is going on with the other person.

If they have a suspicion of something going on between the two, it can be even more upsetting because they start to put two and two together. Put simply, they’ve checked out emotionally and they’re extremely detached as a result.