July 27, 2016 • 46 mins
When is it cheating if there's no sex or physical contact? Welcome to the murky world of emotional cheating. Cristen and Caroline confront its warning signs, hallmarks and social media minefield.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to stuff Mom Never told You From how Stuff
Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Kristen and I'm Caroline, and today we're talking about emotional cheating. Yeah, basically,
when that work spouse we talked about last time, maybe
(00:24):
things go a little too far. Or you've got a
friend that you start confiding in more and more and more,
and suddenly that friends starts looking more and more attractive. Yeah,
but you're not like getting naked together. You're but you're
just having these long, deep conversations and really connecting and
confiding and bonding and slowly abandoning your own relationship. I mean,
(00:48):
this is such a rich topic to talk about because
we have um a lot more emotional cheating capabilities than
we used to thanks to social media, which we'll get into,
but also because it's one of those areas in long
term relationships where you have to be so honest with
(01:10):
yourself because it's easy to make excuses to yourself or
to your partner, to whomever that Oh no, this isn't
problematic at all, because it's not like we're kissing, we
aren't having sex. We're just talking a lot. We're just
like going to lunch every day. I'm just kind of
in love with her. Oh no, it's fine. Yeah, I
(01:35):
mean there's a lot of self preservation delusion that goes
on during a lot of emotional affairs that keeps them going. Well.
This is also one of those things that comes up
all the time in terms of gender and cheating, the
whole uh assumption that men will be more jealous of
(01:58):
physical cheating, of someone having sex with another person, whereas
women are more jealous of emotional affairs. Um. And we'll
get into that some but let's go ahead and put
it out there. Do you are are you familiar with
emotional affairs? Do you know anyone who has had an
emotional affair? Um? A friend of mine, UM, a very
(02:20):
good friend of mine was in the danger zone a
couple of years ago her high school. She's married kids,
she's been married to the same guy for a long time,
been with him for for a long time since high school.
And a previous high school boyfriend resurfaced having some marriage trouble.
He reaches out to her. They start up like a
(02:42):
Facebook back and forth. Side note, and we will get
more into this in a little bit, but Facebook is
cited in a massive number of divorces. So anyway, I
knew that I had all my podcasting research in my
brain as she's telling me about this, and you know,
she's doing the the total stereotype, like everything's fine, We're
(03:04):
just talking all the time. This woman with her children,
with her full time job. She was literally like giving
up sleep to get into these long drawn out Facebook, email,
text conversations, not to mention, like on the phone conversations,
not only like counseling him as he was going through
this rough patch in his marriage, but like confiding in
(03:28):
him about a lot of stuff. And I was like,
you've got to You've got to stop. Like I know
that you're really happy to be back in touch with
someone from your past. He was a nice guy back
when we knew him. That was a long time ago. Um,
you guys are both married, and you you are confiding
really personal things in him that he doesn't need to know, frankly,
(03:48):
and um, she basically said that, well, just you know,
it feels good to talk talk to someone aside from
my husband about this stuff. And I mean if I
could have shown up at her house with like those
airplane direction wands and be like no, stop, go the
(04:08):
other way I would have um, and things eventually cooled down.
Luckily she and her husband are great and fine and
everything's fine. The other guy, uh, did end up having
an actual physical affair with someone else, leaving his wife
and now he's with a woman that he had an
affair with. Dangerous ound city totally. But yeah, that's that's
(04:31):
that that dangerous ledge of Like once you start forming
that intimate bond with someone else and add the excitement
of someone new, relatively, um, that's a recipe for disaster.
Oh yeah, I mean anecdotally, the emotional cheating that I've
witnessed tends to follow a very similar pattern of reconnecting
(04:52):
with an ex, whether you sought them out because they're
troubled waters in your own relationship, or it just happens
that you two ran into each other, whether offline or online.
And there's something about those particular kinds of reconnections with
an X that gets so dangerous so fast, because there
(05:15):
is that sense of a false sense of intimacy that
can arise where it's like, oh, I forgot I could
talk to you like I couldn't talk to anybody else.
And because as you're telling me this about your friend,
and how good it felt for her to say some
of those things to someone other than her husband. The
first thing I think is, well, where are your friends
(05:36):
who you didn't date where things couldn't get complicated? I mean,
she was talking to you. But obviously there's that satisfaction
that we derive from the attention that that exes can
give us. Not to say that emotional cheating only happens
between xes, but I'm just slam. I've seen it happen
(05:58):
a lot. Yeah, And I mean that's not to say
that people can never be friends with their exes. Obviously,
you know, obviously people can. Um, but that's that's just
dangerous water. Yeah, well, especially it all it seems to
hinge on motivation, where it's like if you're suddenly talking
to your X again and things just so happened to
(06:18):
be not so healthy at home, might be a red flag.
Just yeah, practice some self awareness, yeah, check in with yourself. Um.
So what are the hallmarks then, of emotional affairs versus
just having a close friendship, Because, like you said, it
is totally possible to be friends with your exes. If
(06:40):
you are straight, you should be able to have opposite
sex friendships ET cetera. But where does that line start
to get blurry? Well? All right, so here are some
things that hopefully should serve as an excellent uh blowing
up of any denial you're in. Um, So you avoid
(07:02):
telling your significant other about the person and your interactions,
which that sort of secrecy automatically makes you, guys a united,
automatically makes things a little more exciting. Uh. Do you
find yourself getting dressed up for that person, putting on
a little more makeup, doing your hair a little bit nicer?
Do you find yourself telling this other person about your day,
(07:24):
your frustrations, your hopes and dreams, your fears and anger, whatever,
rather than telling your significant other. And that's an important
one because a lot of psychologists and researchers that we
we read their stuff about this. We're saying that when
you share those deep thoughts and fears and etcetera, that
breeds this intimacy that can deepen those bonds and can
(07:46):
lead you, like my friend, to start feeling like perhaps
this person just gets you more than your significant other does,
and that would probably open the door to maybe confiding
in that person about your own relationship to satisfaction. And
then another moment to check yourself before you wreck yourself
(08:08):
or your relationship. You start comparing that person to your
significant other, so essentially like you're building an idealized version
of whoever this alleged friend is. Yeah, because you're already
in like total delusion land, it's easy to only see
the pros of someone rather than the cons as well. Um,
(08:31):
do you find yourself thinking obsessively about the person and
if you're like, well, no, I mean, of course, like
he's funny and like, you know whatever, Or do you
think obsessively about your friends like you, Caroline? I think
about you all the time, because I guarantee you, My
my friend who was going through all that was not
sitting around her house like obsessively thinking about when the
(08:52):
next email for me was going to come in. Um,
because frankly, I don't email that often anyway. Um. And
the whole thing of like, are you increasingly finding more
justifications for your behavior or for continuing the relationship? Um?
When you start feeling really defensive or entitled to this interaction,
(09:14):
that's probably a bit of a red flag as well. Yeah,
to pay attention to your own relationship either if you
need to get out of it, or get it working
again and get it together together people. UM. On the
flip side of that, if you are with someone that
you suspect might be engaged in this kind of emotional cheating,
(09:36):
what are what are the kinds of things that you
should pay attention to and kind of validate for yourself. Well,
one thing to pay attention to is are you starting
to feel crazy? And I don't, I mean, I say
that sounds really flipped, but like, are you starting to
feel as though something is just off and something feels wrong.
(09:59):
Maybe that your your spouse or significant others acting a
little differently and telling you nothing's wrong. That's called gas lighting. Um,
your gut doesn't lie. And so even if you start
to feel like something's off in your interaction, maybe ask
ask what's up? Um? And related to that is that
(10:19):
you sense your partner isn't himself around you. Maybe he
or she is getting something else from this person that
he's having an emotional affair with, and he can be
more playful with that person or more silly or more
serious whatever it is that he feels for whatever reason
that he's not getting with you. And then like, have
(10:41):
you ever been in the situation and this could totally
be innocent where you're like, well, how is your day, honey,
and the persons like, uh, I mean, I already told
Karen all about it. Karen. You're like, Karen, are you
telling Karen all about your day? I want to hear
about your day. I'm your person rudest response all your day? Well,
you know what I already told Karen, So I'm sick
(11:02):
of talking about it. Karen gets me. Just talk to Karen.
But it's the idea of like, oh, you already told
someone all about your frustrations and and whatever. You're not
and you're not confiding in me as much. And another
big thing is sex feeling detached UM. Diane Gerhardt, who's
a professor of marriage and family therapy at California State University,
(11:25):
told read Book magazine in April of that as the
intensity of the emotional connection with this other person builds,
it detracts from the emotional connection in your own marriage,
and that can't help but affect what goes on physically
and emotionally between you two. So there is a physical
element to emotional cheating, but it's with your person and
(11:48):
not this person who um you are becoming attached to
and if you start noticing that, Let's say, your person
keeps bringing up Karen comparing, you know, kind of in
a way of comparing everything you do to what Karen
does better. You know, like you know, Karen loves uh,
(12:11):
just loves hot dogs. Karen loves hot dogs. She can
eat so many of them. Yeah, she's she's basically like
a competitive food eater. Well yeah, red flag if you ever,
if your spouse ever talks about a co workers eating abbots,
you get to that therapist days that, Um, I don't
(12:31):
know what. On a serious note, I mean, it's those
kinds of things of you know, person makes a joke
and maybe you don't laugh, and then your person is like, well,
Karen thinks I'm funny. God, you know what, Karen, you
can just well, maybe Karen doesn't know that this is
going on. Maybe Karen's just like politely laughing. Yeah, maybe
(12:53):
she's obsessed with Karen. Maybe Karen's oblivion. Maybe we need
to warn Karen. We gotta talk to Karen. God, I'm sorry, Karen.
I didn't mean to judge you. Um, but so one
of my favorite resources in the world is, of course
a magazine. Of course, you know me, you know it's Sandwiches,
Corgis and OH magazine and Gail Salts, who's a therapist,
(13:16):
was writing a column about the danger zone that can
prompt an emotional affair or kind of push you over
that edge. And three sort of dangerous dangerous activities she
lists are flirting with other people because you can you
(13:36):
can get kind of hooked on that that high of
like the attention you get when you're flirting, unless that's
part of like you and your your person's No, that's good,
that's good if like you and your person are flirting, well, no,
I'm saying like, if if you and your person are
into flirting with other people right, well, but then that
that requires communication. And the whole thing with emotional infidelity
(13:58):
is that you're hiding it exactly. So if you are
flirting with others in an intoxicating, hidden secret fashion, stop
it uh to innocently spending time alone with old lovers,
that's that whole denial thing. And three hanging out with
(14:20):
emotional cheaters who kind of normalize that behavior. This is
the same thing Kristen and I have talked about before
when it comes to like kids in smoking or like
sexual activity from a young age or whatever, Like if
all your friends are doing it, you know, maybe you're
still not sure, but if everybody around you is doing it,
it seems more normal and acceptable, and like, oh, Jim's
(14:43):
getting away with it. Maybe Karen and I can go
sneak off and exchange text messages side by side. Yeah.
I mean in middle school, all my friends were emotionally
cheating left and right. I couldn't resist. Um, And there's
that of avoidance factor two. Like you said, I mean
communication A. I feel like it's the answer to every
(15:05):
relationship problem, whether not doing it or not doing it effectively. Um,
if you are avoiding talking about your issues and things
that you might feel are lacking in your relationship, that
can definitely backslide into finding someone who can be your
sounding board. It's hitting those rough patches in your own marriage.
(15:28):
And you sort of touched on this earlier in the
episode about you know you're hitting a rough patch. Maybe
you're feeling lonely or unfulfilled somehow. Um, maybe you're just
depressed and assumed that this is just how marriage is,
That there's not good communication and the other person gets
you less and less, and so rather than communicating with
(15:51):
your person, your significant other, you seek that fulfillment and
excitement elsewhere. And what's interesting is that Gayl Salts wrote
in a magazine that she's actually seeing more emotional infidelity
these days. A because, she says, we're so used to
being exposed to sexually suggestive material quote that there's no
(16:13):
longer an obvious verbal or physical line we think we're crossing.
So maybe that's that dangerous flirtation of like, stop stop
flirting with other people. Um. But B she says, we
are connected with others more than ever before, thanks to
technology and social media, So it's entirely possible that you
(16:33):
might have some sort of roster of xs or just
like people that you're kind of interested in on Facebook
or Twitter or whatever. Um, that you wouldn't necessarily be
keeping in mind if you weren't on social media. And
it's become so common that researchers call it remote and fidelity. Um.
And hello, here's a statistic that might surprise. Uh. It
(16:58):
seemed awfully high to me. A Wired magazine reported that
as many as fort of Tinder users aren't single. Now, granted,
that would technically include me. For an evening when I
was out with friends, one of whom was single, you know,
and so we all got on Tender like in solidarity,
and it was fun for for an evening. And then
(17:19):
I realized that my now husband was also on Tender,
and I was like, oh, no, we cannot do this.
He was on He got on Tinder that night. I
should say he hadn't. I didn't like find him on
Tinder lore, but I bet that happens, oh totally. Oh
and and the whole thing too, of online dating relationships
that start and then you go on some dates and
(17:42):
you go on to Okay, Cupid or Tinder to shut
down your account, and then see that they're still active
and you're like, what's up with this? Come on now?
But Facebook seems to be really the play ground of
remote infidelity. Yeah, well, because Facebook is supposedly so innocent,
(18:06):
like oh my gosh, here's like Johnny from middle school.
Here's Johnny um and like this is fine, right, I'm
just connecting with old classmates because oh there's Karen and
Jim and Johnny, this cast of characters. Thanks. Apparently they're
all like nineteen fifties Bobby Socks, here's or something. But
(18:26):
you know, Facebook, like your mom's on Facebook, your grandmother's
on Facebook. What's the heart well? And how often does
Facebook probably serve up those you might know? Oh god,
I wonder how many of those are my boyfriend's ex girlfriends,
because my boyfriend does get like you should be friends
with and it's like an x of mine and I
feel they need to apologize. You know, it's not my fault,
(18:48):
it's Facebook stupid algorithm. But thanks Facebook. So Facebook normalizes
and sets the expectation that you're going to keep in
touch with people from your past, and that you're going
to connect with acquaintances. You know, maybe there's someone who's
caught your eye in the office or whatever. But it's
totally normal to be Facebook friends, right when, in fact,
(19:12):
what you might be doing is setting up a back
burner so that if things turn south or if you
you know, if you are just kind of dissatisfied, you
feel like your relationship isn't a slump and your your
eye starts wandering, you might just innocently enough kind of
reconnect with some people on social media and have the
(19:33):
people on the back burner so that you can you
can leap straight from your old relationship is going down
into flames into at least someone else's bed, I think.
I mean, I have been a back burner. I years ago. Now,
there was this guy that I was really interested in,
and we flirted all the time and we talked about
(19:56):
hanging out, but like it never happened. And it was like,
why isn't he asking me out? We're both clearly interested
in each other. And I had like broached the subject
of hanging out and kind of never picked up on it.
But I still was like getting heavily flirted with, so
like all this cognitive dissonance going on in my head.
And we finally hung out and he you know, uh,
(20:16):
we were actually playing scrabble. Uh, and he at the
end of the night, he like dashed right, he like
ran basically he had to leave really soon. I was
like all right, ended up seeing him at a Braves game,
a baseball game with not only a woman, but a
baby just dropped Yeah, And so I was like, oh, well, um,
(20:42):
that could explain why he was so weird about like
why it took so long for us to a go
on a date, but be why he madly dashed out
so fast at the end of the night. Um he
never disclosed that he had a baby. Well, I don't
even know if it's I don't know what the situation was,
but no, he didn't disclose any of that, and like,
clearly it was not his sister. That's all I'm saying,
(21:04):
you know what I mean, Like this woman was clearly
not like, oh, I'm in town with my sister. Um
and months and months and months later, you know, I'm
dating someone else. I'm happy, it's everything's great. And I
get a Facebook message from dude and he's like, hey,
how's it going. Uh, it looks like you're, you know,
(21:26):
having a great time and just hope you're still kicking
ass and blah blah blah blah blah. And I mean
I blocked that guy so fast, like get get out
of here. And I was telling dude roommate about it,
and he's like, oh, yeah, that guy's checking to see
if you're still on the roster um. And so I'm
pretty sure, like I was totally a backburner because what
I'm assuming is that he was so weird because he
(21:47):
was in a serious relationship, potentially with a child. I
was not privy to any of that information, but he
made sure to remain in touch on Facebook until I
realized what terrible things were happening. Um, and it's interesting.
These researchers from the University of Indiana found that men
(22:11):
tend to have about twice as many back burners on
Facebook as women do, but it's still a widely practiced
phenomenon among men and women. Well, and that study also
cited a separate survey from one Pole which found nearly
half of all women keep in touch with a quote
unquote backup husband. Oh man, so we have like our
(22:35):
work wife, our backup husband. We just got people all
over the place. And on average, respondents in relationships said
that they had romantic or sexual conversations with two people
besides their current partner. How do you I, I don't
have the mental energy to like a even do that,
(22:57):
but the like, don't you want to address the problems
in your relations because that is harder. That takes speaking
words whereas typing words. You know, we have so much more. Yeah,
I guess. And and part of this is related to
(23:20):
conversations we've had and lots of articles we've read about
how supposedly online dating is ruining dating and relationships for
everyone all the time forever. Um. Yeah, well yeah, but
the theory is that now dating is like the wild West,
and you have so many options available to you that
you never have to settle because there's always fifty more
(23:43):
people in line on tender Okay, Cupid or whatever that
if you're fed up with someone, rather than working on it,
you could easily just find the next handsome woman or
man on on an online dating site. But I wonder
if people would be discouraged from doing that if they
knew how, you know, other, how how widespread that is,
(24:07):
you know what I mean. It's like you're not special
for having a roster of back burners because for all
you know, your back burner considers you a back burner,
and and that's not sexy. No, that is not sexy.
But the whole availability of options thing is a factor
(24:27):
that researchers and psychologists site in terms of these emotional
infidelity issues and even sexual infidelities, so not just emotional
stuff but affairs in general, that if you perceive there
to be this huge network of available people, you are
more likely, if you're already predisposed, whether it's because of
(24:48):
relationship problems or whatever, you're more likely to partake well.
And complicating matters too, is how we tend to curate
our social media presences. So we're showing how fabulous our
life is, how interesting we are. And so that probably
adds to the idealizing aspect of a lot of this
(25:11):
emotional cheating too, because it's like, oh, my god, look
at her. She's on a boat. Then she's eating she's
eating so many well plated meals, and there's a parade
that she went to. What a cultured Jim. I forgot
about Karen Karen and her parades? My god. Um. Well,
(25:34):
moving aside, how technology facilitates this, we need to unpeel
some of the psychological layers that keep us going back
to these kinds of dangerous relationships. So we've taken away
all of your excuses and your deniability about like, oh,
where's his friends? So you know better now Karen Karen, Jim,
(25:57):
we're looking at Johnny, Johnny susan um. So despite knowing
all of this stuff, it can be hard if you're
wrapped up in it, to stop, to just stop, even
if you're like I am threatening my marriage. This is
a bad idea, someone could find out. But it just
feels so good. What why are people not stopping? It
(26:19):
is so addictive and the thing is, as Athena stike
Over at psych Central wrote about in twelve, it's less
about how special this other person is and more about
the neurochemicals that reward us in communicating with that person. Yeah,
(26:41):
I mean, because we already talked earlier about how you know, Oh,
it just it just feels good and it's secretive and
it's exciting, especially if you're understimulated, if you feel understimulated
in your own relationship and Stike sites Craig Naked, who
wrote The Addictive Personality Understanding the Addictive Process and Compule
of Behavior, and he says that addiction is quote, a
(27:03):
pathological love and trust relationship with an object, person or event.
It's the out of control and aimless searching for wholeness, happiness,
and peace through a relationship with an object or event.
And clearly that can apply to when you're filling that
gaping emotional hole with alcohol, when you are abusing drugs,
(27:28):
when you're shopping obsessively, but that can also apply to
all of those happy chemicals flooding your brain when you're
having a secret emotional affair. So what Naked says is
that we derive pleasure from numbing the pain shame or
guilt because we've distanced ourselves from taking responsibility for issues
(27:51):
happening in our relationships that have led us to this point. Because,
after all, I R L relationships that we care about
carry the rest of pain and failure and have ups
and downs. Everybody goes through rough patches. But if a
person chooses to stray from their relationship, are their predictable
differences in whether men and women are going to get
(28:16):
physical with someone else or get more emotional. Well, so
the stereotype is that women are going to have the
emotional affairs, but they're also going to be more upset
if their partner has an emotional affair, whereas men are
going to get physical and they're also angrier when their
(28:37):
partner has a physical sexual affair with someone else. And
this has been looked at up, down, and sideways according
to gender sexuality, sexual identity, gender identity, um all of
these different factors. And it's not that actual studies haven't
(28:58):
supported the assert and that men, you know, hate sexual
affairs more and women hate emotional affairs, but there's a
lot of disagreement over why that particular stereotype might be
the case for some people. So there was this two
thousand two article from the American Psychological Association's Monitor magazine
(29:19):
that reads, to me anyway like the most boring, hilarious
academic cat fight, because it pits evolutionary biology theorists against
people who are like, can we leave off with the
cave men and women who are fighting with each other
in the caves and just deal with like the emotional
(29:40):
and neurochemical things that are going on? So tell me
more well. So. The evo bio explanation for why a
man might be more upset about physical cheating and a
woman might be more upset about emotional cheating is that
they argue, uh, we have evolved with special sensitivities to
(30:03):
the type of infidelity that threatens us most. So in
this theory, men are more concerned about sexual infidelity because
of the risk of inadvertently raising another man's child paternity
uncertainty exactly, whereas women, they say, are more concerned about
emotional infidelity because of the threat of losing their mates
(30:25):
support in raising those children. And so they see the
malemates emotional engagement with another woman as a sign that
he's about to pack those caveman suitcases and head out
of the cave just somebody else's cave. It's not a euphemism,
and that triggers jealousy. But there's also an interesting dynamic
(30:47):
when it comes to what men and women, and we're
talking in of course binary and heteronormative terms here, um,
when we are discussing these cave people, Uh, there's some
interesting dynamics about assumptions that men and women are making
about each other. Researchers found that men assume that emotional
infidelity is happening in conjunction with sexual infidelity. They just
(31:07):
assume they're happening together because and this is in very
stereotypical broadbrush terms, but men are more likely to believe
that women are not going to get sexually involved with
someone they're not emotionally connecting with, whereas women are more
likely to assume that men are just having a sexual
affair that doesn't necessarily involve emotions. So that's what the
(31:34):
evolutionary biologists claim. But then of course we have these
other researchers who take a look at the methodology and say, okay,
these are all based on forced choice surveys, where it's like,
if pretend that someone's shooting on you, would you rather um,
and they say that that produces false results and that
(31:56):
it also glosses over individual circumstances. Is clearly like you said,
I mean, it's talking in very broadbrush terms. There is
no nuance to that whatsoever. And it also claims that
sex differences vanish when you remove the need to pick
one or the other and have participants focus on a
separate task while being asked the question. So you're kind
(32:19):
of like distracting your brain in an effort to probably
like get that gut response yes of like what makes
you feel terrible inside? Fold these clothes, now tell me
your thoughts on affairs. Laundry um. Actually I love laundry um.
But they found that when you are like waving a
shiny set of keys in front of somebody as you
(32:41):
ask them the question, everyone man, woman, straight, gay, bisexual, whoever,
everybody is more upset about sexual infidelity when you just
don't stop to think about it. I buy that. I
totally buy that too, because it almost takes a minute
longer if you're speaking in gut terms, It almost takes
(33:01):
a minute longer to process like, wait, you have deep
feelings for someone, versus like, oh, you were naked together
like that took no time at all, whereas this emotional
relationship you would imagine is like a slow build. Well,
in speaking of feelings, this jives with the results of
a study from two thousand four in Personality and Social
(33:23):
Psychology Bullotan, which found that sexual infidelity is more associated
with anger and blame, whereas emotional infidelity tends to spark
hurt feelings. So if we have these like sharper reactions
to sexual infidelity, it makes sense that when the keys
are being shaken in front of our faces, where like
(33:47):
don't sleep with other people, know that amygdala is like
how dare you um? Whereas like creating that like intimate
relationship with someone else that might not be physical can
be devastating because the other person might be sitting there saying,
(34:08):
I've been wanting you to talk to me about those things.
I'm I'm here right, and I mean either one can
shake the foundation of your own identity, like, oh my god,
I have formed this identity as your partner and as
someone who loves you, and here you are telling me
that I'm somehow not good enough, whether it's good enough
sexually or good enough emotionally, Like that can really obviously
(34:30):
do a number on you. Um. And there was a
fourteen study in the Journal of Marital and Family Therapy
that looked at not only gender identity but also sexual orientation,
and they found that across all of these factors, again,
sexual infidelity elicited more distress than emotional infidelity, but women
(34:52):
and straight people on the whole had stronger emotions about
both sexual and emotional infidelity than men in and lesbian
and gay people in this survey. It's very interesting, So
everybody's real upset about infidelity, but women and straight people
are apparently more upset on the whole. Well, and there
(35:14):
was a more recent study that came out in January
and the Archives of Sexual Behavior, which found that while
more straight men were upset over sexual infidelity than emotional infidelity,
and straight women were more upset over emotional infidelity, bisexual
(35:35):
men and women didn't really differ, I mean like across
the board. And ditto for lesbians and gay men. It's like,
regardless of who they might have been with, they just
weren't down with any kind of cheating. Is that kind
of what what they were finding. Whereas there's something about
(35:55):
straight people where we are more maybe it could be
that we're more threatened by alternative arrangements. I'm wondering, you know,
And I'm not saying that like oh, you're bisexual, so
you're tolerant of cheating, or like oh you're a gay man,
so you're like cool with your partner having multiple partners,
(36:15):
like your alternative lifestyle. Yeah, I'm totally That's not what
I'm insinuating. But what I am saying is that perhaps
if you are part of that like super heteronormative mainstream,
you've been force fed these ideas about what marriage and
relationships are supposed to be. And they're supposed to be
your true love, your soul mate, they are supposed to
(36:37):
be everything to you, your best friend, your accountant, in
your lawnmower. Um, all of these things wrapped up in
one and perhaps LGBTQ people have had to imagine up
until you know, we're finally seeing marriage equality, have had
to envision alternate possibilities for their relationships. I don't know.
(36:57):
I mean that that's that's a theory, and I would
think attached to that as well are the normative gender
roles that are hitched to our heteronormative straight relationship scripts,
where it's you know, you have the men who are
supposed to be the accountants of the lawnmowers. You know,
like guys are supposed to provide one thing and women
(37:20):
are supposed to provide another. You know, men are supposed
to be the breadwinners. Women cook the bread. They toast
the bread. I don't know, the bread, they do all
the bread things. Um. And there's also the the idea
to that masculinity equals more aggressive, anger is more acceptable,
and and they want sex all the time, right, So
(37:41):
there is a lot of there. Like you said, there's
a lot of gender norm stuff, baggage and reactions wrapped
up in the survey results. It sounds like a lot
of straight folks in these studies are operating out of
stereotypical whole assumptions and maybe not really communicating well with
(38:03):
each other. I don't know. Yeah, I mean I think
that this also gets into the need for not just
communicating about relationship be things with your partner, but being
able to communicate obviously about sexual and expectations and boundaries.
You know. Um, so what kind of real talk do
(38:23):
you need to have if emotional infidelity is happening? How
do you how do you fix it. Well. So a
lot of this is advice coming from Gale Salts again.
But the first thing you want to do is take responsibility.
Don't try to live in denial land. We're like, no,
we're just friends. Stop it, and don't blame any infidelity
(38:43):
or like emotional cheating or anything on your partner. Don't
turn around and be like, well, if you would just
mow the lawn more, or if you had just brought
me some chicken home from the grocery store, I would
not have done this. No, be be an adult, be
a grown up, and responsibility for your actions and also
ended hello. No, you cannot stay friends and keep the
(39:06):
person in your life. We're on your Facebook account if
you have committed emotional infidelity with them and you want
to keep your significant other. It's different if you guys
are breaking up. And the kind of brutal honesty that
a lot of therapists recommended these situations where I mean
you have to come out, you know, and ask the
questions you need to ask, be straightforward about what's going on,
(39:30):
which can which can hurt for sure. Um. But that's
also where we can look to people who are in
successful open relationships or polyamorous relationships and learn some lessons
because these people have emotional and physical relationships with people
outside of a primary unit, and they operate within an
(39:54):
environment of radical honesty and even uh compulsion, which is
a feeling of happiness when your partner finds someone that
they like and maybe want to have sex with. I didn't.
I don't think I knew there was a word for that. Yeah,
there is. That's more within like the polyamory lexicon um.
(40:17):
And while I'm not saying that the answer is for
everyone to open up their relationships, but I'm saying like
those kinds of it's not about the sex, I guess
is what I'm trying to say is that there can
be perfectly healthy and happy, satisfying long term relationships that
don't that don't require monogamy, because what we require ultimately
(40:42):
is honest communication, right exactly. And so when your partner
has had an emotional affair and your relationships not open,
and that's not going to fly, and hopefully you guys
have already communicated about your wants, needs and expectations around
monogamy or not. Um. You know, like Kristin said, there
(41:04):
are some tough questions and and and you know it's
best to stay away from the gritty nitty gritty details. Uh,
you know, and that's especially if there's been sexual infidelity.
But you know, asking your partner, what are you getting
from this interaction? UM? You know, have I done something? Uh?
(41:26):
Is there something that you've wanted to talk to me about?
Is there something you're not getting from our relationship? You know,
is your self esteem or your sense of self suffering? Um,
and take heart that it doesn't have to be the
end of your relationship unless you want it to be right,
and you can right. You can rebuild it obviously takes
(41:47):
a lot of time, openness and accountability. UM. There will
be tears and possibly some panic attacks. But if you
guys are dedicated to working through those difficult patches, then
I think a better, more open communication relationship is on
the other side of that. UM. Also, thank you for
(42:10):
giving me the name of my memoir, which will be
there will be tears and panic attacks. Keep an eye
out for that and in your local bookstore friends. UM, well,
is it time I think to to talk to listeners.
We want to hear from you about this issue because, UM,
I think it's super common and I think it's super
(42:31):
common for people to hide it away, and um, it's
something that we we need to be more aware of
and be more comfortable talking about. Because the thing is
humans are fallible. People are attracted to more than one
person a lot of times, and rough patches happen. Stress,
(42:53):
can you know, be devastating to a relationship. So we
just we just need to be communicating more. We need
to be honest, stop trying to be so perfect, right
and and and block those shady x is on Facebook. Seriously,
you know who you are, So with that, send us
(43:16):
your letters. Mom Stuff at how stuff works dot com
is where you can send them. Uh. We will as
always respect your anonymity. If you would prefer that for
a more sensitive topic like this, or if you just
want to shout it out to the world, you can
tweet us at mom Stuff Podcasts or message us on
Facebook and we've got a couple of messages to share
with you right now. All right, Well, speaking of relationships,
(43:44):
I have a letter here from Amy in response to
our lesbian bed death episode. Uh, she says, I blah
blah blah. She says, as a queer SIS woman, my
friends and I have often joked about the bed death
thing and one of my favorite images when it's meant
and comes from Rick and Steve. This amazing short lived
cartoon that was on Logo for a while where Kirsten
(44:06):
and Dana, the perfect lesbian couple, one is butch, one
is fem they want a baby, etcetera, etcetera, attend the
funeral for the bed of their friends Ebony and Ivory.
Seriously hilarious, but in all seriousness. My spouse and I
have chatted about this a lot because having now been
together for five years, married for nearly two and trying
(44:27):
to make a baby least sexy process ever for queer
folks and so incredibly invasive and that's an episode for you,
and trying out new medications, our sex life has dwindled substantially.
We ask ourselves whether we mind, and the answer most
of the time is no. I think being raised female
and being allowed to access our emotions more readily than
(44:48):
many sisth straatement are quote allowed. We are able to
find intimacy in ways other than through sex. We talk,
we kiss, we cuddle it, we flirt. We're touching like
all of the time, and it's almus fin as a
big part of that intimate urge and need that having
been in a quote straight relationship previously, I would have
only felt that I had to have sex to satisfy.
(45:09):
Many of my friends expressed similar feelings about the lack
of what we typically consider sex in our relationships. Intimacy
and closeness are achieved in so many other ways just
by being in touch with our connections to our partners
that just because we don't necessarily orgasm while engaging in
intimacy doesn't mean we're missing out on some essential part
of our relationships. Sex is great, but what is the
(45:31):
goal in the end. If it is closeness and eroticism
and intimacy, then I get it all night long. Folks. Well,
thank you Amy, and good luck and congrats on the
baby making. Well, I've got to let her hear from Elia,
who writes, I'm a pan sexual person that came out
from a previous relationship with a man for ten years.
(45:51):
My fiance is the first woman I've been with, and
while I got into it not knowing a thing about
real female same sex physical relationships, I have to say
this is the best sex I've ever had. We just
passed year three and things are every bit as spicy
as before. Yes, we do it much much less, but
if anything, we are enjoying each other more as we
explore and create a safe space to try all sorts
(46:13):
of things. Entering year four, I feel confident it will
stay strong. Well. I'm so happy to hear that, Ilia
and everybody else who want to hear from you too, Mom.
Stuff at how stuff works dot com is our email
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as well as all of our blogs, videos and podcasts
with our sources. So you can learn more about emotional cheating.
(46:36):
Head on over to stuff Mom Never Told You dot
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Is it how stuff works dot com
Welcome to stuff Mom Never told You From how Stuff
Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Kristen and I'm Caroline, and today we're talking about emotional cheating. Yeah, basically,
when that work spouse we talked about last time, maybe
(00:24):
things go a little too far. Or you've got a
friend that you start confiding in more and more and more,
and suddenly that friends starts looking more and more attractive. Yeah,
but you're not like getting naked together. You're but you're
just having these long, deep conversations and really connecting and
confiding and bonding and slowly abandoning your own relationship. I mean,
(00:48):
this is such a rich topic to talk about because
we have um a lot more emotional cheating capabilities than
we used to thanks to social media, which we'll get into,
but also because it's one of those areas in long
term relationships where you have to be so honest with
(01:10):
yourself because it's easy to make excuses to yourself or
to your partner, to whomever that Oh no, this isn't
problematic at all, because it's not like we're kissing, we
aren't having sex. We're just talking a lot. We're just
like going to lunch every day. I'm just kind of
in love with her. Oh no, it's fine. Yeah, I
(01:35):
mean there's a lot of self preservation delusion that goes
on during a lot of emotional affairs that keeps them going. Well.
This is also one of those things that comes up
all the time in terms of gender and cheating, the
whole uh assumption that men will be more jealous of
(01:58):
physical cheating, of someone having sex with another person, whereas
women are more jealous of emotional affairs. Um. And we'll
get into that some but let's go ahead and put
it out there. Do you are are you familiar with
emotional affairs? Do you know anyone who has had an
emotional affair? Um? A friend of mine, UM, a very
(02:20):
good friend of mine was in the danger zone a
couple of years ago her high school. She's married kids,
she's been married to the same guy for a long time,
been with him for for a long time since high school.
And a previous high school boyfriend resurfaced having some marriage trouble.
He reaches out to her. They start up like a
(02:42):
Facebook back and forth. Side note, and we will get
more into this in a little bit, but Facebook is
cited in a massive number of divorces. So anyway, I
knew that I had all my podcasting research in my
brain as she's telling me about this, and you know,
she's doing the the total stereotype, like everything's fine, We're
(03:04):
just talking all the time. This woman with her children,
with her full time job. She was literally like giving
up sleep to get into these long drawn out Facebook, email,
text conversations, not to mention, like on the phone conversations,
not only like counseling him as he was going through
this rough patch in his marriage, but like confiding in
(03:28):
him about a lot of stuff. And I was like,
you've got to You've got to stop. Like I know
that you're really happy to be back in touch with
someone from your past. He was a nice guy back
when we knew him. That was a long time ago. Um,
you guys are both married, and you you are confiding
really personal things in him that he doesn't need to know, frankly,
(03:48):
and um, she basically said that, well, just you know,
it feels good to talk talk to someone aside from
my husband about this stuff. And I mean if I
could have shown up at her house with like those
airplane direction wands and be like no, stop, go the
(04:08):
other way I would have um, and things eventually cooled down.
Luckily she and her husband are great and fine and
everything's fine. The other guy, uh, did end up having
an actual physical affair with someone else, leaving his wife
and now he's with a woman that he had an
affair with. Dangerous ound city totally. But yeah, that's that's
(04:31):
that that dangerous ledge of Like once you start forming
that intimate bond with someone else and add the excitement
of someone new, relatively, um, that's a recipe for disaster.
Oh yeah, I mean anecdotally, the emotional cheating that I've
witnessed tends to follow a very similar pattern of reconnecting
(04:52):
with an ex, whether you sought them out because they're
troubled waters in your own relationship, or it just happens
that you two ran into each other, whether offline or online.
And there's something about those particular kinds of reconnections with
an X that gets so dangerous so fast, because there
(05:15):
is that sense of a false sense of intimacy that
can arise where it's like, oh, I forgot I could
talk to you like I couldn't talk to anybody else.
And because as you're telling me this about your friend,
and how good it felt for her to say some
of those things to someone other than her husband. The
first thing I think is, well, where are your friends
(05:36):
who you didn't date where things couldn't get complicated? I mean,
she was talking to you. But obviously there's that satisfaction
that we derive from the attention that that exes can
give us. Not to say that emotional cheating only happens
between xes, but I'm just slam. I've seen it happen
(05:58):
a lot. Yeah, And I mean that's not to say
that people can never be friends with their exes. Obviously,
you know, obviously people can. Um, but that's that's just
dangerous water. Yeah, well, especially it all it seems to
hinge on motivation, where it's like if you're suddenly talking
to your X again and things just so happened to
(06:18):
be not so healthy at home, might be a red flag.
Just yeah, practice some self awareness, yeah, check in with yourself. Um.
So what are the hallmarks then, of emotional affairs versus
just having a close friendship, Because, like you said, it
is totally possible to be friends with your exes. If
(06:40):
you are straight, you should be able to have opposite
sex friendships ET cetera. But where does that line start
to get blurry? Well? All right, so here are some
things that hopefully should serve as an excellent uh blowing
up of any denial you're in. Um, So you avoid
(07:02):
telling your significant other about the person and your interactions,
which that sort of secrecy automatically makes you, guys a united,
automatically makes things a little more exciting. Uh. Do you
find yourself getting dressed up for that person, putting on
a little more makeup, doing your hair a little bit nicer?
Do you find yourself telling this other person about your day,
(07:24):
your frustrations, your hopes and dreams, your fears and anger, whatever,
rather than telling your significant other. And that's an important
one because a lot of psychologists and researchers that we
we read their stuff about this. We're saying that when
you share those deep thoughts and fears and etcetera, that
breeds this intimacy that can deepen those bonds and can
(07:46):
lead you, like my friend, to start feeling like perhaps
this person just gets you more than your significant other does,
and that would probably open the door to maybe confiding
in that person about your own relationship to satisfaction. And
then another moment to check yourself before you wreck yourself
(08:08):
or your relationship. You start comparing that person to your
significant other, so essentially like you're building an idealized version
of whoever this alleged friend is. Yeah, because you're already
in like total delusion land, it's easy to only see
the pros of someone rather than the cons as well. Um,
(08:31):
do you find yourself thinking obsessively about the person and
if you're like, well, no, I mean, of course, like
he's funny and like, you know whatever, Or do you
think obsessively about your friends like you, Caroline? I think
about you all the time, because I guarantee you, My
my friend who was going through all that was not
sitting around her house like obsessively thinking about when the
(08:52):
next email for me was going to come in. Um,
because frankly, I don't email that often anyway. Um. And
the whole thing of like, are you increasingly finding more
justifications for your behavior or for continuing the relationship? Um?
When you start feeling really defensive or entitled to this interaction,
(09:14):
that's probably a bit of a red flag as well. Yeah,
to pay attention to your own relationship either if you
need to get out of it, or get it working
again and get it together together people. UM. On the
flip side of that, if you are with someone that
you suspect might be engaged in this kind of emotional cheating,
(09:36):
what are what are the kinds of things that you
should pay attention to and kind of validate for yourself. Well,
one thing to pay attention to is are you starting
to feel crazy? And I don't, I mean, I say
that sounds really flipped, but like, are you starting to
feel as though something is just off and something feels wrong.
(09:59):
Maybe that your your spouse or significant others acting a
little differently and telling you nothing's wrong. That's called gas lighting. Um,
your gut doesn't lie. And so even if you start
to feel like something's off in your interaction, maybe ask
ask what's up? Um? And related to that is that
(10:19):
you sense your partner isn't himself around you. Maybe he
or she is getting something else from this person that
he's having an emotional affair with, and he can be
more playful with that person or more silly or more
serious whatever it is that he feels for whatever reason
that he's not getting with you. And then like, have
(10:41):
you ever been in the situation and this could totally
be innocent where you're like, well, how is your day, honey,
and the persons like, uh, I mean, I already told
Karen all about it. Karen. You're like, Karen, are you
telling Karen all about your day? I want to hear
about your day. I'm your person rudest response all your day? Well,
you know what I already told Karen, So I'm sick
(11:02):
of talking about it. Karen gets me. Just talk to Karen.
But it's the idea of like, oh, you already told
someone all about your frustrations and and whatever. You're not
and you're not confiding in me as much. And another
big thing is sex feeling detached UM. Diane Gerhardt, who's
a professor of marriage and family therapy at California State University,
(11:25):
told read Book magazine in April of that as the
intensity of the emotional connection with this other person builds,
it detracts from the emotional connection in your own marriage,
and that can't help but affect what goes on physically
and emotionally between you two. So there is a physical
element to emotional cheating, but it's with your person and
(11:48):
not this person who um you are becoming attached to
and if you start noticing that, Let's say, your person
keeps bringing up Karen comparing, you know, kind of in
a way of comparing everything you do to what Karen
does better. You know, like you know, Karen loves uh,
(12:11):
just loves hot dogs. Karen loves hot dogs. She can
eat so many of them. Yeah, she's she's basically like
a competitive food eater. Well yeah, red flag if you ever,
if your spouse ever talks about a co workers eating abbots,
you get to that therapist days that, Um, I don't
(12:31):
know what. On a serious note, I mean, it's those
kinds of things of you know, person makes a joke
and maybe you don't laugh, and then your person is like, well,
Karen thinks I'm funny. God, you know what, Karen, you
can just well, maybe Karen doesn't know that this is
going on. Maybe Karen's just like politely laughing. Yeah, maybe
(12:53):
she's obsessed with Karen. Maybe Karen's oblivion. Maybe we need
to warn Karen. We gotta talk to Karen. God, I'm sorry, Karen.
I didn't mean to judge you. Um, but so one
of my favorite resources in the world is, of course
a magazine. Of course, you know me, you know it's Sandwiches,
Corgis and OH magazine and Gail Salts, who's a therapist,
(13:16):
was writing a column about the danger zone that can
prompt an emotional affair or kind of push you over
that edge. And three sort of dangerous dangerous activities she
lists are flirting with other people because you can you
(13:36):
can get kind of hooked on that that high of
like the attention you get when you're flirting, unless that's
part of like you and your your person's No, that's good,
that's good if like you and your person are flirting, well, no,
I'm saying like, if if you and your person are
into flirting with other people right, well, but then that
that requires communication. And the whole thing with emotional infidelity
(13:58):
is that you're hiding it exactly. So if you are
flirting with others in an intoxicating, hidden secret fashion, stop
it uh to innocently spending time alone with old lovers,
that's that whole denial thing. And three hanging out with
(14:20):
emotional cheaters who kind of normalize that behavior. This is
the same thing Kristen and I have talked about before
when it comes to like kids in smoking or like
sexual activity from a young age or whatever, Like if
all your friends are doing it, you know, maybe you're
still not sure, but if everybody around you is doing it,
it seems more normal and acceptable, and like, oh, Jim's
(14:43):
getting away with it. Maybe Karen and I can go
sneak off and exchange text messages side by side. Yeah.
I mean in middle school, all my friends were emotionally
cheating left and right. I couldn't resist. Um, And there's
that of avoidance factor two. Like you said, I mean
communication A. I feel like it's the answer to every
(15:05):
relationship problem, whether not doing it or not doing it effectively. Um,
if you are avoiding talking about your issues and things
that you might feel are lacking in your relationship, that
can definitely backslide into finding someone who can be your
sounding board. It's hitting those rough patches in your own marriage.
(15:28):
And you sort of touched on this earlier in the
episode about you know you're hitting a rough patch. Maybe
you're feeling lonely or unfulfilled somehow. Um, maybe you're just
depressed and assumed that this is just how marriage is,
That there's not good communication and the other person gets
you less and less, and so rather than communicating with
(15:51):
your person, your significant other, you seek that fulfillment and
excitement elsewhere. And what's interesting is that Gayl Salts wrote
in a magazine that she's actually seeing more emotional infidelity
these days. A because, she says, we're so used to
being exposed to sexually suggestive material quote that there's no
(16:13):
longer an obvious verbal or physical line we think we're crossing.
So maybe that's that dangerous flirtation of like, stop stop
flirting with other people. Um. But B she says, we
are connected with others more than ever before, thanks to
technology and social media, So it's entirely possible that you
(16:33):
might have some sort of roster of xs or just
like people that you're kind of interested in on Facebook
or Twitter or whatever. Um, that you wouldn't necessarily be
keeping in mind if you weren't on social media. And
it's become so common that researchers call it remote and fidelity. Um.
And hello, here's a statistic that might surprise. Uh. It
(16:58):
seemed awfully high to me. A Wired magazine reported that
as many as fort of Tinder users aren't single. Now, granted,
that would technically include me. For an evening when I
was out with friends, one of whom was single, you know,
and so we all got on Tender like in solidarity,
and it was fun for for an evening. And then
(17:19):
I realized that my now husband was also on Tender,
and I was like, oh, no, we cannot do this.
He was on He got on Tinder that night. I
should say he hadn't. I didn't like find him on
Tinder lore, but I bet that happens, oh totally. Oh
and and the whole thing too, of online dating relationships
that start and then you go on some dates and
(17:42):
you go on to Okay, Cupid or Tinder to shut
down your account, and then see that they're still active
and you're like, what's up with this? Come on now?
But Facebook seems to be really the play ground of
remote infidelity. Yeah, well, because Facebook is supposedly so innocent,
(18:06):
like oh my gosh, here's like Johnny from middle school.
Here's Johnny um and like this is fine, right, I'm
just connecting with old classmates because oh there's Karen and
Jim and Johnny, this cast of characters. Thanks. Apparently they're
all like nineteen fifties Bobby Socks, here's or something. But
(18:26):
you know, Facebook, like your mom's on Facebook, your grandmother's
on Facebook. What's the heart well? And how often does
Facebook probably serve up those you might know? Oh god,
I wonder how many of those are my boyfriend's ex girlfriends,
because my boyfriend does get like you should be friends
with and it's like an x of mine and I
feel they need to apologize. You know, it's not my fault,
(18:48):
it's Facebook stupid algorithm. But thanks Facebook. So Facebook normalizes
and sets the expectation that you're going to keep in
touch with people from your past, and that you're going
to connect with acquaintances. You know, maybe there's someone who's
caught your eye in the office or whatever. But it's
totally normal to be Facebook friends, right when, in fact,
(19:12):
what you might be doing is setting up a back
burner so that if things turn south or if you
you know, if you are just kind of dissatisfied, you
feel like your relationship isn't a slump and your your
eye starts wandering, you might just innocently enough kind of
reconnect with some people on social media and have the
(19:33):
people on the back burner so that you can you
can leap straight from your old relationship is going down
into flames into at least someone else's bed, I think.
I mean, I have been a back burner. I years ago. Now,
there was this guy that I was really interested in,
and we flirted all the time and we talked about
(19:56):
hanging out, but like it never happened. And it was like,
why isn't he asking me out? We're both clearly interested
in each other. And I had like broached the subject
of hanging out and kind of never picked up on it.
But I still was like getting heavily flirted with, so
like all this cognitive dissonance going on in my head.
And we finally hung out and he you know, uh,
(20:16):
we were actually playing scrabble. Uh, and he at the
end of the night, he like dashed right, he like
ran basically he had to leave really soon. I was
like all right, ended up seeing him at a Braves game,
a baseball game with not only a woman, but a
baby just dropped Yeah, And so I was like, oh, well, um,
(20:42):
that could explain why he was so weird about like
why it took so long for us to a go
on a date, but be why he madly dashed out
so fast at the end of the night. Um he
never disclosed that he had a baby. Well, I don't
even know if it's I don't know what the situation was,
but no, he didn't disclose any of that, and like,
clearly it was not his sister. That's all I'm saying,
(21:04):
you know what I mean, Like this woman was clearly
not like, oh, I'm in town with my sister. Um
and months and months and months later, you know, I'm
dating someone else. I'm happy, it's everything's great. And I
get a Facebook message from dude and he's like, hey,
how's it going. Uh, it looks like you're, you know,
(21:26):
having a great time and just hope you're still kicking
ass and blah blah blah blah blah. And I mean
I blocked that guy so fast, like get get out
of here. And I was telling dude roommate about it,
and he's like, oh, yeah, that guy's checking to see
if you're still on the roster um. And so I'm
pretty sure, like I was totally a backburner because what
I'm assuming is that he was so weird because he
(21:47):
was in a serious relationship, potentially with a child. I
was not privy to any of that information, but he
made sure to remain in touch on Facebook until I
realized what terrible things were happening. Um, and it's interesting.
These researchers from the University of Indiana found that men
(22:11):
tend to have about twice as many back burners on
Facebook as women do, but it's still a widely practiced
phenomenon among men and women. Well, and that study also
cited a separate survey from one Pole which found nearly
half of all women keep in touch with a quote
unquote backup husband. Oh man, so we have like our
(22:35):
work wife, our backup husband. We just got people all
over the place. And on average, respondents in relationships said
that they had romantic or sexual conversations with two people
besides their current partner. How do you I, I don't
have the mental energy to like a even do that,
(22:57):
but the like, don't you want to address the problems
in your relations because that is harder. That takes speaking
words whereas typing words. You know, we have so much more. Yeah,
I guess. And and part of this is related to
(23:20):
conversations we've had and lots of articles we've read about
how supposedly online dating is ruining dating and relationships for
everyone all the time forever. Um. Yeah, well yeah, but
the theory is that now dating is like the wild West,
and you have so many options available to you that
you never have to settle because there's always fifty more
(23:43):
people in line on tender Okay, Cupid or whatever that
if you're fed up with someone, rather than working on it,
you could easily just find the next handsome woman or
man on on an online dating site. But I wonder
if people would be discouraged from doing that if they
knew how, you know, other, how how widespread that is,
(24:07):
you know what I mean. It's like you're not special
for having a roster of back burners because for all
you know, your back burner considers you a back burner,
and and that's not sexy. No, that is not sexy.
But the whole availability of options thing is a factor
(24:27):
that researchers and psychologists site in terms of these emotional
infidelity issues and even sexual infidelities, so not just emotional
stuff but affairs in general, that if you perceive there
to be this huge network of available people, you are
more likely, if you're already predisposed, whether it's because of
(24:48):
relationship problems or whatever, you're more likely to partake well.
And complicating matters too, is how we tend to curate
our social media presences. So we're showing how fabulous our
life is, how interesting we are. And so that probably
adds to the idealizing aspect of a lot of this
(25:11):
emotional cheating too, because it's like, oh, my god, look
at her. She's on a boat. Then she's eating she's
eating so many well plated meals, and there's a parade
that she went to. What a cultured Jim. I forgot
about Karen Karen and her parades? My god. Um. Well,
(25:34):
moving aside, how technology facilitates this, we need to unpeel
some of the psychological layers that keep us going back
to these kinds of dangerous relationships. So we've taken away
all of your excuses and your deniability about like, oh,
where's his friends? So you know better now Karen Karen, Jim,
(25:57):
we're looking at Johnny, Johnny susan um. So despite knowing
all of this stuff, it can be hard if you're
wrapped up in it, to stop, to just stop, even
if you're like I am threatening my marriage. This is
a bad idea, someone could find out. But it just
feels so good. What why are people not stopping? It
(26:19):
is so addictive and the thing is, as Athena stike
Over at psych Central wrote about in twelve, it's less
about how special this other person is and more about
the neurochemicals that reward us in communicating with that person. Yeah,
(26:41):
I mean, because we already talked earlier about how you know, Oh,
it just it just feels good and it's secretive and
it's exciting, especially if you're understimulated, if you feel understimulated
in your own relationship and Stike sites Craig Naked, who
wrote The Addictive Personality Understanding the Addictive Process and Compule
of Behavior, and he says that addiction is quote, a
(27:03):
pathological love and trust relationship with an object, person or event.
It's the out of control and aimless searching for wholeness, happiness,
and peace through a relationship with an object or event.
And clearly that can apply to when you're filling that
gaping emotional hole with alcohol, when you are abusing drugs,
(27:28):
when you're shopping obsessively, but that can also apply to
all of those happy chemicals flooding your brain when you're
having a secret emotional affair. So what Naked says is
that we derive pleasure from numbing the pain shame or
guilt because we've distanced ourselves from taking responsibility for issues
(27:51):
happening in our relationships that have led us to this point. Because,
after all, I R L relationships that we care about
carry the rest of pain and failure and have ups
and downs. Everybody goes through rough patches. But if a
person chooses to stray from their relationship, are their predictable
differences in whether men and women are going to get
(28:16):
physical with someone else or get more emotional. Well, so
the stereotype is that women are going to have the
emotional affairs, but they're also going to be more upset
if their partner has an emotional affair, whereas men are
going to get physical and they're also angrier when their
(28:37):
partner has a physical sexual affair with someone else. And
this has been looked at up, down, and sideways according
to gender sexuality, sexual identity, gender identity, um all of
these different factors. And it's not that actual studies haven't
(28:58):
supported the assert and that men, you know, hate sexual
affairs more and women hate emotional affairs, but there's a
lot of disagreement over why that particular stereotype might be
the case for some people. So there was this two
thousand two article from the American Psychological Association's Monitor magazine
(29:19):
that reads, to me anyway like the most boring, hilarious
academic cat fight, because it pits evolutionary biology theorists against
people who are like, can we leave off with the
cave men and women who are fighting with each other
in the caves and just deal with like the emotional
(29:40):
and neurochemical things that are going on? So tell me
more well. So. The evo bio explanation for why a
man might be more upset about physical cheating and a
woman might be more upset about emotional cheating is that
they argue, uh, we have evolved with special sensitivities to
(30:03):
the type of infidelity that threatens us most. So in
this theory, men are more concerned about sexual infidelity because
of the risk of inadvertently raising another man's child paternity
uncertainty exactly, whereas women, they say, are more concerned about
emotional infidelity because of the threat of losing their mates
(30:25):
support in raising those children. And so they see the
malemates emotional engagement with another woman as a sign that
he's about to pack those caveman suitcases and head out
of the cave just somebody else's cave. It's not a euphemism,
and that triggers jealousy. But there's also an interesting dynamic
(30:47):
when it comes to what men and women, and we're
talking in of course binary and heteronormative terms here, um,
when we are discussing these cave people, Uh, there's some
interesting dynamics about assumptions that men and women are making
about each other. Researchers found that men assume that emotional
infidelity is happening in conjunction with sexual infidelity. They just
(31:07):
assume they're happening together because and this is in very
stereotypical broadbrush terms, but men are more likely to believe
that women are not going to get sexually involved with
someone they're not emotionally connecting with, whereas women are more
likely to assume that men are just having a sexual
affair that doesn't necessarily involve emotions. So that's what the
(31:34):
evolutionary biologists claim. But then of course we have these
other researchers who take a look at the methodology and say, okay,
these are all based on forced choice surveys, where it's like,
if pretend that someone's shooting on you, would you rather um,
and they say that that produces false results and that
(31:56):
it also glosses over individual circumstances. Is clearly like you said,
I mean, it's talking in very broadbrush terms. There is
no nuance to that whatsoever. And it also claims that
sex differences vanish when you remove the need to pick
one or the other and have participants focus on a
separate task while being asked the question. So you're kind
(32:19):
of like distracting your brain in an effort to probably
like get that gut response yes of like what makes
you feel terrible inside? Fold these clothes, now tell me
your thoughts on affairs. Laundry um. Actually I love laundry um.
But they found that when you are like waving a
shiny set of keys in front of somebody as you
(32:41):
ask them the question, everyone man, woman, straight, gay, bisexual, whoever,
everybody is more upset about sexual infidelity when you just
don't stop to think about it. I buy that. I
totally buy that too, because it almost takes a minute
longer if you're speaking in gut terms, It almost takes
(33:01):
a minute longer to process like, wait, you have deep
feelings for someone, versus like, oh, you were naked together
like that took no time at all, whereas this emotional
relationship you would imagine is like a slow build. Well,
in speaking of feelings, this jives with the results of
a study from two thousand four in Personality and Social
(33:23):
Psychology Bullotan, which found that sexual infidelity is more associated
with anger and blame, whereas emotional infidelity tends to spark
hurt feelings. So if we have these like sharper reactions
to sexual infidelity, it makes sense that when the keys
are being shaken in front of our faces, where like
(33:47):
don't sleep with other people, know that amygdala is like
how dare you um? Whereas like creating that like intimate
relationship with someone else that might not be physical can
be devastating because the other person might be sitting there saying,
(34:08):
I've been wanting you to talk to me about those things.
I'm I'm here right, and I mean either one can
shake the foundation of your own identity, like, oh my god,
I have formed this identity as your partner and as
someone who loves you, and here you are telling me
that I'm somehow not good enough, whether it's good enough
sexually or good enough emotionally, Like that can really obviously
(34:30):
do a number on you. Um. And there was a
fourteen study in the Journal of Marital and Family Therapy
that looked at not only gender identity but also sexual orientation,
and they found that across all of these factors, again,
sexual infidelity elicited more distress than emotional infidelity, but women
(34:52):
and straight people on the whole had stronger emotions about
both sexual and emotional infidelity than men in and lesbian
and gay people in this survey. It's very interesting, So
everybody's real upset about infidelity, but women and straight people
are apparently more upset on the whole. Well, and there
(35:14):
was a more recent study that came out in January
and the Archives of Sexual Behavior, which found that while
more straight men were upset over sexual infidelity than emotional infidelity,
and straight women were more upset over emotional infidelity, bisexual
(35:35):
men and women didn't really differ, I mean like across
the board. And ditto for lesbians and gay men. It's like,
regardless of who they might have been with, they just
weren't down with any kind of cheating. Is that kind
of what what they were finding. Whereas there's something about
(35:55):
straight people where we are more maybe it could be
that we're more threatened by alternative arrangements. I'm wondering, you know,
And I'm not saying that like oh, you're bisexual, so
you're tolerant of cheating, or like oh you're a gay man,
so you're like cool with your partner having multiple partners,
(36:15):
like your alternative lifestyle. Yeah, I'm totally That's not what
I'm insinuating. But what I am saying is that perhaps
if you are part of that like super heteronormative mainstream,
you've been force fed these ideas about what marriage and
relationships are supposed to be. And they're supposed to be
your true love, your soul mate, they are supposed to
(36:37):
be everything to you, your best friend, your accountant, in
your lawnmower. Um, all of these things wrapped up in
one and perhaps LGBTQ people have had to imagine up
until you know, we're finally seeing marriage equality, have had
to envision alternate possibilities for their relationships. I don't know.
(36:57):
I mean that that's that's a theory, and I would
think attached to that as well are the normative gender
roles that are hitched to our heteronormative straight relationship scripts,
where it's you know, you have the men who are
supposed to be the accountants of the lawnmowers. You know,
like guys are supposed to provide one thing and women
(37:20):
are supposed to provide another. You know, men are supposed
to be the breadwinners. Women cook the bread. They toast
the bread. I don't know, the bread, they do all
the bread things. Um. And there's also the the idea
to that masculinity equals more aggressive, anger is more acceptable,
and and they want sex all the time, right, So
(37:41):
there is a lot of there. Like you said, there's
a lot of gender norm stuff, baggage and reactions wrapped
up in the survey results. It sounds like a lot
of straight folks in these studies are operating out of
stereotypical whole assumptions and maybe not really communicating well with
(38:03):
each other. I don't know. Yeah, I mean I think
that this also gets into the need for not just
communicating about relationship be things with your partner, but being
able to communicate obviously about sexual and expectations and boundaries.
You know. Um, so what kind of real talk do
(38:23):
you need to have if emotional infidelity is happening? How
do you how do you fix it. Well. So a
lot of this is advice coming from Gale Salts again.
But the first thing you want to do is take responsibility.
Don't try to live in denial land. We're like, no,
we're just friends. Stop it, and don't blame any infidelity
(38:43):
or like emotional cheating or anything on your partner. Don't
turn around and be like, well, if you would just
mow the lawn more, or if you had just brought
me some chicken home from the grocery store, I would
not have done this. No, be be an adult, be
a grown up, and responsibility for your actions and also
ended hello. No, you cannot stay friends and keep the
(39:06):
person in your life. We're on your Facebook account if
you have committed emotional infidelity with them and you want
to keep your significant other. It's different if you guys
are breaking up. And the kind of brutal honesty that
a lot of therapists recommended these situations where I mean
you have to come out, you know, and ask the
questions you need to ask, be straightforward about what's going on,
(39:30):
which can which can hurt for sure. Um. But that's
also where we can look to people who are in
successful open relationships or polyamorous relationships and learn some lessons
because these people have emotional and physical relationships with people
outside of a primary unit, and they operate within an
(39:54):
environment of radical honesty and even uh compulsion, which is
a feeling of happiness when your partner finds someone that
they like and maybe want to have sex with. I didn't.
I don't think I knew there was a word for that. Yeah,
there is. That's more within like the polyamory lexicon um.
(40:17):
And while I'm not saying that the answer is for
everyone to open up their relationships, but I'm saying like
those kinds of it's not about the sex, I guess
is what I'm trying to say is that there can
be perfectly healthy and happy, satisfying long term relationships that
don't that don't require monogamy, because what we require ultimately
(40:42):
is honest communication, right exactly. And so when your partner
has had an emotional affair and your relationships not open,
and that's not going to fly, and hopefully you guys
have already communicated about your wants, needs and expectations around
monogamy or not. Um. You know, like Kristin said, there
(41:04):
are some tough questions and and and you know it's
best to stay away from the gritty nitty gritty details. Uh,
you know, and that's especially if there's been sexual infidelity.
But you know, asking your partner, what are you getting
from this interaction? UM? You know, have I done something? Uh?
(41:26):
Is there something that you've wanted to talk to me about?
Is there something you're not getting from our relationship? You know,
is your self esteem or your sense of self suffering? Um,
and take heart that it doesn't have to be the
end of your relationship unless you want it to be right,
and you can right. You can rebuild it obviously takes
(41:47):
a lot of time, openness and accountability. UM. There will
be tears and possibly some panic attacks. But if you
guys are dedicated to working through those difficult patches, then
I think a better, more open communication relationship is on
the other side of that. UM. Also, thank you for
(42:10):
giving me the name of my memoir, which will be
there will be tears and panic attacks. Keep an eye
out for that and in your local bookstore friends. UM, well,
is it time I think to to talk to listeners.
We want to hear from you about this issue because, UM,
I think it's super common and I think it's super
(42:31):
common for people to hide it away, and um, it's
something that we we need to be more aware of
and be more comfortable talking about. Because the thing is
humans are fallible. People are attracted to more than one
person a lot of times, and rough patches happen. Stress,
(42:53):
can you know, be devastating to a relationship. So we
just we just need to be communicating more. We need
to be honest, stop trying to be so perfect, right
and and and block those shady x is on Facebook. Seriously,
you know who you are, So with that, send us
(43:16):
your letters. Mom Stuff at how stuff works dot com
is where you can send them. Uh. We will as
always respect your anonymity. If you would prefer that for
a more sensitive topic like this, or if you just
want to shout it out to the world, you can
tweet us at mom Stuff Podcasts or message us on
Facebook and we've got a couple of messages to share
with you right now. All right, Well, speaking of relationships,
(43:44):
I have a letter here from Amy in response to
our lesbian bed death episode. Uh, she says, I blah
blah blah. She says, as a queer SIS woman, my
friends and I have often joked about the bed death
thing and one of my favorite images when it's meant
and comes from Rick and Steve. This amazing short lived
cartoon that was on Logo for a while where Kirsten
(44:06):
and Dana, the perfect lesbian couple, one is butch, one
is fem they want a baby, etcetera, etcetera, attend the
funeral for the bed of their friends Ebony and Ivory.
Seriously hilarious, but in all seriousness. My spouse and I
have chatted about this a lot because having now been
together for five years, married for nearly two and trying
(44:27):
to make a baby least sexy process ever for queer
folks and so incredibly invasive and that's an episode for you,
and trying out new medications, our sex life has dwindled substantially.
We ask ourselves whether we mind, and the answer most
of the time is no. I think being raised female
and being allowed to access our emotions more readily than
(44:48):
many sisth straatement are quote allowed. We are able to
find intimacy in ways other than through sex. We talk,
we kiss, we cuddle it, we flirt. We're touching like
all of the time, and it's almus fin as a
big part of that intimate urge and need that having
been in a quote straight relationship previously, I would have
only felt that I had to have sex to satisfy.
(45:09):
Many of my friends expressed similar feelings about the lack
of what we typically consider sex in our relationships. Intimacy
and closeness are achieved in so many other ways just
by being in touch with our connections to our partners
that just because we don't necessarily orgasm while engaging in
intimacy doesn't mean we're missing out on some essential part
of our relationships. Sex is great, but what is the
(45:31):
goal in the end. If it is closeness and eroticism
and intimacy, then I get it all night long. Folks. Well,
thank you Amy, and good luck and congrats on the
baby making. Well, I've got to let her hear from Elia,
who writes, I'm a pan sexual person that came out
from a previous relationship with a man for ten years.
(45:51):
My fiance is the first woman I've been with, and
while I got into it not knowing a thing about
real female same sex physical relationships, I have to say
this is the best sex I've ever had. We just
passed year three and things are every bit as spicy
as before. Yes, we do it much much less, but
if anything, we are enjoying each other more as we
explore and create a safe space to try all sorts
(46:13):
of things. Entering year four, I feel confident it will
stay strong. Well. I'm so happy to hear that, Ilia
and everybody else who want to hear from you too, Mom.
Stuff at how stuff works dot com is our email
address and for links to all of our social media
as well as all of our blogs, videos and podcasts
with our sources. So you can learn more about emotional cheating.
(46:36):
Head on over to stuff Mom Never Told You dot
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