THE EMOTIONAL AFFAIR AND ABUSE

One of the lesser known symptoms of abuse and perhaps the most interesting is The Emotional Affair.  

Many women who are in abusive marriages are often carrying on with an emotional affair either with or without their abuser's knowledge.  Of course, when the divorce breaks out it is easy for the abused woman to feel guilty for having that emotional affair and for the abuser to feel justified in his abuse because it.  

So, what is an emotional affair? An emotional affair occurs when a married woman invests a substantial amount of emotional energy on a relationship outside of her marriage and obtains emotional support and companionship from that relationship.  Although the relationship is a platonic one on the surface, there is a lot of sexual tension and flirting going on, as well as the exchange of intimate and personal information that would ordinarily only be shared with a spouse.  

Many of these emotional affairs take place on the internet because it is such a freewheeling place to connect and disconnect and it is daily getting to be more so.  

Many women in abusive relationships with their spouses deal with substantial emotional and physical pain on a daily basis.  These women are essentially held prisoner within that relationship.  So what is their only escape?  Through fantasy!  

That fantasy can be that one day they'll hit the big time and win the lottery, or that they will have a major career breakthrough, perhaps getting that big role as an actress, or something like that.  Sometimes it can be a dream of traveling around the world or moving to California, somewhere far away from the abusive situation.  

Or else it can be finding some place in their lives, some place in their minds where their abusers can't get a foothold, and that would be within the context of emotional relationships.  Within a daydream space with a daydream lover who will be a sympathetic listener, the abused woman finds her ideal escape.  

And the good thing about it is that an emotional affair can be conducted anytime and anywhere.  It can happen when you catch a few minutes to text your emotional lover on the phone, when you locate common grounds in a chat room, or post on each others' facebook page.  Literally, you don't ever have to leave the house to keep it going.  You may never even kiss, you may never share passionate embraces, but the intensity and the pleasure of the relationship can outstrip that of any real relationship because it exists within the realm of the imagination, and it stands as this extraordinary object of beauty when compared to the drab and ugly daily lives of women struggling with abuse.  

The problem with these kinds of relationships are that within them an abused woman exposes herself doubly to ongoing abuse, the ongoing abuse from the abusive spouse, and the ongoing abuse of the man with whom she is conducting the emotional affair.  In the first instance, when a woman is completely distracted by an emotional affair, she may not notice what she needs to do to protect herself, or notice that her abuser continues to increase the level of his abuse.

In the second instance, any man who, platonically or not, involves himself with a married woman online or otherwise is essentially emotionally raping and exploiting that woman, encouraging her to share intimacies to which he is by no means entitled and using the access he has to feed his own narcissism.  

Unfortunately, so many abused women are in such pain that they are unable to recognize this danger.  But if you are one of these women, think about it.  Is it in the least normal to pour out your heart and soul to a person you only meet on paper or online, a person who may only be sharing with you a very edited version of who he is, and there is probably no way to verify that anything he says is real?  

Men who suck women into these kinds of relationships are fundamentally criminal, so if you are involved with such a man, run away as fast as you can.