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I’m Andrea Giles, and you’re listening to the Heal from Infidelity podcast, episode number 214, The Truth About Emotional Affairs and What They’re Really About.

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Hello and welcome to the Heal from Infidelity podcast for courageous women learn not only to heal from their spouse’s betrayal, but to become the boldest, truest, most decisive and confident versions of themselves ever. If you know there’s more for you than the life you’re currently living but don’t quite know how to get there, you are in the right place. Stick around to learn how to create a life that will knock your own socks off. Is it possible? It is. And I’m here to show you how I’m your host, Andrea Giles. Are you ready? Let’s dive in.

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Hello. Hello everybody. I got to give you a fair warning, okay. This episode I’m about to record. It might hit some nerves for every one of you. It might hit some nerves. It might be hard to hear, and I want you to listen anyway. I want you to give yourself time where you can listen, where you can ground yourself. If you feel activated, triggered, stay with yourself. Know that I’m with you, that every episode I ever do is because I want to help you, because I want to help you live a life that you are proud of, that you feel good in, that you can be honest in, that you feel safe in. And this episode is one that I feel is important and that I want you to hear today. Alright, here we go. Emotional affairs. Here we go. Okay. Emotional affairs are very tender.

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They’re very real. So many of the people I work with say that they almost wish that it would’ve been physical because that would make more sense or because they could say it was just like a one night thing or they just were hooking up. And sometimes the emotional side of things can feel more painful than physical for some people. And I want to take this entire episode to talk about the kind of affairs that are emotional affairs. And first to define them. They are the kind of affairs that happen where there isn’t physical, you’re not having sex, there’s not sexual interaction that’s not happening. But there is emotional connection. There is an emotional connection. And if you think about a husband and wife forming a whole in an emotional affair, it becomes a triangle. And there’s the husband and wife, and then there’s a third person that is meeting some need for somebody for one of those people without the other person knowing.

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So they’re outsourcing something that they need, that they want to this third party. And the other person, your partner, your spouse, does not know, they’re not aware of it. And the two ingredients to infidelity. One, a breach of the agreement, a breach of what you agreed on. Two deceit where you’re not sharing, where you’re lying, where you’re omitting, where you’re leaving things out that need to be shared. Okay? So let’s just get right into it, shall we? I’m going to hit you with a lot of truth bombs today. That might be difficult. They might be difficult, and I’m going to share them anyway, okay? And I want you, like I said, to just sit with it. Know that I’m coming from a place of love and support and in service of you, okay? Way more people than you will ever know at different times in their life, have interactions where they feel emotional resonance with someone and it feels easier and lighter and they may feel more alive than they have in a long time, and they may feel more alive than in the relationship that they’re currently in.

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Many, many people have these things happen. I have had times where I’ll feel a connection, where I’ll feel chemistry or something like that. It’s what we do with that, that makes all the difference. For some of you listening, you moved towards that resonance with that person, forming that triangle. For some of you, your spouse did. For some of you, you know that you could have and you chose not to. The option was there and you chose not to. In my particular situation, that has been the case. I’ve had different times where it would be available if I wanted to, and I’ve chosen not to from a place of integrity within myself. It doesn’t mean that it’s easy though, because of what it can open up inside of you. Some of you listening might be facing this possibility right now, and you are terrified. Some of you may be in a pretty vulnerable space in your relationship with your partner, with your spouse, and there might be some anybody else that’s a listening ear that’s giving you attention, that feels good, that makes you feel something that you haven’t felt, that makes you feel heard in a way that you haven’t felt heard.

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And it might terrify you. And I hope you hear me out today. This is not a conversation today about bad people, about moral failure, moral hierarchy today. This is a conversation about unmet emotional hunger and what happens when that hunger meets opportunity when we are hungry and there seems to be a feast. Okay? First of all, why does the poll happen? For most people? They are not out looking for it. In the work that I do, most of the time people are not out on the hunt. They’re not out on the hunt looking for a relationship. They’re not out seeking something. What they are looking for is relief. They’re in pain. They might feel trapped. They might know that something is wrong and they just don’t know what to do. They don’t know what to do. That might be it. And you’re out in your life just feeling that pain, but you’re not desiring a relationship of any kind.

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You’re not out desiring it, but you might desire some relief. And let’s say that there’s someone who mirrors back to you and yourself in a way that feels warm and safe and real. And at first you’re not falling in love with them. You’re falling in love with the part of you that comes up, that surfaces in their presence. It’s something that feels safe and held and it’s like they’re holding a mirror saying, it’s okay. It’s okay for you to feel these things. It’s okay for you to expose these things. And if we’re starving, being able to expose these things and have somebody not recoil, but actually meet us there can feel like we are being fed. We might feel that aliveness or I can breathe. I can feel like myself. Again, if you are the one who’s been betrayed, you might be going, how could my partner be that open, that alive, that honest with someone else but not with me?

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How can that be? And that is a very, very fair question. It’s a very fair question. I’ve been starving for emotional contact. I’m starving. And you hear that on the one hand, they’re connecting with somebody because of their own emotional starvation and wanting that contact while you’re over there feeling that too, and you’re like, wow, they can just go out and do that. How nice for them. And I’m not suggesting in any way that that’s okay. That’s not what I’m suggesting. I’m just trying to shed light on why this happens and what we can do, what we can learn if we’re here to grow, if we’re here to get wiser, let’s take these experiences that we’re having and learn from them, shall we? Shall we? Let’s keep going. Okay. Why long-term relationships are vulnerable? Did you know that long-term relationships sometimes can be more vulnerable than short-term?

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It’s not because long-term couples are broken. It’s because longing that is unspoken becomes longing. That’s un. And over time when disappointment stacks up and up and up and up and repair doesn’t happen, the body stops trusting home like your physical home, the relationship as a place where needs will land. And then there’s someone that smiles, that listens, that compliments you, that sees you, that sees what you’re good at, that sees how you look and says you’re really beautiful, pays you a compliment, that comments on something that you appreciate about yourself, but that you don’t feel like your spouse appreciates and your body loves it. Your nervous system takes a breath and goes, oh, I can breathe for the first time in a long time. That exhale can feel quite intoxicating and say, I want to get me more of that. Our nervous system recognizes that as that feels good, that feels safe.

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I need more of that. And I want you to know that this is not weakness to want, that it’s not weakness. It’s your body’s way of saying, this is actually what we need here. And it’s saying, I have felt dead. I feel something and I want more of it. It’s not weakness. Now having interactions with people where you might notice that they’re attractive or where they might notice you or where you might feel a little flutter of, oh, someone’s paying attention to me or somebody seems to need me. This is amazing. Okay, that’s okay. It’s okay. So next I want to talk about where betrayal actually begins. Betrayal doesn’t actually begin with another person. Betrayal begins when we abandon our own truth about what we need. It’s when we abandon our own desires, our own hunger, our own want, our own soul desires. And we betray ourselves by saying, I don’t really have to do that.

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I can just get by. I can get by. I don’t want to be too much. I’ve already tried. It didn’t work, but I’m okay. I can make a good life. I’ve got a good life. Look at my good life. I have so much. I have so much. Why can’t I just be happy with it? We start living half alive, managing our own disappointment instead of owning it, we’re managing it. We’re not naming it, we’re just managing it. And often we find things to keep us busy, busier, busier, and before long we are drifted into disconnection from each other. And that is when we are prime for another person to enter the picture. But this betrayal of self can happen long before and it usually does, especially in long-term relationships, long before anyone else enters the picture. Okay, so now back to emotional affairs involving another person.

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This is something you’re not going to hear very often. You’re going to hear it from me though. Emotional affairs are not about the other person. They really aren’t. They aren’t about that other person because you don’t really want to disrupt your whole life. You don’t really want to disrupt their whole life. You don’t want to blow up anybody’s life. You don’t want to hurt anybody, right? You don’t. And it really isn’t even about wanting them. It really isn’t. Where it starts out is it’s really not even about wanting that particular person. It’s more about this person Help this part of me that finally feels permission to exist and that person can get all the credit for that. Thank you for helping me feel this again. And we can be grateful. We can feel grateful to feel it is a gift to feel. It means we’re not dead.

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It means we’re alive. It’s what we do with that and the stories that we tell about it and the boundaries we do not set that gets us in trouble. That hurts people. That ultimately hurts you because it’s not that other person that you want. You want to feel that you want that for yourself. And I’m going to get a little bit into later what to do with this in your own relationship, okay? What feels electric in this relationship isn’t actually them. You don’t really even know them. You know that this person is able to hold a mirror to something that feels alive in you, that’s been dormant for a long time. It feels seen again, mirrored wanted. You couldn’t breathe again. This is not about that person. It’s about you awakening. It’s about something being alive in you going, I cannot keep abandoning myself. I cannot keep ignoring myself.

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I can’t. Okay? And for the one who strayed that pole isn’t about escape. It can be, but in this context, it’s not necessarily about escape. It’s about connecting with a starved part of yourself that stopped believing. It could live here in your home within you, and you’re starting to learn that it can feel, again, a part of you that needs to be seen. And for the one who was betrayed, the deepest wound isn’t you wanted somebody else. It’s often some part of you came alive somewhere outside of this relationship. Without me, I couldn’t reach you. And sometimes the in this is knowing that you really tried, knowing that you really tried to reach them at a soul level and that they would not open up to you. That can be very heartbreaking and that’s what can shatter trust at a soul level. But here’s the real truth.

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Emotional affairs come from an honest need, but a dishonest strategy. Let me say that again. Emotional affairs come from an honest need, but a dishonest strategy. The need is human. We all need it. We all need to be seen. We all need to be met. Delighted in the dishonesty is outsourcing that need before you even know what it is before you even know that what the thing is, it’s not named, it’s not owned. It’s not saying this is the thing. You’re just feeling it and going, I want more of that. But you’re not even identifying what it is that’s alive in you now and you’re outsourcing it. You’re letting this other person feed this in you without even knowing what it is and without bringing it back to the union to see if you can create more of that there. This dishonesty is outsourcing that need before you’ve owned it.

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It’s not being a villain, it’s not moral failure, okay? It’s just the dishonesty piece is you’re not being honest with yourself and really naming, what is this? What is this that feels alive here? And I’ll be honest with you, you might feel a lot of grief in this process as you name it, as you go, this is what it was. This is what I felt. I didn’t know I could feel that way again. I thought that was dead and gone. And now that I remember, I don’t know that I can go back to the rest of my life not feeling that again. But then you’ve made kind of a mess, right? There’s this mess with a hurt spouse sometimes hurt kids, and so you might feel like you don’t deserve it. And what I’m telling you is that no one wins. No one wins. If both people in the relationship are not feeling like their needs matter every bit as much as the other and where they’re communicated about and given and received, it won’t happen.

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Once you can see something, you can’t unsee it. Once you have felt something again, you can’t unfeel it. You know it’s there. It’s undeniable, and we have to stay open to that. It can become your new compass of what you’re creating, that longing, that fueled the emotional affair. It’s the same longing required to heal, whether it’s rebuilding the relationship or leaving it with self-respect, knowing that you did what you could to repair the energy isn’t the problem? The energy, we just feel stuff we just do. We think stuff. It’s like a cloud going by. We don’t judge the clouds for being extra heavy one day. There it is, extra electric. There it is, right? It just is a cloud and it passes. It’s not the energy of it, that’s the problem. It’s the secrecy that distorts it. It twists. It turns it into something that it’s not.

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It makes us believe stories about the situation that are self deceptive like that we are the special person that’s going to rescue them and they’re rescuing me. And maybe sometime we could really be together and there’s so much deception there and we can make such a big mess for ourself. But what is real is that feeling of aliveness and the need that it touched on, the hunger that it touched on, the wound that it touched on. When longing is brought into the light, when we can bring to the light longing and we can own it with our own ownership, with our own honesty, and we can speak it, it becomes intimacy first with yourself, A sort of intimacy of I’m finally hearing me.

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I’m finally hearing me either with your partner or with your own truth, either with you alone or with your partner. You’re finally able to share and that becomes intimacy. Now, if you are the one who’s straight, I want you to know your body wasn’t betraying your marriage, it was betraying your suppression of yourself, and that’s where it started. The work now isn’t punishment, it’s not penance, it’s learning to feed that same hunger with integrity, it’s learning a different way. We’re we are not bearing it. Again, it’s about learning how to feed that hunger with integrity and asking yourself, what part of me came alive there? What need was trying to speak? How can I honor that need directly right now? And really owning it. What this does is it turns shame into something we can work with. It turns shame into responsibility. This is now my responsibility. This is my responsibility now to hear the needs of others to really hear without recoiling, learning how to hold a mirror to someone else to say, I can stand here in your presence and I can hear what you are saying without recoiling, without making you wrong, without being too much, letting you feel what you’re going to feel. And I can energetically hold it. I can hold all of you, and we need to know if this person can do the same for us. Can we both give this to each other?

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Now, if you’re the one who was betrayed, your pain is not just that he connected or she connected somewhere else. It’s this, I was starving too, and I didn’t know how hungry I was until now. Ouch. I knew I was hungry. I knew I was starving, and I didn’t even realize until now, how hungry and how we know is by how much it hurts and how we are recognizing what we also cannot go back into. It becomes a turning point. Your healing is not about becoming more desirable or proving your worth. It’s not at all. You don’t have to prove nothing. You don’t have to prove anything. There’s nothing to prove. Your healing is about reclaiming yourself within yourself as a place of emotional safety again, and for most of you, it’s a first time job. You’ve never done it before. You’ve never done it.

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You didn’t know how. You didn’t have the tools. It didn’t feel safe enough, and now you are seeing the absolute necessity. I have to feel safe again. It’s about rebuilding your capacity to be fully alive, not just waiting to be chosen, but choosing yourself. It’s about choosing you first. Really, you have to choose you first going, I can’t go back. I can’t go back. I cannot self betray. I cannot self reject. I cannot shrink. I cannot and I will not. And I want to throw this in this piece right here. This is probably the most important place where I meet my clients, where my women in my group speak this out loud. I cannot go back. I will not go back. And they have all of their sisters in the group there that are helping them, that are supporting them, that are carrying them, that are, there’s some accountability.

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Even not in a, you said you’re going to do this, but more like out of mutual respect for each other. I’m going to respect myself. I’m going to respect this space, and if I say I’m going to do something, I’m going to accountability. Knowing that people are watching can be really a powerful motivator. And this is the work that I do with you is helping you not go back. We’re not going back. We are not going back. Helping you get to that place where you understand what the need is, what the one is, what your standard is, moving forward and growing your capacity to courageously lead yourself forward because you know that you can’t collapse on yourself again, and you are betting on you. You’re betting on that I will be okay. I will figure this out, and I don’t quite know how this is going to go, but I have to choose me. I have to choose me. And this is where I help you with strategy, with mindset, work with nervous system work, all the things that we need to be able to move through this very challenging time, okay? This is about rebuilding your capacity to feel fully alive. To be fully alive, not just wanting to be chosen, but choosing yourself. Okay? Choosing yourself. Now, if you happen to be listening to this and you are in a situation where there’s somebody that you feel a little bit of a pull with, integrity isn’t the absence of desire.

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Integrity is the courage to stay present with what you’re feeling, to feel a longing without acting it out. How we feel is just how we feel. Acting it out is where we take it up a notch and where we move into a different direction, where we create that triangle that I talked about earlier where we start to justify things, where we start to kind of be a little more sneaky. You can honestly say, I’m drawn to this because I feel seen. I’m grieving what has never been in my relationship at home. I’m craving emotional maturity and depth and delight. Naming that. Hunger is very healing. Just naming it. And from there you can ask, is this an invitation to repair? What is currently here? What exists here with the person I’m with? Or is it an honest signal that something fundamental cannot be rebuilt? There’s no villain in that question.

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There’s only truth, and I would say that for most of the people that I work with, you might not get that answer until you are being so honest with yourself and then articulate that honesty to your partner and let them respond. It’s likely a conversation you have never had, because if you’ve never had it with yourself, you probably haven’t had it with them either, of really understanding what is this about? What is it that I am starving for, and then naming it. That emotional pull is never really about the other person. It is your unmet self calling you back saying, Hey, pay attention. There’s something. Pay attention. There’s more for you. And sometimes that more for you can be shown to us and another person. That doesn’t mean that that other person is for us, but it might mean that they are showing us something that we are needing to call back, open and heal within ourselves and open up.

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Sometimes that call leads to renewal with your partner. Sometimes it leads to completion and release. Sometimes it leads to deeper self-trust before any decision is made. I would say that’s the most important place to start. But the doorway here is always the same. Honesty without self abandonment, honesty, without self-abandonment, we’re not going back. You can hold desire without acting on it. You can acknowledge longing without making yourself wrong. You can find yourself in the ache and not lose yourself to it. Alright? And that’s what this work every bit of it is really about. Not just staying or leaving, not about policing your behavior or policing anyone else’s behavior. That’s not what fixes this. That’s not what heals it. Policing anyone’s behavior is not what fixes this. We have to go back into ourselves, meet those parts of us that have felt starred with love and generosity and curiosity and understanding. Meet them and start advocating for them. Either side of this that you’re on, that is the way forward. Alright. Thank you for being here. I hope you found this useful and I will see you next time. Thank you for listening to the Heal from Infidelity podcast. If you would like to be kept in the know about upcoming free classes, new podcast episodes, and other ways of working with me, go subscribe to my weekly email. You can subscribe@andreagiles.com slash lies about dash infidelity slash. Again, it’s andrea giles.com/lies about dash infidelity slash I will see you next time.