Originally Posted by
landomando
Its the emotional cheating I think that confuse me because guys and girls are so different. I feel I have emotional cheated before like over texts but thats just how I text. Like smiley faces and what not. would be considered flirting?? so is that cheating? because its emotional?
No, I don't think a smiley face would be any kind of cheating, otherwise I would be considered the world's biggest cheat, because everyone gets a smile from me sometimes. I guess it boils down to what is going on for you when you add that smiley - are you being friendly, kind, amusing, reassuring, or are you feeling flirty - hoping for something back which your partner wouldn't like? We are all allowed friends and we are all allowed to feel emotion towards people other than our partners. We are supposed to love and care for our kids, our parents, our friends. In a healthy relationship we acknowledge and share our good feelings for others with our partner.
Three danger areas arise which slip into the emotional cheating territory:
Firstly, sexual inneundo or suggestion. Most partners would dislike knowing you are outright flirting in this way.
Secondly, inappropriate sharing of our time and/or feelings which detracts from the main relationship. If we tell all our problems to a friend but refuse to discuss them with our partner. Not to say we can't run our feelings by a friend, or stranger like on here, to clarify them and get advice first. Sometimes we want to work things out for ourselves, or with specialist help, and of course that's fine too. But if we always turn to a 'special friend who understands us' and block out our partner we are heading for problems. If we drop everything for another without any thought as to how our partner might be affected - giving them the message that their needs aren't important in the equation. For example I have known men run to fix an attractive neighbour's dripping tap having ignored the leaky shower at home for weeks - leaving their other half feeling not surprisingly disgruntled. Or a woman to bake a welcome cake for the new guy that moved in next door while her husband gets to fix his own beans on toast - again. We often get complaints about a partner dropping everything to always answer texts from that 'one person' whilst taking their other half for granted.
Thirdly a relationship that we exclude our other half from. People sometimes have a friend that they refuse to let their partner meet or simply hide communication with. This is bound to have them wondering what they are being excluded from and why and raise suspicions as to if it is appropriate. Why wouldn't we share our friends with our partner?
I'm not sure men and women are so different in these things. Nobody wants to feel they are being treated as second best in favour of another or that their significant other is being less than honest with them.