This phrase probably sums up the essence of emotional cheating perfectly. Being emotionally betrayed is undoubtedly one of the most terrifying and painful things one can experience. What makes it worse is the fact that you don’t even know for sure if it’s happening or not since it’s not as blatant as infidelity.
You will not release inappropriate texts or someone else’s underwear from under your partner’s clothes; all you have are a few subtle clues that might indicate your partner is cheating on you emotionally. But sometimes these subtle signs are enough to let you know for sure if you’re being scammed or not. Look for these signs in your partner that can help you uncover the truth.
8 Signs You’re a Victim of Emotional Cheating
1. They feel like a stranger to you.
They don’t seem to be themselves, and even though you’re meant for each other, it seems like you’re sitting next to a stranger. The conversations that used to be effortless seem contrived. Their quirks seem different and every time you look at them you feel like you don’t know them at all.
Not only that, they also seem very distant from you emotionally and when you try to talk to them about it, they seem to close down even more. If your partner is cheating on you emotionally, you will feel unwelcome and unwanted whenever you want to spend time with them. The tenderness, adoration and love they used to shower you with will then be a thing of the past and you will feel like you never knew them.
2. They no longer treat you as a priority,
Gone are the days when you meant the most to them and making you happy made them happy. One night stands and purely physical affairs don’t take a lot of energy and time to sustain, but emotional cheating does. Emotional CHEATING is a much more complicated form of infidelity and one that is more intimate. If you feel like your partner doesn’t care as much about your feelings, it’s likely that they’re emotionally focused on someone else in their life.
If your partner treats you as a minor matter and makes you feel like you don’t matter, then they may not be entirely honest. For example, if you go out to dinner and your partner mostly focuses on their phone and not you, that’s a red flag. When you want to spend time with him or her, he or she makes all sorts of excuses about how busy he or she is, but somehow he or she always finds time to be with his or her “friends.”
3. They overprotect their phone.
“If a man who says he loves you doesn’t tell you the details of a private conversation between him and another woman, you can be sure he’s not protecting your heart from himself. He protects himself and the women he has feelings for. Smart women just see things as they are, not as their low self-esteem allows.” —Shannon L. Alder
If you notice your partner being overly secretive and clingy when it comes to their cell phone, it’s a clear sign that they’re hiding something from you. While boundaries are important in a relationship, when someone goes to great lengths to hide their phone from their partner, it’s more or less proof that they’re not exactly faithful.
Additionally, if you notice that he or she is constantly leaving the room while answering calls, or if he or she is suddenly addicted to texting and social media, then these are important signs that he or she is emotionally cheating. If they take their cell phone with them wherever they go, if they are uncomfortable when you use their phone (even for a harmless reason), and if they always call and text very secretly, these are clear red flags of fraud.
4. They’re emotionally cut off from you.
It’s like they built walls around them to shut you out when before you were probably the only person they poured their hearts out to. They have never hesitated to open up in front of you but instead felt safe when they were vulnerable. But now that has changed and how! They’ve stopped sharing their feelings with you, and no matter how hard you try to understand what’s going on, they push you away.
Maybe they don’t open up to you like they used to because they now have someone else to talk to. Maybe he’s distancing himself from you because he feels guilty about his emotional infidelity. If your partner distances himself or herself from you, even though he or she has never been before, it can be a sign of emotional cheating.
5. They have a “friend” they are particularly close to.
I’m not talking about a childhood friend or an old friend, but someone they’ve recently found and become a “friend.” Your partner values them more than you do, talks to them more, and seems to spend far more time with them than they do with you. They seem to do everything together, and when you complain about it, your partner gets extremely angry.
If you try to tell them that you’re not comfortable with the closeness between your partner and their “special friend,” you’ll be accused of being overly possessive, problematic, and clingy. If your partner cares more about their feelings than yours, then that’s a clear sign that they might be cheating on you.
6. They pick fights with you for no reason whatsoever.
If your partner is always looking for reasons to argue with you and starts fighting for seemingly no reason, it can be a sign of emotional cheating. Since he is now interested in someone else, spending time with you or around you makes him unhappy and increases his frustration, which manifests as anger. They may also accept arguments with you to deal with their guilt about being emotionally unfaithful to you.
Since the two of you fight constantly, it makes it easier for them to fall into their partner’s arms. Because in their minds they are in an unhappy relationship and being with each other makes them feel better about it all. The fact that they are the problem and not you, of course, does not occur to them.
7. They feel uncomfortable with any form of physical intimacy with you.
This is one of the main signs that you are emotionally cheating. If your partner is always making excuses not to be intimate with you, then something is very wrong. He doesn’t initiate anything in the bedroom, nor does he react when you do, and he always seems distant and uninvolved.
And it’s not just about love, they get uncomfortable with any kind of physical closeness with you. Whether it’s cuddling, hugging, holding hands, or even a simple kiss on the cheek, the discomfort and dislike are always clearly visible on her face.
8. You seem more comfortable and happier with your “close friend.”
They’re either constantly hanging out with that “close friend” or they’re always talking about how great he is. Instead of you, your partner’s life begins to revolve around that other person, and they don’t care how it affects you and breaks your heart. When they’re with you, they seem distant, uninvolved, and unhappy, but when they’re with their “close friend,” they seem happier, more comfortable, and more relaxed.
They love spending time with them and eagerly await the time before they find them while you silently deal with a broken heart and hurt self-esteem. No matter how hard you try, your partner never seems to respond to you the way they do to this other person.
Being on the other side of emotional CHEATING is honestly one of the most heartbreaking situations there is. Dealing with emotional cheating can sometimes be more painful than dealing with infidelity. The most you can do in a situation like this is let your partner know that their behavior breaks your heart and makes you feel humiliated and alone. If he still decides to stick with his behavior, you should reconsider the whole relationship and let him go.
You deserve better than being in a relationship where, despite all your effort and love, your partner doesn’t even have the decency to tell you the truth. You deserve honesty, respect, integrity and love, not infidelity, heartbreak and second-rate treatment.
