My Husband's Emotional Affair - Am I Wrong to Feel Hurt and Betrayed?

"Is my husband's emotional affair meaningless? Am I overreacting? Am I wrong to feel hurt and betrayed by it?"

These may be some of the questions swarming around in your head if you either suspect or have just discovered that your husband is having an emotional affair.

Sometimes, an extramarital relationship may never get as far as an intimately physical or sexual affair, but can become an intense emotional and personal connection. This may seem like it should be taken more lightly, as long as there were no sexual relations, but actually it can be very hurtful for the injured spouse involved. And this seems to exhibited more by husbands than wives, although it is not exclusive to males.

One of the common roles in marriage is that each spouse should be able to provide most, if not all, of the basic needs of the other spouse. And an important component of marriage is the emotional bond and connection that is built and nurtured between husband and wife. They should be able to share the good times and the bad times; they should find strength and support in one another.

So when your husband seeks the companionship of someone else in this regard, it could hit you even harder than a sexual relationship would. This is because it may signify the fact that he does not feel comfortable sharing emotional issues with you and feels the need to withdraw from you and confide in someone else.

As the wife, of course you should feel hurt by this! You should feel betrayed by the fact that there is little transparency in your marriage and that perhaps your husband does not view you as a good enough outlet for his emotions and feelings.

The worse thing is that everyone looks at extramarital affairs as simply sexual, and as long as that does not happen anything else can't be wrong. And so you may feel guilty for your feelings of hurt and betrayal. But what your husband is doing is accommodating someone else into his life in the capacity as you should be in. Someone else is encroaching into your space. This is not right, and you are entitled to feel aggrieved by this.

The next step should be to get past the mistrust, anger and hurt and ensure that you can get your husband to admit that he is actually in an emotional affair. Then you should both be able to sit down and start the emotional affair recovery by talking more and increasing transparency. Emotional affairs should not be ignored because the longer they are allowed to go on, the harder it becomes to recover from further down the line.

So you should not feel bad about your husband's emotional affair - it is not right for him to give that part of his life and his heart to someone else. But you should try to get past the betrayal and urge for confrontation, and work together with him in saving your marriage and rebuilding trust after an emotional affair.