Is Emotional Affair a Real Cheating?

Cheating is cheating, no matter was it physical or emotional. Meetville.com (dating app to find the right person) polled 55,653 people in the period from 9/17/14 to 12/8/14 to find out people’s opinion on the question “Is moral cheating a real cheating?”

The poll captured attention of many participants around the world (USA – 62%, Canada – 4%, Britain – 11%, Australia – 7% and other countries – 16%).

The results indicate that minority (30%) doesn’t consider emotional connection with other person apart from their partner a deadly sin.

According to Gail Saltz, MD, associate professor of psychiatry at New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell School of Medicine, the real problem is that kind of attachment impacts relationships negatively most of the time: “Many of these emotional affairs do move into a sexual affair. Ultimately it ends painfully one way or another: Your marriage ends, or you’ve got to give this person up.”

But finding out emotional infidelity may be even more hurtful than learning about sexual one. Dr.Saltz goes on: “Everybody understands a sexual act need not necessarily contain affection or intimacy. It could be literally about a sexual act. Whereas the emotional affair feels like it’s much more about being connected, about loving or liking.”

Alex Cusper, Meetville service analyst, says that emotional affairs are pretty common. They happen more often nowadays because partners feel emotionally isolated from each other in relationships. The way out is to share feelings and thoughts with your loved one and be always supportive.

Meetville, a leading mobile dating service, regularly conducts research among its users. Millions of people from the U.S., Canada, Britain and Australia answer hundreds of questions every month. You can find the results of the poll here. If you are interested in research on a particular topic, please contact us. Any reprint of the material should be followed by clickable links to the survey.