Emotional Faithfulness
- by Pixel
I’m not saying I buy ’emotional cheating,’ but let’s say I did. Even if it truly existed, absence of emotional cheating would not equal emotional faithfulness. There’s a gulf between emotional cheating and emotional faithfulness.
Emotional cheating is when you no longer love the person you are with exclusively. Let us define it as such and worry about ‘love’ later. It is often contrasted with physical cheating. But there is another, orthogonal contrast. And this is between emotional cheating and emotional faithfulness.
| Cheating | Faithfulness | |
| Emotional | Not solely loving the person you are with | Solely loving the person you are with |
| Physical | Sex/whatever with a person who is not your partner | Solely being intimate/whatever with your partner |
Let’s ignore bivalent logical systems and consider the senses of ’emotional cheating’ and ’emotional faithfulness’ rather than the exact denotation. Because in standard logic, of course not emotionally cheating will equal emotional faithfulness. QED.
Consider the case in which someone is unfaithful physically but claims to have been faithful emotionally.
I would argue that such a case is impossible.
Assuming the sex was consentual, it was not an open relationship, and the person did not forget they were with you, then they consciously decided to sleep with someone they did not love that was not the person they loved. But what can this sense of emotional love be if one is so callous with their physical body? The idea is that if one is willing to do something like that, then it could not have been the sort of love that would put the other person above themselves. And if it’s not that sort of love, then what is the sense in even talking about them being emotionally faithful? Their emotions are obviously impoverished.
But suppose, on the other hand, that it is that sort of love and their emotions are not impoverished. Then by being willing to physically cheat, they demonstrated that they did not truly love the person they were with. At least not at that moment. And if this is the case, then the consequences are even worse: because now it is a sporatic love.
I have sympathy for such people, but it is not sympathy worthy of a relationship. I build my relationships with a solid foundation of trust. When that gets knocked down, I don’t try to repair it, I scrap it and start anew somewhere else.. no matter how much it sucks.
Because if you don’t have trust, what do you really have left?
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I’m not saying I buy ’emotional cheating,’ but let’s say I did. Even if it truly existed, absence of emotional cheating would not equal emotional faithfulness. There’s a gulf between emotional cheating and emotional faithfulness. Emotional cheating is when you no longer love the person you are with exclusively. Let us define it as such…
truly interesting isn’t it… I like what you’ve done here.
A big part of it is how you view the act of sex. You view it as a very emotional act. Some people don’t have as much emotion involved.
I would amend your definition of emotional cheating to keep it consistent with the physical cheating. I would say that it is loving someone who isn’t your partner (outside the presumably knowable scope of your relationship). I could, without a doubt, love a girl friend, but not step outside that boundary. Just as you have a level of acceptable physical contact, hugging, or kissing on the cheek.
This leads into the definition of openness. You could set your cheating and faithfulness on a continuum and each relationship would have their line a different distance away from each side.
I argue that one could have sex with someone and not love them, and not be emotionally impoverished, and still love their partner. I think it would be possible to physically cheat and not be outside the emotional cheating limit. I would say that this situation isn’t that likely though, because sex does bring out a lot of emotion.
Even so, cheating no matter where the line is drawn, is still a breaking of trust.
I think I agree with everything you just said, even if my post would suggest I held a more hard-line position. The problem comes about when people have different definitions/expectations than their partners.
❓