Welcome to the Healing Broken Trust podcast. I'm Morgan Robinson. And I'm Brad Robinson. And today we're talking about emotional infidelity.

Today we're diving into what emotional infidelity is. And then we're going to talk about 20 differences between an opposite sex friendship and emotional infidelity. So stay tuned. Morgan, let's just jump right in.

At its core, emotional infidelity occurs when one partner forms a deep emotional connection with somebody outside of the

relationship. It involves crossing boundaries of intimacy that should be reserved for a significant

other. Unlike physical infidelity, which involves sexual activity, emotional cheating,

thrives in secret conversations,

growing attachments, and misplaced loyalties. It often begins innocently, a coworker who listens

when a spouse is too busy, a friend who understands our sense of humor, when our partner seems

distant, but over time the connection intensifies and the primary relationship weakens. There's some

interesting research on this by Amy Roach and Sybil Chan. They wrote a research article called

Love and Infidelity, Causes and Consequences. They define emotional infidelity as the occurrence

of emotional involvement with a third party that violates the ground rules established

by the couple.

Kind of a definition that they're working with is the occurrence of emotional involvement

with a third party that violates the ground rules established by the couple.

So some examples.

Do you want to give those or do you want me to do that?

Morgan, some examples would be trusting somebody more than our partner.

Telling them things our spouse never hears, falling in love with them, obviously,

spending time, money, or emotional effort on someone outside of our marriage and justifying it all under the label of

just friends. So having maybe that emotional vulnerability with someone else that you don't necessarily

show to your spouse the same way. But what happens when the participating partner denies any

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