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Which Is Worse: Emotional or Physical Cheating?

Cheating, it’s probably at the top of the list of why relationships fall apart. The reasons behind it can be some of many: contempt, revenge, dissatisfaction, , etc. Sometimes cheating can be the necessary evil for a relationship thats falling apart to get the reality check it needs to come back together. While in other cases, it is the one thing that the relationship couldn’t withstand.

An interesting poll and commentary was done on Huffingtonpost.com that discussed men and women’s view on emotional vs. physical cheating. The conclusions were compelling and yet, different. It in fact plays on the idea that men and women think and feel differently.

For him, physical cheating is a game changer. Men relate to the physical more than most women do, and there for have a possessive and protective nature. Apparently, a man who realizes his partner has developed a physical relationship with someone else, simply put, feels emasculated. They feel a painful rejection. Men find it harder to forgive physical cheating than emotional. They see another man as having something they don’t physically which hits a man harder than a woman.

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Even though no one wants to share their significant other physically, a man prides himself on the sacredness of what he shares with his woman’s body.

She is an emotionally driven creature, and therefore the physical isn’t quite as second nature to her. Physical interaction with another person is the lesser of the two evils. Emotionally driven cheating makes her feel likes she’s lost. It makes her believe that he has completely given up on the relationship. The way she looks at it, a physical rendezvous can happen for a number of reasons, but more importantly it can be a “mistake”. You can’t mistake a well contemplated emotional affair. In her mind there is…

no emotional cheating equivalent to a one night stand. This type of scenario entails a more calculated and elaborate approach to keep a secret.

Emotional cheating is usually harder to spot. A continuous physical affair usually involves texts, cheesy dick pics, and him dramatically angling his body away from you every time he looks at his phone as if he’s the Donald Trump Jr. of sexual sneakiness. Emotional cheating can be your boyfriend religiously watching his ex’s Insta stories or always getting lunch with the same coworker he slowly developed a catastrophically massive crush on.

So which do you feel is a more devastating breach of the “relational contract”? Ultimately, relationships are about commitment, and if this can’t be done then people should reevaluate their circumstance. Hurt feelings, angst, and resentment are slow killers. They eat away at relationships, and quite frankly whether it be emotional or physical cheating, you are bound to deal with at least one of the 3.

No matter how you get cheated on, it takes work to get it the way you want it to be.

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