Emotional Affair: The difference between an Emotional and Physical Affair

Question: What Is The Difference Between An Emotional Affair And A Physical Affair?

The traditional definition of cheating is that one person in a committed relationship is physically involved with someone other than his/her spouse. In recent years, cheating has been reclassified to include not only the physical affair but, also, the emotional affair.

http://divorcesupport.about.com/od/emotionalaffairs/f/emotianlaffair.htm

Is infidelity natural? Ask the apes

(CNN) -- In recent weeks, a series of CNN articles have appeared purporting to get to the bottom of male infidelity. "Men More Likely to Cheat on Women With Bigger Paychecks," one headline informs us; yet in the body of the article we are told that the opposite is true as well: "A man who makes significantly more money than his girlfriend or wife is also more likely to cheat."

It's a bit bewildering, keeping track of all the things that could cause a man to be unfaithful. Earn too much and he might cheat, but earn too little and he might cheat then, too.

Association is not the same as causality, but news outlets have latched on to this anyway as the reason actress Sandra Bullock was betrayed; high-and-low-earning ladies everywhere had better beware.

This article and others like it that surface in the media every so often amount to something of a cottage industry in the justification of male infidelity. Scratch the surface of any of them and you get a phenomenon of male entitlement that is oddly abetted by some women.

For example, if you thought that the man himself had anything to do with it, former "sugarbabe" and mistress Holly Hill explains otherwise in an article that ran a few weeks ago: "Men are hardwired to betray women on the long-term." In this view, man is but a victim of faulty "wiring" -- although the wires evidently worked well enough to fund her "sugarbabe" business.

http://www.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/09/02/shalit.infidelity/index.html?hpt=C2