Emotional fidelity is like the solid foundation that underpins the intimacy we share with our partners. You know that feeling when you're just so emotionally connected to someone, and you can be totally yourself around them? That's emotional fidelity at its finest. We met with Counseling Psychologist, Rwituja Mookherjee who walked us through this nuanced topic and helped us understand how to build and navigate it with our partners.
Emotional Fidelity is synonymous with emotional connection, safety, and intimacy. Critical for a healthy relationship, it’s a partner’s ability to be vulnerable, open up, and self-disclose. It establishes the partner as your “primary” confidant, your source of inspiration, and the guiding beacon to keep you grounded whenever life becomes challenging. They listen to your deepest insecurities and aspirations, make you feel safe, and step up on your behalf when necessary. They have your back and are supportive of your journey towards important life dreams. With them, you feel “it’s okay to be me.” This shared meaning of a life together strengthens connection, trust, and commitment.
Its importance becomes evident when the relationship struggles. Maya and Rohit, a couple living in Mumbai, sought therapy a year into their marriage post a brief courtship. At the outset, everything seemed okay. They didn’t have major arguments, lived independently, had successful careers, and respected each other’s personal spaces and friends’ circles.
Discussions highlighted the absence of positive affect between them. They adjusted to one another by inadvertently rearranging their individual lives on parallel tracks. Their personal friends circle catered to their emotional needs making their interactions transactional. Therapy helped to confront this distance and create ways to reconnect more intimately.
Couples have differing love languages and attachment styles. So it's crucial to understand these differences and finding what works for oneself and their partner supports the journey back to one another.
In most long-term relationships, emotional connection wanes due to the mundaneness of life, the presence of children and parenting responsibilities, caregiving responsibilities for aging parents, infrequent sexual intimacy, careers, and financial commitments.
Hema and Anvit were married for 5 years and had a 3-year-old daughter. Hema quit her job post pregnancy making Anvit the sole provider. He was ecstatic about fatherhood but felt pressured to manage their financial commitments. He missed Hema, and felt left out, displaced, resentful, and simultaneously guilty and overprotective.
He became critical of her parenting capabilities which made her feel rejected and attacked. Feeling emotionally detached, their physical intimacy reduced, and they became bitter and contemptuous. Anvit spent longer hours at work while Hema took to social media. They connected through their daughter and turned towards her to provide for their emotional needs, leading to further challenges.
It’s normal to feel disappointed in one another sometimes yet every time you give to the relationship and do something good for your partner, you’re actually doing good for yourself and benefitting the relationship. Kindness, consistency, and honesty help to build a connection instead of blaming and shaming.
Emotional Fidelity means commitment, trust, and respect. Maya and Rohit learned to truly accommodate each other by collaborating on household decisions, scheduling family time, ‘we’ time, and ‘me’ time. They planned recreational activities together, instilling fun and competitiveness into their lives. They moved past ‘exchanging information’ to becoming vulnerable and discussing daily frustrations, simple achievements, expectations, and childhood stories.
These shared experiences made them feel good about themselves and each other. Their physical intimacy increased. They gave each other back rubs and foot massages to achieve mutual relaxation. Such positive exchanges made their future seem hopeful.
Caring behaviors, especially small and simple gestures are an impactful way to intensify feelings and strengthen emotional connection.
Emotional Infidelity occurs when a partner invests more into a friendship or relationship outside the marriage. It’s normal and helpful to be dependent and emotionally connected to others but can become inappropriate when sharing intimate details about the marriage, shifting the need for togetherness towards them and keeping it a secret from your partner. This double life of deception erodes fidelity and can potentially threaten the committed relationship. It violates the exclusivity norms and one’s fundamental beliefs regarding what they consider acceptable in a relationship.
Emotional infidelity is usually a symptom of emotional distance between the couple and deeper issues within the relationship. The responsibility of repair after the rupture falls on both partners who must willingly and proactively reclaim their lives and be courageous enough to rebuild a safer connection. It includes sharing concerns and feelings with honesty, abstaining from discounting a partner’s feelings, getting back to normal routines and responsibilities, scheduling time together, and rebuilding a solid and safe boundary around their relationship.
The betrayed partner, seeking security might become hypervigilant, with an obsessive need for details, and experience flashbacks of the betrayal. Being the cause of intense pain the involved partner might need autonomy and struggle to stay engaged. Coping strategies require balancing between validating these reactions and containing and managing them. Caring gestures and affection need to accommodate these opposing needs. Professional support is helpful at this juncture to work through the emotional attacks, rehashing past hurt and empty reassurances.
Relationship building takes emotional work. Emotional fidelity is important for physical health and the relationship’s well-being. It’s essential for partners to be emotionally responsible for their own feelings. Fears of isolation, shame, rejection, inadequacy, anger, criticism, and failure form barriers to feeling safe and attuning to each other’s needs.
Compassionate communication including active listening, softened start-up, mindful sharing with honesty and respecting one’s vulnerability are necessary for a strong emotional connection. Conflicts are obviously challenging, yet the ability to repair and circle back to one another is the most effective way to resolve them.
