Case (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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fandomsecrets2025-09-02 07:11 pm
case) wrote in fandomsecrets2025-09-02 07:11 pm
[ SECRET POST #6815 ]
⌈ Secret Post #6815 ⌋
Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.
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[KPop Demon Hunters]
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Notes:
Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 19 secrets from Secret Submission Post #973.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.
Re: What is emotional infidelity?
(Anonymous) 2025-09-03 06:47 am (UTC)(link)"Is it also the case if the person your SO got super involved in was someone they couldn't be sexually attracted to?"
Depends on how "involved" you mean. If one's SO is focusing the majority of their time and energy on someone who's not their partner to the point where their partner is going without, I guess that can be a weird kind of cheating. But IMO, it's rare to see that level of intimacy and infatuation without sexual attraction. Especially in men.
Re: What is emotional infidelity?
(Anonymous) 2025-09-03 08:06 am (UTC)(link)Thank you again for your kind response! I guess because I'm so inexperienced with relationships, that it's hard for me to wrap my head around the whole of it.
A part of me wants to think it's romantic. The fact someone will stay with their SO despite falling in love with someone else, if only because they've always loved their SO, and know that will prevail over emotions they can't control?
I do see how that's stressful though. The fear of losing the one you love to someone else because you see how important that other person is to them, but at the end of the day I can't see cheating as anything other than abject betrayal, and that has everything to do with intention. It just comes across as a sort of "my husband loves his golf more than me" I guess? Which is problematic, can break up relationships left and right, but that'd be like saying "my husband cheated on me with his putter", which isn't right at all?
I guess I'm showing my naivety with this, because, idk, I guess I hold a lot against cheating, and without purposeful intent and action, it really does feel wrong to call that cheating. Because pursuit and infatuation are just so different to me. Tbh, even when sexual attraction is involved, so long as they're not going after them sexually, they've done nothing wrong, I feel. If only because that's something they cannot help but that doesn't mean they can't be close to that person either?
I really do not envy couples counsellors right now, omg.
Re: What is emotional infidelity?
(Anonymous) 2025-09-03 06:41 pm (UTC)(link)I suppose it could be, but that's an extremely romanticized view of things that works better in fiction than real life. Very few people can love more than one person equally, and have that work out. It usually creates tension, jealousy and resentment, especially if that person only gets to act on that love with ONE of the people and has to spend the rest of the time yearning after what they can't have. Again, that's great fiction, but terrible for real life relationships.
If a person is in love with someone else, then there's a very good chance they won't be able to hide that - it'll come out in how they behave, even if they don't intend for it to happen. And think of it this way... doesn't their partner deserve someone who loves them and is devoted to them, fully and completely? Would you consider it romantic if your partner loved someone else, but stayed with you out of some sense of duty and obligation and thought that faking the rest was good enough for you? Some people wouldn't mind that, but a lot would have a problem with it. I would.
To be honest, I think you're downplaying emotional cheating quite a lot. It's one thing for a hobby like golf to take over a partner's life, and people certainly make jokes about "golf widows" even though that, too, can be a problem. (If a person spends all their time on golf (or another hobby) and neglects their family, for example. It's sad and heartbreaking if your kids only remember you as "that guy who was never there on weekends and holidays because he was off with his golf buddies".) But doing this with a person is far more intimate of a betrayal than merely being overly-involved with a hobby.
You say you don't have much experience with relationships, so it might be difficult to explain the intimacy that occurs between two people who are deeply involved. I don't mean sex, I mean the emotional bonding and connection between two people who trust and love one another, who take care of one another and would never do anything to harm the other person. Think of it like a deeply committed friendship in addition to the romance and sex, where you don't just love someone or are attracted to them, you really like who they are as a person and that mutual regard is returned. That's the foundation a romantic relationship is built upon. If one half of the couple isn't doing that, and is instead turning all that attention on someone outside of the relationship, it leaves a big, noticeable hole in the relationship and weakens the foundation.
Infatuation doesn't occur in a vacuum, or it'd be fine, like you said. It's almost always going to manifest in some way that detracts from the relationship that actually exists because it's a type of obsession. You cannot be present for your partner and your family if you're obsessed with someone else, and that's where the emotional infidelity comes in.
Re: What is emotional infidelity?
(Anonymous) 2025-09-04 05:14 am (UTC)(link)You've actually done a brilliant job explaining, because I didn't even get half-way before it clicked for me. I thought, 'like losing your best, childhood friend.' and once I finished reading I think I understand it as best that I think I can.
But to go through your comment, and it's almost hilarious because I've never considered myself to be anything close to a hopeless romantic, but I definitely am, because a part of me still believes that I would be okay with it, if only because they chose me. I suppose I never considered it an equal love though, the prospect of emotional cheating. That the existing one would be more prevalent, and so there'd be no faking or settling for what someone already has.
Maybe I simply saw it more as someone who has every chance to cheat, with everything set up on a silver platter, and choosing not too. But it's more than turning down an opportunity, it's indulging in one instead?
I don't believe I'll ever fully get it, because even now I want to defend it. The whole 'they're allowed their own life, to have friends, to spend time with who they choose' but I know now that it isn't that simple. I still don't feel right to call it cheating, and I've typed out about a dozen reasons on technically why, but sometimes conversations only make things worse, and the betrayal is real to one person while the other just might never see why. It doesn't matter if the third person is real, or they can reach out to them. It's different for everyone.
Thank you again for being so patient with me, I was scared people would think I was a troll or trying to stir something up, but you've been nothing but kind and articulate, and I appreciate that a lot. <3