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People with a heart of gold are like treasures hidden deep underground, they’re too rare and precious for this unfair and cruel world. You see, people like them are filled with compassion, kindness, and genuine love in their whole being. They didn’t just learn those things in the four corners of their classroom nor it was taught by people around them; those traits are inborn to them and they will always carry it even until they grow old.
And believe it or not, you’re indeed blessed if you found one of their kind.
They will start to share their life with you by building a good foundation of friendship; they will invest a lot of time to know everything about you—your past, present and even the future that you want to become and achieve, all your quirks and uncontrollable fidgets, your family history way back from your grands and up to your youngest sibling, your favorites, those baby pictures in your photo albums, that scar on your skin, and every bits of information they need to know.
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As a society, we don’t understand relationship skills. Yet everything is at stake in people’s relationships. Maybe that’s why Daniel Goleman’s Emotional Intelligence struck such a responsive chord. It said: there are social-emotional skills and I can tell you what they are.
Mindset adds another dimension. They help us understand even more about why people often don’t learn the skills they need or use the skills they have. Why people throw themselves so hopefully into new relationships, only to undermine themselves. Why love often turns into a battlefield where the carnage is staggering. And, most important, they help us understand why some people are able to build lasting and satisfying relationships
So far, having a fixed mindset has meant believing your personal traits are fixed. But in relationships, two more things enter the picture–your partner and the relationship itself... The growth mindset says all of these things can be developed. All–you, your partner, and the relationship – are capable of growth and change.
In the fixed mindset, the ideal is instant, perfect, and perpetual compatibility. Like it was meant to be. Like riding off into the sunset. Like “they lived happily ever after.” Many people want to feel their relationship is special and not just some chance occurrence. This seems okay. So what’s the problem with the fixed mindset? There are two. In the fixed mindset:
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An emotional affair has three features:
Secrecy, either about the existence of a friendship, or the interactions that take place.
Physical chemistry and attraction.
When the friend knows more about your primary relationship than you know about this friendship.
Emotional affairs, like all affairs, are increasing because of the social context in which we live.
We spend a lot of our time at work with colleagues, we travel away from home and we have mobile phones, messenger applications, social media and emails. We have individual friendships.
Blurred boundaries
Emotional affairs usually start with a friendship that has 'crossed the line'. By this it is meant that the boundaries around that friendship, that prevented it from posing a threat to your primary relationship, have become blurred over time. Emotional infidelity occurs when your partner starts exchanging intimacies and secrets with a friend that they would normally share with you.
If your partner wouldn’t have wanted you to hear or see these interactions, a line was crossed. If there was also secrecy involved and physical attraction, there was a high risk that this emotional affair would have evolved into a combined affair, where both physical and emotional infidelity occurred.
Not every emotional affair will lead to physical infidelity. For some individuals, there is a boundary that they won’t breach. If your partner decided to end the friendship and has taken the risk to tell you about what has happened, there is a good chance that the relationship would not have progressed further.
Talk to your partner about your concerns
Although you are bound to feel hurt, listen to what your partner is saying and take comfort from the fact that they stepped back from the brink of a combined affair and showed sufficient investment in your relationship to be honest about it. As with all affairs, try to see this as a joint opportunity to find out why it happened.
If, on the other hand, the emotional affair has ended because of discovery, or because the other party has withdrawn, your partner needs to be as honest as they can about the likely progress of the friendship. Most people in this situation would like to think that they would not have been physically unfaithful, but this can be a comforting self-delusion.
An emotional affair can be as painful for all parties as a physical, or combined affair. It is a mistake to minimise the hurt feelings and loss of trust, but with hard work and a willingness to uncover the reason why it happened and agreeing future boundaries for safe friendships, a couple can build a stronger relationship in its wake.
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