When Emotional Adultery During Deployment Leads to Military Divorce

As a military spouse, your marriage is susceptible to all the stresses of a civilian marriage, plus some special challenges. The deployment of a spouse is one of these challenges.

When your spouse is deployed overseas, you may feel lonely and depressed, especially if you're not surrounded by a close support network of friends, family or other military spouses. You may also feel anxious for your spouse's safety and overwhelmed by the responsibility of handling all the household tasks alone.

These conditions can lead to a state of emotional vulnerability that might make you more susceptible to emotional adultery during your spouse's deployment.

Emotional adultery occurs when a person develops intimate feelings for someone other than their spouse. Emotional adultery usually starts rather innocently as a friendship or passing flirtation, but then develops into a deeper relationship between the parties, in which they spend time engaging in many of the emotional bonding activities normally shared by couples.

While we cannot control our emotions, we can control what actions we take in response to them. Emotional adultery often does lead to physical adultery but this does not always have to be the case.

If during your spouse's deployment, you find yourself having intense feelings for someone else and feel that it could be emotional adultery, take a step back and ask yourself: Are you otherwise happy in your marriage? Is this new relationship worth risking a divorce?

In some cases, ending an emotional affair can be quite painful. You'll find that seeking help from caring and supportive sources will help you through the process.

In other cases, the emotional adultery may be a symptom of a larger, more permanent breakdown in your marriage. If this is the case and you are considering a military divorce, be sure to consult with a Virginia divorce attorney who understands the special considerations of a divorce involving a military couple. 

Contacting a Virginia Divorce Attorney

The decision to file for divorce usually comes at the end of a long and painful journey. In addition to the emotional turmoil involved, there's also a lot of fear and uncertainty about what the future holds. Concerns about children, mortgages and even just paying the bills or buying groceries can easily become overwhelming.

A Virginia divorce attorney at Hofheimer/Ferrebee can examine the specifics of your case to help you decide how much support to ask for, what child custody arrangement will work best for you and your children and how to fairly divide your marital assets. Request a FREE copy of our divorce book for women in Virginia, or reserve your seat at our monthly divorce seminar - 757-425-5200.