Both are betrayals of trust, one exposes you to more harm than the other. A sexual affair opens you up to disease as well as financial/paternity insecurity. My wife gets knocked up with another man's child, I don't know about it so I end up paying for it's up bringing...and catch HPV in the process.

I don't know the law, but I've read that under the current family court rulings if you are married and she gets knocked up by someone else the husband can still be held responsible for financially supporting the child b/c of the needs of the child.

That would piss me off a little more than what some dude knows about my relationship.

I get what you're saying about being mad about being responsible for another man's child (and in most states, if not all, the husband of the pregnant woman is automatically established as the paternal parent... I think steps can be taken to change that if he is not the father, though).

But emotional affairs are a lot more than just sharing the ins and outs of your relationship with an outsider... it's about getting emotional needs met by someone else. I would think that for a number of women, an affair would start as emotional, and then lead to sexual. Would you really be comfortable knowing that your wife is going to another guy and getting from him (emotional, sexual or otherwise) what she can't get from you? I think they would all be hard to work through.

For me, I think I would be more apt to shut down if I found out my husband was having an emotional affair. There's more of an investment there (of time, feelings, etc) than if he had just hooked up with a girl once or twice on a purely physical level.

All very true.

100% agree here.

Both choices would suck...but in degrees of severity I rank sexual as more heinous than emotional.

I believe that which is worse depends on intimacy and intent. If you are in a committed relationships there is a level of intimacy that is being broken with both an emotional sexual relationship. Having an affair is draining whether it is emotional or physical because in some way you are telling your partner that they are filling your needs and they may be lacking in some area. Even if your intent is not to say that, the other will have those thoughts at some point in the process.

I get the whole thing about emotional ties and everything, but I still say sexual is worse. If my husband cheats on me emotionally, the possibilities of the ways in which I'll be hurt are deep, but limited. If he cheats sexually, he could create a child and an innocent life will be thrown into the mix. Emotional ties can be cut, but someone can never be removed from your list of past sexual partners--that will always be there. He could bring me home any number of diseases and maybe even one that isn't curable. There's many more ways that situation could turn out and they're all longer-lasting than the time it takes to resolve some strong emotions and those problems can keep evolving (if he gives me HPV it could turn into cervical cancer, his child could have a birth defect, etc).

I'd be pissed if he cheated on me emotionally, but I would be devastated if he cheated on me sexually. I would be really mad and hurt if he cheated on me emotionally because I wouldn't be able to trust him again. Even if he came forward and told me that it was just an emotional affair, I wouldn't know if it was something that has stopped or if it's something that still going on. I would be crushed if he cheated on me sexually because that would tell me that he never loved or cared about me in the 1st place. What about the STDs that so many people have? What about AIDS and Herpes?