Emotional cheating signs can be difficult for the untrained eye to detect, but when you know what to look for, emotional cheating in relationships can be observed quite easily. One of the biggest factors to look for is change.

Changes in the way a person feels are often mirrored by changes in the way a person acts. For example, behavior is quite different between a person who is angry and a person who is happy. Likewise, when a person grows emotionally distant, they will act much differently than when they are head over heels in love. Therefore, looking for changes in your spouse’s or partner’s behavior is a good way to identify emotional infidelity.

Infidelity statistics by the American Association of Marriage and Family Therapy reveal 15 percent of wives and 25 percent of husbands engage in sexual relationships outside of marriage. When emotional affairs are thrown into the equation, the numbers jump by more than 20 percent.

Emotional affairs at work tend to make up a large percentage of these numbers, and some research shows over 50 percent of opposite sex, work friendships end up turning into something more. Even without sex or physical intimacy, an emotional affair can be just as damaging to a relationship as a physical one and, in many cases, more so.

The reason for this is emotional adultery surrounds itself in secrecy and deceit. When it comes to sharing intimate thoughts and feelings with someone who isn’t your partner, most people aren’t aware they are cheating and don’t intend to do it purposely.

However, when this type of relationship is allowed to continue and feelings continue to grow, the risk of emotional affairs turning intimate is greatly increased. When an affair begins at an emotional level, it tends to either end or it escalates into something physical.

So how do you go about discovering signs of infidelity? What can you look for?

Here are 17 emotional affair signs that can signal trouble in your relationship, regardless of whether it’s you or your partner who is committing them. If you identify these signs of an emotional affair in your own behavior, then it may be time to re-evaluate your relationships. If you spot them in your spouse, beware. A physical affair might be just around the corner.

• Sharing intimate thoughts and feelings with a friend who is not your spouse or partner.
• Spending more time with your friend than you do with your spouse or partner and not telling them about it.
• Having feelings of attraction toward your friend.
• Changes in behavior such as working late more often.
• Distancing yourself from your spouse or partner emotionally.
• Having your friend constantly on your mind, even when you’re at home spending time with your spouse.
• Taking special care of your appearance whenever you know you’re going to see your friend.
• Making secretive phone calls to your friend that your spouse doesn’t know about.
• Lying about how much time you spend with your friend.
• Feeling closer to your friend than you do to your spouse.
• Talking to your friend about private details of your relationship with your spouse.
• Feelings of jealousy when you see your friend dating someone else.
• Feeling guilty or uncomfortable when your spouse see’s you spending time with your friend.
• Feeling nervous about how your spouse would react if they knew you were spending time with your friend or knew what your conversations were about.
• Feeling guilty even though you’re “not doing anything wrong”.
• Sexual withdrawal from your spouse.
• Being defensive about your conversations with your friend. This can include things like hiding text messages from your spouse and keeping a close eye on your phone at all times.