Cognitive Infidelity: When Attention Leaves Before the Affair<br/> (opens in new tab)

Affairs, as a category, are wonderfully concrete. Something happened. A line was crossed. There’s a timestamp. But in my work with couples, the more interesting shift happens long before that—when nothing has technically happened, and yet everything has already begun to move. If you’ve ever found yourself more mentally alive with someone outside your relationship than within it, you’ve already met this phenomenon. You just didn’t have a name for it. There’s a moment—again, subtle, because all...