Danielle Lee Darling was a good wife to a good husband of 13 years.
But the mother of two exploded that good little life in 2020, after having an “emotional romantic relationship” with a “narcissist” disguised as a good guy.
“I had an emotional affair, but I know I’m a good person,” Darling, 43, from Nashville, told The Post. “Even good people do not-so-good things when they’re not in a good place [mentally].”
With the faux pas on her permanent record, Darling’s love life fast became a tangled web similar to the one spun by Andrew Cuomo, 67.
The former New York governor, who stepped down in 2021, and his top aide, a then-married Melissa DeRosa, engaged in an “emotionally intimate relationship,” during his time in office, per new bombshell legal testimony.
A lustful labyrinth of disloyalty, an emotional affair is an extramarital, non-physical bond between two people that “crosses a boundary or a line,” Genny Finkel, a NYC-based licensed clinical social worker, recently told The Post.
“They’re talking about things that are really intimate,” she explained. “They’re making it clear that the person is different than their partner.”
However, Cuomo spokesperson Rich Azzopardi called DeRosa’s allegations “silly and ridiculous.”
“Of course, after seven years of working together for New York, the Governor and Melissa were emotionally close — we all were after going through COVID and everything else together,” he said in a statement.
But an emotional-romantic spark oft-ignites a flame that leaves the cheaters burning with desire for one another, says marriage and family therapist Jane Greer.
“The distinction between a friendship and an emotional affair is when there’s a longing, there’s an excitement, there’s a need,” said Greer, adding that the dalliance can damage a marriage just as severely as a sexual affair, “because there is a betrayal of trust.”
But Darling didn’t perceive her emotional fling as a sin against her holy matrimony — at first. Instead, rekindling with an old crush via Facebook during the pandemic offered her a much-needed stream of acknowledgment and support.
“He re-entered my life and reminded me of everything that I truly knew was inside of me,” remembered Darling, who chose to neither name her husband nor her affair partner for privacy.
She did, however, agree to refer to her paramour with the pseudonym “Sean.”
The two initially met through a mutual friend in college. Both smitten but too young to fully commit at the time, they made one of those sappy pacts vowing they’d be together someday.
And that day came during the COVID-19 lockdown, when Darling’s marriage — as well as her self-worth — was on the rocks.
“We spent lots of time on the phone,” she said of her connection with Sean, who lived a few states away from her home in Tennessee. “He believed that I was enough, but I just didn’t see evidence of that in my day-to-day life.”
“I was in survival mode [in my marriage],” continued Darling, adding that her hubby was a great catch, just not her match — that was a designation she’d convinced herself belonged to Sean.
“Our relationship was like a perfect romantic movie.”
Their phone-only fling went on for two months before Darling asked her ex for a divorce. She and Sean even dated for a few while after her split. But the brunette quickly learned that her dreamboat had a few nightmarish tendencies.
Still, she doesn’t regret their emotional entanglement.
“I did carry a lot of shame, but I believe God sent [Sean] to wake things up that were inside of me and to make me brave enough to move forward,” said Darling, now a certified Identity coach and founder of the Do’s And Don’ts of Divorce, an online uncoupling hub.
“I’m all about helping people identify their limiting beliefs and process their emotions,” she said, “So they don’t make mistakes like I did.”
Chelsea Smallwood echoed similar sentiments to The Post.
She struggled with “guilt” and “shame” for years after having an emotional-turned-physical relationship with a married coworker behind her now ex-husband’s back in 2013.
“In the wake of an affair, everything falls apart around you. There’s a lot of vitriol that comes your way,” said Smallwood, who initially felt like an “absolute villain” for cheating.
But Smallwood, a lifestyle coach and host of “The Other Woman & The Wife” podcast, has since taken herself off the hook — thanks to therapy — and built a virtual community founded on “judgment-free” relationship support.
“Humanizing yourself after an affair requires you to see that the affair actually isn’t the biggest part about you,” said Smallwood, who is now married and has three kids with her affair partner.
“The [affair] wasn’t something that made me or broke me,” she insisted. “It just refined me.”
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