Emotional Affair? Worried!!

[Jayne85]

Hi all - I’ve a bit of a confusing situation here, and I don’t know whether it’s simply my friends all being drama queen's and reading too much into a situation, or whether I need to have a serious think about what I’m doing. I’d love your thoughts, especially as when I Googled 'emotional affair', a few Mumsnet threads came up!

I’m not married but am in a long (and a mean, long) term relationship with my boyfriend. We live together, split bills and rent, etc, etc. In fact, friends and family basically see us as married. We’ve been together for the best part of a decade, and whilst that initial excitement has obviously faded somewhat, we’re happy (most of the time!) together. I can certainly see a future of marriage, kids, etc.

Around a year ago at work, I had to move offices. Instead of working in our London one, I now work in a slightly smaller satellite office where I met and had to start working relatively closely with this guy, who’s single…

First off - in honesty - I find him a nice, genuine and rather good looking man. However, I’m sure most women (single or spoken for) could say that about a large number of guys and many would say this about this guy.

What sets him apart is that quite quickly we ‘clicked’. Not romantically, or anything, but we have very similar personalities and senses of humour, so consequently, from within a week or two of knowing each other we’ve always got on well and been able to enjoy a really easy, natural banter. So far, no problems.

As we’ve got to know each other better and become a bit closer; the lines have become slightly blurred from being just being a colleague from work, to perhaps something a bit different.

In the past few months we’ve got closer. Gradually, we’ve started having the odd drink together after work, sharing a few texts outside of work-hours, helping each other out where we can (for example, I was ill and didn’t fancy braving the rain one lunch time, so I gave him my Credit Card and PIN, and he was happy to pick a few things up for me. The only thing I slightly regret is occasionally we divulge pretty personal stuff to each other. For example, I’ve told him one of two things I wouldn’t tell my boyfriend and I’ll occasionally have a moan about the boyf to him.

Now at this point, I’d point out in all the time we’ve known each other there’s never been any point where I thought he might ‘make a move’, or things might become sexual. He’s not a ‘sleazy’ type and whilst I’ve had to odd dream about him, they’re rarely sexual.
However, whilst I’ve never really thought there’s any problems, when I told all this to my friends they told me to ‘be very careful’ and mentioned an ‘emotional affair’, something which I’d never heard of before.

What is more, over the past couple of months people in the office have begun talking about our relationship, joking that we’re ‘like a couple’, whilst I know some of the other guys in the office have – again, jokingly – referred to when this man and I have been for an after work drink as ‘date nights’. Though not to our faces'.

Basically, I’m a bit worried. Aside from the odd personal thing mentioned above, there’s nothing in the relationship with this man that I’d keep from the boyfriend. He knows we’ve been for the odd drink, knows we work quite closely together and he’s fine with it. He’s certainly not the jealous type. However, when my friends and those in the office are obviously thinking what’s going on is perhaps a bit inappropriate, I do worry and wonder if I’m not being honest with myself.

I’d be interested to hear your thoughts and any questions, fire away.

Thanks for your time.

[winkywinkola]

Well you are obviously very close.

It's always good to have more than one friend to spend time with.

I would start making other friends.

And I would never give my PIN number to anyone.

[Windywenceslas]

Would you be happy for your partner to see all texts/messages, overhear all the conversations with this man? If so, this is a friendship not an EA.

If you conceal some of the nature of this friendship from your DP, you're on shaky ground and should maybe pull back a bit.

Men and women can be friends without it becoming an EA, but plenty of people struggle with the concept and will read more into it than there is. Just be careful not to let there be more to it. It doesn't sound from your OP as if you'd go there, is that correct?