To think there are no emotional affairs.

[welliesarefuntowear]

That they are affairs. They have been unfaithful and betrayed you. I see the words emotional affair used so many times almost as though it's a reasonable explanation for the lies that have been told. I think it does the person who has been betrayed a disservice to even to try and distinguish the two. And I truly believe it's used to give cognitive dissonance to the fact that they will have had sex with that person.

I think it's a weird thing to define.

I mean according to MN definition I've pretty much had an "emotional affair" with pretty much all hy friends. Male or female.

See I think its fair enough to expect people to control themselves and not cheat. Bit o dont think you can force them to never have feelings ever again in any way.

@easyandy101 it's easy to know if you're having an emotional affair for example how would you answer these questions:

If your partner said to their friend what you say to yours would you mind/be jealous?

If you got offered a promotion who would you want to tell first, partner or friend?

If you were away who would you message good morning/good night to first? Who would you call and text more? Who would you miss the most?

If your friend and partner both needed you who would you go to?

Who do you feel a closer connection to?

Who would you rather spend your time with?

Do you delete messages?

Do you give numerous comments to your friend while only complaining about your partner?

Obviously I'm not asking you to answer them but just by giving it some thought it's easy to know what an emotional affair is and if you're having one. My partner has many friends of the opposite sex but none of them are emotional affairs, friendship is very different.

I get where you are coming from OP. In some ways it's just as painful.

I think however that the term emotional affair is useful. I had an ex who had an emotional affair with another women, when I was quite young. It wasn't until I heard the term emotional affair that I understood what had happened. Everyone I'd tried to explain it to up until then had just dismissed it because there was nothing physical going on. The term helped me to understand what had happened.

I mean according to MN definition I've pretty much had an "emotional affair" with pretty much all hy friends. Male or female

Me too. Where does friendship become an “emotional affair”?

I think emotional affairs are worst than having sex. But I don't think about sex as being as important as some people do.

That said, I have women friends I give and get emotional support from. I'm not having a emotional affairs with any of them. I do with men too also, no emotional affair. But that's why it can be so hard on the outside, as you can see what is happening and they cannot, as they truly believe it's a normal friendship.

@Alsohuman a friendship becomes an emotional affair when you're doing things like hiding it from your partner, investing your time and energy and emotions in your friendship not your relationship and resenting time spent with your partner because you can't message/talk to your friend as much etc.

Me too. Where does friendship become an “emotional affair”?

I don't know I mean imagine being the friend that someone has known for 20 years and knows everything about you and all you have been through and then being the last to know about something cos of some bloke they met 6 months ago...

SarahTancredi I agree with this. I think its important to be honest about the fact that you can be unfaithful to your partner without physical intimacy. But sometimes on MN I see people with fairly unrealistic expectations.

If you've crossed over into the territory IceClown is discussing then you're definitely having an emotional affair. But it isn't possible to police relationships that rigorously. Especially at work: you can develop very close working relationships in the workplace with people of the opposite sex which on paper, based on the number of hours you spend together/amount of contact you have after hours, would look shady. But in practice in some jobs this can be necessary.

You have to be honest with yourself about where your emotional loyalties lie, but also allow space for some intimate friendships with people of the opposite sex if they are appropriate. Otherwise we're kind of back in Victorian territory.

I've known people have emotional affairs.

Sometimes it might be a male and females friend/colleague, both attached but not to each other, where the chats and laughs they have together get a bit to close. If they were both single it probably would just be hanging out but could lead to something.

I have known couples where the man has developed a crush on a friend or colleague. The 'OW' will be a damsel-in-distress type (husband left her/widow/single mum) or a bit younger. The man will have 'fallen in love' with 'OW'. There may be some stolen kisses but probably not much physical going on.

Affairs:
One of a couple has a sexual relationship with someone else.
It might be a one-off, possibly drink related, or it may be a full-blown affair.

All of them are betrayals. I have known a couple where she had a drunken ONS and he went on to have a full-blown affair, and I think that what he did was far worse than what she did. (Bear in mind I know more about it than I am prepared to say on here)

But not all emotional affairs are physical.

What do you mean "not all"? No emotional affairs are physical. That's why it's called an emotional affair. Once it becomes physical, then it's called an affair.

I don't really understand what an emotional affair is.

Think about your relationship with your partner/ spouse. Think about the level of trust between you, the support, the amount of time you spend together and how you prioritise one another. Now imagine you had all that with someone else and felt an attraction but didn't act on it. You keep telling yourself and your partner it isn't cheating because it isn't physical. However, when you would have shared a problem with your partner it's your 'friend' you turn to. When your friend and partner are upset it's the friend you go to comfort first. It's them you think about and want to be with.

In the OP's case it sounds as if even if it started like this, it ended up with them sleeping together whilst maintaining they weren't. Either way, I think that level of emotional connection, of treating someone like a partner whilst claiming they're not a partner, is very damaging to a (supposedly) monogamous relationship.

It depends if you believe that a man and a woman can be friend wo it becoming sexual.

You have people in here talking about speaking to their friend daily, sometimes several times a day. To spend hours talking on WhatsApp/phone etc... they are friend with a woman and it’s ok. But somehow the same thing with a man isn’t.

If you believe that a man can be friend with a woman, then there shouod be no issue. If you dint, then clearly you will see that as an issue.
The way I personally look at it is whether there is some lying or not. If the person is lying/hiding having said conversations then I would wonder what is happening. If they are not and are talking about it in the same way they would talk about another friend (from the sex gender?) , then I cant see the issue.

What is "treating someone like a partner"

Different people would have different levels of investment in different things.

If my rabbit did something ridiculous and I had to tell someone I'd tell a friend. She has cats she loves pets and shed see the funny side. Dp isnt bothered by animals and wouldnt give a shit.

Same if something happend at work. I'd tell.my friend cos she works with customers too and would "get it"

If the.kids were admitted to hospital course I'd tell dp.

From personal (and probably bitter) experience my ex had at least two emotional affairs while married to me. Bitched about my children to them, talked about how lonely he was, how he never had sex (we had two babies in 25 months?) and shared private details about our family with these women. He used the fact that he wasn't sleeping with them as an excuse - but somehow the emotional connection he'd made with other women hurt me so much more than if he'd had a drunken one night stand.

For me the difference is that he spent time and effort on those relationships whilst neglecting ours. While moaning about me not giving him attention - 4 kids and a full time job does somewhat keep me busy..... being too busy to spend time with his family because he was locked away in a toilet texting his fantasy women!

However I do believe totally that he'd have made it physical had the opportunity presented itself

I'm not sure any of us have much control over strong emotional bonds forming, but we do have a choice regarding what we do next - once we've become aware of it. That's when the affair starts or is nipped in the bud. It could also be the moment to be honest with your spouse/partner and end things with them. Much better than stringing them along blindly.

@SarahTancredi would you also hide that communication with your friend from your partner? Message your friend constantly throughout the day but not contact your partner and then go home and ignore your partner all night while texting your friend? Would you be upset/angry/jealous if your partner behaved with their friend as you do with yours?

What you're describing is friendship and an emotional affair is very different and not a one off behaviour but a series of behaviours that erode their relationship with their partner while strengthening the one with their friend.

I don't really understand what an emotional affair is.
Boundaries are crossed. Say your partner has a female friend and he takes her for a drink or for a meal, he might tell you about it, but your gut instinct tell you something is wrong. He might start spending time with this person, without you knowing, or maybe with you knowing. The friendship will stray into relationship territory, usually with a detrimental effect. Your unease will be dismissed as BU, being jealous etc.

I never hear the term "emotional affair" in RL, only on Mumsnet, and I just can't get worked up about it.

If my DH is disrespectful to me eg. slags me off to someone at work, or lies about my relationship, then that's unacceptable and hurtful, whether he says it to someone he fancies, or to his, best friend, or his mother.

If it is simply that he fancies someone else, enjoys their company, gets close to them because they understand him, or even loves them in some form, but is honest about me, doesn't physically get involved, and it doesn't affect his relationship with me, then I don't have an issue.

I guess it is just a way of saying that an affair without sex is still an affair. Most ‘cheaters’ will say that they were not cheating, as there was no sex.

For me, Exes emotional affairs and even the fleeting betrayals like making out that things were bad with us, or not even mentioning me, while flirting with women who couldn’t care less about me, after having met me, and them both getting an ego boost...

That still hurts even now!

Even more than the sex DP did have with other women. I care less about that now. There was guilt and remorse about that from both DP and OW, well some anyway. It showed some awareness of me and some respect.

The emotional affairs - neither party showed any remorse. Even now, Ex will still meet up with them. They say they were friends. Both Ex and OW in this case have zero respect for me, in the past or any acknowledgement.

I often have private conversations with my friends. I find people who tell their partners everything I've said infuriating if I wanted them to know what i was saying I'd he friends with them too. So I dont tell my dp either.

Im out most evenings at work i dont get a chance to ignore my dp even if I wanted too

I text my friends in the day as I'm home. Dp has little signal where he works so I could text him but theres no point cos he wont reply cos hes busy/got no signal.

We live together so I dont need to text him all day anyway. My friends are scattered about so text is our main form.of communication

I'm also not sure about this but for different reasons. People on here jump quickly to emotional affair, but often it's just two friends Of different genders, and it's friendship. For me an emotional affair is when there is romantic intent, or even an underlying attraction. I don't see having a friend of the opposite sex means it's an emotional affair every time, but many people jump to that.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotional_affair

The whole point of an enotional affair is that there was never any sex. I think that some people are a bit confused about this and think it is just a normal affair. It isn't, because the people involved keep themselves in check by not physically cheating.

I think it's really difficult to make a ruling on 'emotional affairs'.

There has to be a line somewhere as to what constitutes an affair. To me, as hurtful as an 'emotional affair' is to the injured party, it's also somebody stopping short of fully cheating.

I'm not saying it's not wrong or hurtful for people in relationships to become emotionally too close to somebody else, but at the same time I do think that through life anybody can find themselves connecting to somebody new and going that little bit too far with a friendship, maybe sending a few too many texts or thinking about the other person a bit too much. That doesn't mean that they no longer love their partner or that they'd want to give it all up, or even that they'd take it any further.

I can completely understand the pain that these relationships cause, but also think that it's easy for people to slip into these situations but then come to their senses and stop.

Bitched about my children to them, talked about how lonely he was, how he never had sex (we had two babies in 25 months?) and shared private details about our family with these women. He used the fact that he wasn't sleeping with them as an excuse
Sorry serendipity sounds rubbish. I identify with this massively.
The lies.
The putting us and our kids down to the OW.
The saying they are lonely to OW.
The saying their lives are awful being in a relationship with us to OW.
The saying that they get no sex to OW.
Yet the sanctimonious aggressive defensiveness about their ‘friendship’ if we say we are hurt.
So we feel like second best, gaslighted, utterly demeaned and humiliated and can’t even name it as an affair.

These are what makes an emotional affair so very very painful.

@Bibidy I do agree there’s a line. The line is a little blurry but it’s there.

Our partners getting a little ‘smitten’ very briefly by a female friend. But then realizing they were being stupid. That’s forgivable.

Being smitten for more than a few days. Defending new friend over partners feelings? Getting to be quite hurtful.

What I’ve described about. That isn’t okay ever.