Emotional affairs - have you or your dh/dp had one?

[highlighter]

Apparantly these are becoming more and more common particulary with colleagues due to long working hours etc. It is where you have an emotional but not physical relationship with someone which goes beyond harmless flirting. Can be spending a lot of time with someone, calling them or texting them out of work, hiding it from your partner etc.

They can be just as destructive as physical affairs, the feelings of betrayal and hurt on discovery can be just as bad. I just wondered how many of you had experienced them and how you had dealt with it or whether you don't really think it's a big deal if it's not physical.

(am regular btw)

i dont think thats wrong. it is good to get a male perspective imo.

should i share the texts i havegot this morning?
then tellme if they are bad?

yes of course if you want to!

It is subjective though, only you know the intent behind what you do. What may seem harmless on the face of it becomes a betrayal if you hide it or there is hidden meaning iykwim

LOTF, what do these texts say?? Pray, tell...

okay, hang on....

I actually don't think "emotional affairs" is a very helpful term

An affair, by definition, involves physical intimacy - whether you like that person or not

It is normal to fall in love with other people and you WILL do this, over the course of your lifetime, and so will your husband

It is normal to FANCY other people and you will do this and so will your husband - maybe a lot

I have close/flirtatious relationships with men and DP does with women. We are quite open about this. I think that as long as you are both mature enough to be open about your feelings towards other people then there is no harm in it. In some ways, if you are able to say "Look, I'm actually starting to feel uncomfortable about my feelings towards X" and discuss that with your partner, then you are far LESS likely to have an affair than if you have to sneak around hiding perfectly innocent friendships from a jealous/immature partner.

"I think that as long as you are both mature enough to be open about your feelings towards other people then there is no harm in it."

Precisely what I am saying

I agree with everything MP said

how you deal with it i spose depends o the stateof your marriage.
i know a woman who divorced someone cos of his friendship with a woman at work.
if a man was confiding his marriage troubles to me, if i fancied him, i would be hopeful,if my marriage was in trouble. if i didnt fancy him, then i would thnk of it as harmless.

I think it's the secrecy that is the betrayal. If you don't feel you're doing anything wrong then you wouldn't feel the need to hide it from your dh. if you feel the need to hide it then deep down you must feel that what you're doing is wrong, iykwim.

A friend had an emotional affair with someone she met over the internet. It certainly wasn't harmless flerting but they'd never even met in person. But her dh found out and it nearly cost her her marriage.

i have many male friends. people I've known since I was at school. We don't see each other any more as they live in South Africa but we regularly text/email/talk on msn and occasionally on skype/the phone. And when I go to South Africa in the hopefully not too distant future I will be staying with one of them. They are some of the best friends I've ever had but they are friends and nothing more, and i wouldn't want to sleep with any of them even if dh wasn't in the picture, I just don't feel that way about them. My dh knows all this - I have no reason not to tell him.

That being said, they are friends I had long before I met my dh, I'm not sure if I'd feel it was so appropriate to act in that way with a bloke I'd met since meeting dh iyswim.

The think is though, some day you may overstep the mark, take it too far, decide NOT to be open about it with your parnter. Things can spiral very fast. You may not be aware that the consequences can be as devastating as if it were a physical affair.

your second question was "How would you feel if you discovered that your partner was doing this?"

Which suggests that you are talking about a relationship that is a SECRET from you.

I think this suggests problems.

Good morning LotF! Hope youre well today. Its a simply GORGEOUS morning.... Would like to wine and dine you on the 12th June LotF, my birthday treat. Can u make it for 12? I shall take you to that cheeky italian over the road. Is that ok? And they do a nice Latte to finish with lashings ofwhipped cream.... How do you feel about that? Slurp! Lovely! lol. Laters....! x

Sounds terrible now i have typed it out! lol

will find another!

mp .. i don't think me or my dh would be emotionally mature enough for the situation you describe.. we would both be very jealous. i am jealous cos he fancies weather girl.

Oh god I am not advocating not having male friends fgs!!!

lotf.

But highlighers if you are talking about things spiralling etc, then you ARE talking about a physical affair, non?

I wouldn't go out drinking with someone I felt that way about because then it WOULD spiral and go tits up (or tits out)

Of course it suggests that! By definition you would have to discover such a relationship (unless they suddenly chose to tell you about it out of the blue)

ebs...

LoTF he sounds a bit CAMP!?!

Lots of men apparantly don't think it is a problem as long as they don't sleep with someone, whereas for women the emotional element of any affair is the most painful

lol

my thoughts too mp.. is he ? i was going to ask...

lotf
omg
he sounds errrr MAD!

highlighter I think that both people need to be secure enough in their relationship to be able to be open about it

Jealous feelings are GOOD but acting unreasonably on jealous feelings is NOT good - i.e. I might feel jealous that DP was taking another woman out to lunch, but stropping and saying he couldn't would be UNREASONABLE

imo

highlighter I think that man/woman difference is a bit of a caricature

It doesn't ring true for me, anyway