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)

My friend is very emotionally involved ie, in love with a married man at work. She is single, he has children.
They hold hands, declare their love for eachother, go to dinner together if working away, text, cry about their situation, that sort of thing. The wife doesnt know.
So far all i have said is i would kill my dh if he was doing this to me, ie its just like a affair even though you're not sleeping together, and have been a shoulder to cry on. (She was very upset after the realisation he wont ever be with her properly, leave his wife etc etc)
After reading some of the threads on here from women whose dh have done this and worse, im wondering if I should be giving sterner advice??
You know the whole this is crazy, why dont you find a single man etc etc

Sounds to me like he is getting what he sees as a risk-free ego massage from your friend. I bet he thinks that because he hasn't slept with her that his dw wouldn't see it a being unfaithful

I agree she should get a single man and stop propping up the ego of a mid-life crisis ridden saddo

send her this thread!

Yes

bettybobo yes tell your friend what an arse she is being

if she thinks she has any 'right' to be upset at the realisation that he'll never be with her, then she is seriously deluded! he's using her for an ego boost (and obviously he's the married one with children so shouldn't be doing this in the first place! ) but she should know better and find a single man to chase.

highlighter lol snap I was so tempted to send a thread a while ago when someone was considering seeing a man for dinner or something when he was married and it was a MN pile up!!
He is 10 years older i seriously think he is stringing her along, she may not have children if she waits around for this idiot all her life. Ive been busy with other stuff but this has been nagging me for a while.
She lives in oz, so miles away, but i keep asking her to come and visit so i can try and shed some light. I think she''s a bit lonely and sad, easier prey for older men. Her delicate disposition makes me want to be with her when i show her a MN thread
She honestly doesnt get why she should consider his wife or dc in all of it. i suppose its harder to know the hugeness of marriage etc when you dont have children.
it is bugging me tho, knowing a marriage is being potentially ruined!

bettybobo show her one of my threads! about my life being ruined by a 19 year old girl who didn't give a sht about the wife or child when she decided to sleep with my husband.
(not to mention the sht of a husband who had the affair in the first place of course!!)

but this girl had to face me a couple of weeks ago and tell me everything that had happened.

i shook uncontrollably and was physically sick at the realisation of what had actually happened. and i asked her how come she didn't think of me when she was sh*gging my husband, in my bed, with my wedding pictures on the wall.
she tried to say she loved him and believed their relationship was to last forever. i just burst out laughing!
then the look on her face said it all.

I'll have a word with your friend if you like!!

oh goodness mylittlestar Im sorry you had to go through that.
Im finding it hard to exert much control from here. I think she needs to leave her job or him leave to end it (otherwise its just repressed love, ie stop holding hands wont end it really). I keep hoping she will meet someone else, give up and leave, and I keep pushing for her to get on a plane and come to london. I can deal with it better here.
She is the same age as me but like a rebellious teenager, plus she does have another friend who is married to someone with a past wife and life and im sure she gets the solace she needs from her. I also think she might be depressed, whcih is causing this attachment, i want to try and help her with that too.

Im also wondering if there is anyother way to stop this from going on than one of them leaving their job?
Anyway I knew deep down i shouldnt just let her do this, ill ring her tomorrow and ask her to log on mylittlestar, thanks all

think I am having one sort of. It is mostly an MSN thing, he lives on the other side of the planet. He is someone I knew from long ago, but never quite a boyfriend. We spent many hours in our teens talking on the phone, writing letter etc. We never saw much of each other, because there was distance between us even then. I havent actually seen him for almost 15 years, but we got in touch through friends reunited a couple of years ago. It is an interesting , unique relationship i think, I dont want a physical one with him (I wouldnt risk it) but i sort of like alluding to it.
DS know's about our conversations, though not the details.

Thats wretched Littlestar. I'm so sorry

I haven't (I mostly did physically unfaithful when I was like that) but I think an emotional affair is worse in some ways than one which is purely sex and nothing else. I might just about forgive the latter but I'd find it harder to do so for the former.

So I think Brief Encounter was spot on
pph, your dh sounds brilliant.

Coming late to this, but this was from the survey highlighter linked to:

"If your partner has had an affair, what was the most difficult to overcome?"
Women's responses:
That they had sex with someone else - 28%
That they deceived me - 72%
Men's responses:
That they had sex with someone else - 30%
That they deceived me - 70%

I find it difficult to separate the two out in my mind. I mean, surely if you ask someone whose partner has had an affair, "Would it have been better if he'd not deceived you about it?" I don't think that would go down very well. Most people who embark on an affair know perfectly well that their partner ain't gonna like the idea (unless they happnen to be in a particularly tolerant "open" marriage) and so once they have decided to do it, the deception and the sex kind of go hand in hand.

The survey rather implies there are three options: (a) cheat without permission, (b) cheat with permission and (c) don't cheat. Whereas in reality most people only have (a) and (c) to choose between, and most of us are happy to settle for (c).

I'm probably not explaining myself very well, so apologies if so.

settle for (c) wasn't a very good way of putting it.
happy with (c) is better!!

"I think part of the problem is that until something like this happens we don't necessarily think what the boundaries should be until it is too late."

Definitely. That's why I don't think flirting is a good idea either. A. The other person can get the wrong idea even if you think it is 'nothing' B. You can kid yourself it is 'just flirting' but if you both are attracted, it can easily get into more.

I speak from experience.

I flirted with my (married) boss, and he with me. We spent a lot of time working together, and got close. I would fantasise about him in the knowledge that 'it would never happen' so the fantasies were ok. He finally confessed his feelings 'but I also love my wife, so nothing is going to happen' and obv. I agreed with that. But guess how long it did take for things to happen?! About one month. It messed everyone up - and 8 years later I wouldn't say I've got over it totally.

I'm not saying every flirtation goes this way. But it has the potential to, and I don't think you can always control it when feelings have become deep. Of course I had a choice, but it had got to the stage where I so badly wanted it to happen.

So - no flirting for me!

Message withdrawn

DH had an 'emotionl affair' that i fond out about last autumn, it nearly destroyed our marriage and we are still on very dicey ground. At this point we are only together for the sake of the children (from my point of view at least, he is very sorry I am )

Betrayal is betrayal, I certainly did not see it as harmless fun and if it had been the other way round he would have gone beserk.

As has been said already it was the lies and deceit that went along with it that hurt the most.
If you are doing something with a someone that you would not do in front of your spouse then I would class that as an affair.