What separates an emotional affair and a close friendship?

[GirlOnIt]

Just that really. I feel like there as to be a sexual element. Because otherwise isn't it just a close friendship?

Romantic feelings. Not always sexual.

secrecy from the other partners

discussing things your partner wouldn't want you to discuss

Emotional intimacy can be just as much an infidelity as the sexual kind. There are things you just don’t do/say to another person once you are in a committed exclusive relationship(unless you’ve both agreed otherwise)

Secrecy. If he can't share everything about the 'friendship' with you then he's being deceitful

Secrecy for sure. For me it was thinking about someone else before my partner. Wanting to tell them things about my day. When I got a text or a message, hoping it was them over anyone else.

Pouring time and effort in to a relationship elsewhere. Secrecy. Messaging every day.

I get the secrecy part, but is that just about the actual friendship. Because I wouldn't want him reading messages between me and my friends.,

The best description I ever heard is that it's when you stop treating your other half as your partner in crime, and start treating them as the mean school teacher/ stern parent figure /fun spoiler in general. So, dodging them, keeping secrets, laughing with your OW/OM about how your OH would hate this or want to stop it, making your OH the but of the jokes, rolling your eyes when they are upset etc.

I do think that sometimes this dynamic can arise as a symptom of a bad relationship/controlling partner, but either way, it's not ok.

Channeling much emotional energy, time & attention into someone else. Attraction. Secrecy. Telling him/her things that would hurt you if you read or overheard. Confiding about your relationship issues.

Little or nothing, OP. For instance, I don’t ever criticise my husband to my friends, male or female, or discuss our sex life with them, yet I’ve frequently heard people treat both as normal and frequently discussed iin friendships.

I'm struggling with that @MsDogLady. Because I confide in my friends about him and it's probably things he wouldn't really want them to know.

He's claiming only friends and from what I've seen it is. Yes he's talked about us, but not in a bad way. Definitely not messaging all the time and I don't think he's thought about her above me. He thinks it's no different to me and my best friends, other than he let it hidden which he's apologised for.

You are not going to get the answers you are looking for, op

Your husband is a cheat. Just because some other people have close friends does not mean what he did is ok.

I suggest you stop looking for excuses to fit his narrative that don't include the full context

I don't know @AnyFucker. I can't see anything that seems affair like in their messages and know they haven't met up. Other than hiding it from me.

Then why hide it ?

I don't hide friendships from my husband. Do you ?

Why does he say he hid a friendship?

He admits it's because he thought I'd be annoyed or suspicious and he didn't want to cause any problems between us.

Why did he think you would be annoyed or suspicious ?

An innocent friendship would not cause that reaction in you. Would it ?

What @AnyFucker said. My best friend is male , and I have a couple of other close male friends. None of them are ‘hidden’ friendships.

He says, because he's kicked up a bit of a fuss in the past over my male friends, so he thought I might be annoyed. But this is the part I think means more, that he liked having someone to talk to that wasn't me. But then like he says, I do have that with my friends and I wouldn't like not having it.

Oh when I was 17 I was in a lovely EA with an older guy who was genuinely in an unhappy marriage (he later left for someone else.)

It wasn't physical at all, but he would say things like,

'I love you, I want you.'

We would have lovely romantic walks.

So yeah we eventually weren't just mates even before anything at all physical happened, and even though very little ever did.

If someone had seen our emails (email had only just begun to be used really by the end of this occasional thing) I think they might've been full of declarations of undying love.

Does he have other female friends, that aren't secret?

No he doesn't have female friends really, not ones he'd message or anything.
But no declarations of love or even any affection really, the messages I've seen are pretty boring. Mostly about work and the kids.

How about the messages you haven't seen ?

Do they work together?

He claims there isn't any and I deleted his WhatsApp and reinstalled, so anything that was backed up came back and nothing untoward on it.

Did at one point @Pjsarelife. But not now and too far apart to have been seeing each other in person. Well anything other than very occasionally.