Emotional affair vs close friendship.

[WarrickDavisAsPlates]

I wasn't really sure how to word the title but over my time on mumsnet I've read about people having emotional affairs.

The concept of an emotional affair is fairly new to me, although makes sense that there's a line you don't cross when becoming close to someone and that a relationship betrayal isn't always physical.

As someone who is prone to having quite close and intense friendships I wondered what the line would be for a friendship to become an emotional affair? Would ot have to be something as obvious as confessing feelings or wanting to sleep with eachother, or could there be more subtle changes that Mark the end of the friendship and the beginning of an emotional affair?

(I do realise that different relationships would likely have different points at which boundaries were crossed, for example open relations or polygamous couples would see things differently to a very traditional set up.)

I'd like to know this too..... would be be sharing personal details about your desires?

I think the difference is sharing things that you should only be sharing with your partner, and when the friend becomes more important than your partner.

Depends how much you keep secret from you partner.

I think you can tell your partner everything that you discuss with a friend. However if you kept some stuff back then you probably know that what you've discussed may not be ok which is emotional affair territory. If you tell your friend something that you can't tell your partner then either the relationship or friendship is 🚩

I have a close male friend. We speak pretty much daily and share pretty much everything going on in our lives.

But there is nothing I share with him that I don’t share with DH, and DH is the first person I will message or chat to (he doesn’t always reply in which case my friend may be the first I’ll have a conversation with about things). I’d be 100% happy with my DH reading every WA I send my friend, or listening to every call (he’ll sometimes hear anyway if he is in the room).

Our conversations are never flirtatious, I never moan about DH to him and he never moans about his DW (actually I never moan about DH to anyone, he’s amazing and I couldn’t even think of anything negative I’d ever say anyway!). It’s just a really good friendship.

To be honest, I think it’s a very grey area - hence your confusion.

Unless you’re a sociopath or in a controlling relationship, I think a big clue would be how the relationship with the other person makes you feel vis-a-vis your partner. Do you feel guilty towards your partner when you spend time with this other person? Could you, if required, comfortably tell your partner what you discussed with this other person? If your partner were to observe your interaction, would he have grounds to feel concerned? Do you feel that the energy you’re putting into this friendship significantly detracts from the energy you put into your relationship with your partner? Are you spending more time with this guy than with your partner? And so on.

For me, declarations of romantic love etc would clearly fall within affair territory and I think continuing to see that person after such a declaration would constitute being unfaithful to your partner.

I have a couple of very close male friends. Similar to the poster above, I would be more than happy for my husband to read all our messages (not that he ever would) and my husband is still the first person I would call or talk to about any situation. There’s absolutely no flirtation at all on either side, we share photos of family days out, our dogs, cool stuff we’ve seen - no selfies or any weird shit like that. I love my husband, they love their wives, we’re just very good friends - I really disagree that men and women can never be friends. A friend of mine discovered her husband was having an emotional affair and that was very different - furtive text conversations, lots of crap about how he wasn’t happy, loads of selfies and other flirty shit on both sides…

Emotional affair is someone you are sexually attracted to. Close friend you're not.

Well you are essentially becoming infatuated or falling in love with the emotional affair partner. Those feelings are completely different from how you feel about friends in my experience. Unless you are a teenager who crushes on friends.

You will be basically doing or feeling all the stuff you do when infatuated. Like wanting to tell them things first and to speak to them all the time. Arranging life around being together, having confidences that you don’t let others into, your own little language, in jokes and putting the best version of yourself forward. I get friendships have some of this but not all of this.

I make myself presentable for my friends. But if I didn’t have time or got stuck in a rainstorm I wouldn’t be bothered about it. However when dating (years ago) I would make time to be presentable and look my best. I would get in a cab rather than risk the rain.

I get exhausted thinking about this. I just could not be like this with new friends and have probably crystallised a good reason never to have an affair.

Emotional affair is someone you are sexually attracted to. Close friend you're not.

This, the dynamic is very different.

Emotional affair is someone you are sexually attracted to. Close friend you're not.

This Comment made me think??? Surely it had to be reciprocated otherwise it's just a crush not a EA?

Yes that's why i included the declarations of feelings in the op. Could you just be close friends that you have more of a crush on?

But what kind of things would people class as things they should only tell their partner?

Perhaps I'm just not a relationship type person as I do feel that there's situations where I'd put my friends before a romantic relationship and I'd certainly not be happy for a partner to read messages between my friends and I, partly because I may have been speaking negatively about my partner and partly because I'd not want to expose ant secrets my friends had told me.

I can see that when a friend becomes someone you want to have sex with and you speak to eachother in a sexual way and talk about how much you're falling in love with them, all of that is certainly an emotional affair. But there must be a point before that where lines have just been crossed but not so explicitly as to constitute a full on emotional affair.

Maybe certain personality types make a difference as well?

If you're having conversations or doing anything that you wouldn't do in front of your partner then it's an emotional affair. Hiding anything from your partner in terms of what you've been doing with X person, if you've been seeing X person, messages etc.

Exception is if your partner has an extreme jealousy issue, then I can understand keeping back some things.

Could you just be close friends that you have more of a crush on?

In that case the person needs to end the friendship. I would not expect my partner to be fine with me in a friendship where I'm also attracted to the person and I certainly wouldn't like it if he was in the same situation. Even when it's one-sided it can be problematic. Husband had a colleague who had a crush on him and he knew to be more professional with her because anything friendly could be misconstrued.

My yard stick is - "do I communicate with any man in a way that would hurt my partner if he saw it?" and "does he communicate with a woman in a way I would find hurtful if I discovered tests /emails" The answer should be no to both.

If you wouldn't be happy for your dh to see the conversation
If you are investing time and effort into the ea when you should be putting it into your marriage

I knew my husband was having an emotional affair when I challenged him to show me the messages he and his online “friend” had been exchanging oh so innocently. He refused. That told me all I needed to know.

For me it’s if there are sexual feelings on both sides and romantic attraction/love. Platonic love does exist though, and I don’t think a partner always has to take priority over friends, that depends on the situation. I don’t think you have to tell your partner everything you tell friends or let them read the messages either. You’re entitled to privacy within a relationship.

I don't think it's as complicated as any of this. We all know what our bench mark is for what's acceptable and how our partners would feel about our relationships with other. When you cross the line for both then you have crossed the line. I'm not talking about occasions where a partner is unreasonable/ jealous for no reason, etc.
Innately as adults, we all know deep down when we have crossed the line.

I think it’s a sliding scale and can happen without people realising.

I think it strays into the emotional affair territory when:
-dp prioritises Friend over spouse
-friendship with Friend is keep secretive
-dp values Friends comments more over spouse
-dp wants to spend time with Friend rather than spouse
-dp tells Friends things but not the spouse
-dp has pet names, in-jokes, etc with Friend
-spouse is side-lined

As you said,many of these are common in good friendships. However, at some point, the platonic friendship is superseded by an EA. However, dp often don’t recognise it as such, as no physical act occurs, therefore technically not an affair.

I think it's when you hide the messages from your OH

It's more complex than just hiding stuff, it involves complex feelings, thoughts and planning to be with that person .

I do think men and women can enjoy jokey flirtatious friendship without fancying each other.

My view has always been that if a straight man spends a lot of his time messaging you, however innocent it seems, he fancies you and wants to get you in bed. I’ve had numerous examples of what I thought were just good friendships being turned into something more by the man and spoiling the friendship. I think we are just wired differently.

Do you think your views would differ when considering non straight friends?

An emotional affair is when the person you first want to share news with, make decisions with, feel more excited about seeing is your friend. Not partner. Also when your favourite person is your friend v partner and they take priority over partner.

The difference between a friend and partner is that only one of them will share finances with you, and wash your arse if you're sick or old, and make life decisions to make you happy. So it's weird to treat them both the same, and feel the same way for both of them.