Emotional affairs v "just" sex affairs - can a couple recover from either? Advice please

[candystick]

I've discovered that DP has had a "emotional" affair ie. no sex, but lots of phone talk about how deeply they feel for each other, how they want to be together and so on.

After I found out he ended it, we talked and agreed to get through this together but I can't help but feel that this will be more difficult to get past than a "just" sex affair.

If it was for sex then there would have been no/fewer emotional ties and I would imagine it would be easier for DP to "get over it" and for me not to be so paranoid but as it stands I'm petrified that the bonds bewteen them are so strong it will resurface.

Anyone got any experience or advice please?

To add, I've just been reading another adultery thread and 'whatalotofchocolate' summed it all up...

"What really did me in was the lack of loyalty. I was always there for him, and that's what you get in return."

Well, that'll be my trigger for the bi-daily sob and miseryfest...

I had an affair with a partnered man with children.
It only lasted 7 weeks before his partner found out. We had emotional texts and cyber sex and I'd even spoke to his daughters on the phone.
He promised me he would leave her.

Then he shut up shop when she found out. I never got the closure I deserved. Never got the answers.
This happened nearly 5 years ago and it still hurts like hell. Haven't seen him since. We msn every 6 months or so but nothing like it used to be. God ladies, don't get involved. Please don't. save your sanity.

look infidelity begins with lies and no fancy language or differentiating between sex or emotional affair will conceal dirty shaggers can and do lie

pseudo-intellectualism and trying to sanitise lies,deceit,selfishness as cerebral uncontrollable affairs is a crock of shit,really that is trying to spin your groin twitchings as a deeper felt passion

bottom line,is shaggers always line any line

I don't think that everyone has crushes at work. I never have! Plus it takes two to tango. Yes of course it strokes your ego to have someone obviously laying a path to your door, but it's not exactly hard to say "I'm not interested". I'm not sure that there is such a thing as "just" sex in any case, unless it is a complete one night stand akin to visiting a prostitute. However ties that appear very strong can disappear once the glue of an affair withers, and the fantasy dries up.

Yes, not hard to say not interested. Some men are very persistent and some lie. I often get married men emailing me (I'm single) but I don't want that and most of what they say you have to assume is a lie anyway.

It's hard to generalise as some people of both sexes are very unhappily married and will move on to new partners and live happily ever after. Some women an dmen are serial adulters. Others are serial emotional affair people and others again once have an affair and never again.

I certainly agree that someone who gets emotionally close to someone is betraying much more fundamentally than someone who just has sex at the office party though. I have a friend whose wife is deciding if she can stay with him after his affair. He was relived she found out but the life of the lover is ruined, she'd been promised so much and he didn't go through with it. But she ought to have known the score from the start and if you marry someone who is having an affair with you you can hardly complain later when he runs off with someone 20 years younger and does the same again.

Thanks all for your views and experiences.

Christmas hasn't been as bad as I'd anticipated. Trouble is I've had DP here under my nose all the time so easier to "keep an eye on" IYSWIM.

When things go back to normal (work, school runs, general daily grind etc) I'm scared the monotony of reality and everyday life will make him want to seek excitement in contacting her again.

We are going to contact Relate in the new year. As well as looking at our relationship and why this happened do you think they will be able to offer advice to DP on how to deal with any feelings about her? and how to avoid responding if she texts/texting her on a whim?

I think with the counseling you have to ensure that the counsellor is in tune with you. If the first one you go to isn't right, try again with someone else. Some are much better than others. They shouldn't be imposing any strictures on you IMO. On the other hand I do believe you can put it behind you and move on, just not after a few weeks. More like a few years. Of course you are right you can't forget it happened, but it becomes just a part of your history together.

I am very sad for you.

If you want to forgive him you can.

3 years ago I had an "emotional" affair. My DP found out. I was very upset and we talked and talked. I had to prove myself but since then we have got married and had a daughter.

Occassionally in a row he will throw it in my face but I think we have moved on.

It didn't take very long for us to recover because it made him see that he loved me (things had not been good between us) and it made me realise how much I loved him, and how bad I felt about hurting him.

These emotional affairs are stupid and cruel, but they are often based on a childish selfish need for recognition, from anyone.

The person I had this (what I now call "stupid" thing) with was also married with children. He was 12 years older than me.

I now know its something he does a lot and have heard that he is now with someone else, his wife is unaware. Somehow I feel better knowing that I was "duped" by a professional but I still hate myself for it, everything good in my life could have been hurt.

I promise I am me!!

If I were you I would be scared if your H was not upset, feeling guilty and desperate to make amends. I know everyone reacts differently but I immediately deleted and threw out everything to do with OM, I was literally crying on my knees to my then DP, now DH.

I gave him the phone number of OM to let him speak to reassure that nothing physical had happened (thank god).

I now have nothing to do with OM at all. Once the OM sent me a text message and I had to tell DH as per our new promises, he was angry but at least he trusts me.

OM did ask me to leave then DP for him (when it all blew up) and I thought it was very strange as it was never that to me.

I know it was horrible of me but I am not actually a horrible person. I just got carried away (selfishly) by attention.

Do you not think they'd planned to have sex at the hotel? Sorry but I don't buy all this "it just happened" baloney.

He doesn't want to give you all the details as he wants it done and dusted.

abedelia - I truely feel for you

My husband has been having an affair for over a year. During which time we have tried on several occassions to work things out. However, the lies he has told - and continues to tell - are making it impossible to move on. He has lied every single step of the way and continues to do so.

I don't know your husband but I know what mine has done and said. He has lied and lied and lied to cover himself. Not only to me but to the OW, his parents, his work colleagues. So much so that he is now made himself ill with the stress of it all.

I never thought he would have an affair, never tought he would lie and hurt me in the way that he has. But the truth of the matter is that he has and continues to do so.

Please don't be too quick to believe your husband. There are things I believed when he showed me 'proof' and explained to me which I now know was a pack of lies.

The only way you can move on from this is if your husband wants to as much as you do and if he is willing to tell you everything you need to know. Keeping any secrets about what happened will only cause you both grief in the long term because they WILL come out and the further down the line you get the more hurt they seem to cause because each time you think you have moved on that little bit you go back 2 steps and have to pick up the pieces once again.

Your husband may well be telling you the truth, all I know is mine lied about anything he thoughthe could get away with. Even when I thought he was telling me the truth he wasn't

I think you know what is right for you and your future abedelia....

I have a ex-friend who I was chief BM for at her wedding her hubby and her were of equal friends I knew her through work (her dad was a director and I felt sorry for her as others we worked with used to ignore her because of who her dad was!) anyway her hubby worked for a bank and I knew her through him but became really good friends...I moved abroad, they moved from the sticks to London she started working for a big firm (where she moved around departments loads of partners - read rich wanting to take team out for drinks etc...) anyway she turned into a complete slag imho she was shagging 3 guys at work and the odd one night stand...still with hubby....anyway they had been at ours we had been drinking her hubby hadn't I knew of one of the blokes (at the time more details came out after!) so I had said to her when saying good bye she needed to tell him as it wasn't fair (her hubby was lovely big heart of gold!) and he overheard thus found out about the affair (well one of the blokes) so it all kicked off I don't think her hubby ever forgave me (i felt awful, I think she was a cow for letting it go on for so long it took her a couple of months for me to find out, then she was using me as an excuse hence my telling her when she was leaving mine that she needed to tell him as if she didn't I would! I have a lot of time for her hubby and didn't like the way she treated him.
It was hard as I got on great with her parents....anyway she split from her hubby, and moved into my spare room for a few months, was a terrible flirt with anyone male including my hubby (who was my bf at the time) time went on and they "got back together" but from her point it was only to go on a holiday to the maldives with ex and ex-neighbours it was a make or break holiday and she came back, knowing it wouldn't work (I was so angry at her for leading him on unfairly) that was eventually the end of them....

Through this she knew all along that it wasn't going to work, as did he deep down, though he would never say to me as I was friends with her first....

It mad me so angry and I hate that a friend of me could act so horridly especially when her ex-hubby would have done anything for her and I mean anything, she was a cow to him.

We fell out over the whole business as I hated the way she mis-lead her ex and was so horrid to him, if she had been straught with him and not continually given him false hope, used me as a "excuse" then I would have probably tried to save our friendship, I think affairs cause many victims, sorry for rambling but my point was thatyou know what is right for you and you have to do what is right for you, and your family even if it hurts do what you need to do, and what is right for you.xxx

Cheers. The fact it wasn't consciously planned is true, I know - I secretly accessed his emails from her so it was never written with me in mind. But he has tried to cover other things up before, like the fact that they had decided to meet once a month after, and that they'd talked about how they thought of each other as more than friends very early on, rather than it dawning on them after exchanging emails for a bit over the summer. I just have to have it out and ask him to come clean on anything else - the guilt of covering it is probably causing him a pile of stress also. I think we really need to have a big talk about things he is covering to spare my feelings as like people say, when you find out later it really stirs things up again. And I have a nasty habit of finding things out, especially as her husband won't leave me alone and regularly calls with little titbits about their future plans and things that he has discovered (not all of them true as I have copies of thr mails etc he is supposedly quoting and his version is wildly exaggerated, he is partly trying to wind me up and ruin our relationship as his wife hates him). H has threatened to get a restraining order on him for this. If we are to move on it needs to be with total honesty... butterscotch your friend sounds a nightmare. Sadly I think her husband never forgave you owing to the embarrassment of knowing that you knew of the affair before he did. men and their pride and all that... I'll cook dinner tonight and then bring it up - I haven't mentioned anything for about 10 days as I wanted us to have a good Christmas so H probably thinks 'phew, she's had enough of mentioning it' so wish me luck...

abedelia, I think that you need to decide whether you can forgive him if he did semi plan to sleep with her. It will always be in the back of your mind so you have to forgive the worst case scenario, if that makes sense?

I know what your H did was horrible but it does sound like he regrets it (and rightly so) and more importantly, that he loves you and wants to work at your relationship.

My ex boyfriend cheated on me several times and I split up with him 3 years after finding out, it took me that long to realise that I could not move on (we were very young)

I now realise that by cheating on me more than once (we were 18) he obviously did not even care about the hurt he was causing me.

This thing with your h sounds like a one off.

Now, I am rubbish and I am not sure I could forgive my h but that is a decision for you to make.

I just know that I used to see things as very black and white, right and wrong but then I saw how easy it was to fall from grace (with some gentle persuasion).

To be fair nothing physical happened with me and the OM, and maybe h would not have forgiven that but I know he probably has doubts and he has had to forgive that worst case scenario, even though its irrelevant in this instance.

I hope that you do whatever calms that sicky/anxious feeling that you must have right now.

Good luck abedelia, my friend was a mare, I am glad we are no longer friends as I wouldn't want to be associated with someone who can cause hurt without thinking of others.

Well, really I think that sleeping with her was the plan all along. he has said that the main reason it happened was simply really because she was an asian woman with big boobs and he was attracted to her despite finding her a bit boring to speak to when groups of them went out to lunch etc. But he thought she might have been flirting with him a bit and eventually built it into the type of crush where he just couldn't resist saying something and knowing if it had all been one sided before he left. Idiot. So although he dressed it up as teenagerish love / infatuation, really I think it was all about sex and when the opportunity arose he went for it and probably talked her into it, which is why he is ashamed (and rightly so), and does not want to talk. Anyway I'm going to put this idea to him. To be honest I have spent too much of Christmas suppressing everything so we can have a low-friction one for the kids that I am now having nightmares about everything! It needs to come out...

It was very silly of him to say something.

I know it sounds hypocritical (maybe) but I really wish that people would take more time to value what they have. My "stupid thing" has really made me do that, and strangely to hate the OM.

I think sometimes (especially after you have been together for a while) you don't really know what you have until it is threatened. He'd built her up into a massive crush and just had the overwhelming urge to try it out thinking it would be a fond memory of something sweet that couldn't have been. Little did he know she'd then text and email constantly after, despite the fact he was halfway across the country and it just spiralled. Her husband works very hard and I think there was an element of bored wife (she doesn't work during the summer holidays to look after their daughter). In the case of telling all I think he imagines that I will feel less hurt if I don't know the full truth whereas in fact I would rather know everything - it doesn't change what happened and I am already dealing with that anyway, I just can't see the sense in him continuing to lie and I actually think he'll feel better to get it off his chest as well as he's suppressing it and it will probably end up making him ill. He's off abroad for a week on business shortly and last night was discussing being away from me and the kids and how much he'd miss us as he hadn't spent a night away before. I actually had to remind him he had on the night of the 'event'. I'm not sure it's healthy to block it that much?

By abedelia on Sun 28-Dec-08 13:25:10
I think sometimes (especially after you have been together for a while) you don't really know what you have until it is threatened.

-how true abedelia.

I think DP's "emotional affair" and my discovering of it has shaken us up to what we have and what we stand to lose.

My reaction really shocked him -I really don't think he thought I would be as angry/shocked/hurt/emotional as I was. Over the period of the week after I found out I told him clearly how it would effect the DC, what it would mean to us, how we would stand to lose our home and so on, right down to tiny details that he hadn't considered.

When confronted with the reality of what stands to happen if he takes this "affair" further it shocked him (I hope its permanently so).

At the moment we are in some sort of strange phase like a "new" relationship - lots of hugging, cuddling, time talking, great (and frequent) sex. Its as if the shock and tension of the last few weeks has found a release in our physical closeness. Is this normal? Or are we burying our heads in the sand and conning ourselves?

We are talking about it (when we get chance bearing in mind DC and family around) and plan to contact Relate