1) Thinking or saying, "We're just friends."
If you have caught yourself thinking or saying, "but we're just friends," you are probably already in trouble. "But we're just friends" are four of the most dangerous words for a relationship. These words are usually said to rationalize something you know is wrong. Rationalize is also spelled "rational lies."
2) Thinking and daydreaming about the person more and more often
This should be a loud, screaming clue. Do you think and day dream about your regular friends in this way?
3) Looking forward to the next time you can see and/or talk to the person
If you feel excitement and anticipation, a quickening of your pulse, as you get ready to see this person, watch out.
4) Wanting to tell them first when something happens in your day
This means that this person has become your primary emotional confidant.
5) Sharing intimate emotions
This flows naturally from this person being your primary emotional confidant. Because emotional affairs can be harder to break than purely physical ones, you can get trapped right here.
6) Sharing intimate problems
Especially dangerous if you are sharing problems in your marriage or relationship with this other person.
7) You believe that this person understands you much more than your spouse
Of course it looks like they do. That is part of the illusion of the affair. This belief draws you away from your partner and toward the other person.
8) Keeping secrets and covering up
Secrets bond two people together against a third person.
9) Giving gifts you would not normally give to a friend
Things to wear, jewelry, and other intimate gifts come with a message: we are very close.
10) Spending more and more time alone
I've heard so many people tell me that this was the one that pushed them over the edge. They had promised themselves that nothing would happen, but the temptation and availability of time alone was too much to resist.
To read more Beyond Blue, go to www.beliefnet.com/beyondblue, and to get to Group Beyond Blue, a support group at Beliefnet Community, click here.
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My significant other of 5 years just deployed for 4 months, 2 weeks after he left his ex wife who is currently married,they have been divorced over 11 years left him a message on his answering machine. They were only married for 2 years and she cheated on him the whole time, their divorce was bitter and nasty. I just found out this past Sunday that for the past 6 months they have been having an online relationship and also calling each other. When I found out I e-mailed them both, she responded he has not. They both agree that what they are doing is okay and I am the one with the problem, I am insecure. I ended it with my s/o, he was at first angry that I would no longer be taking care of his house and told his ex that. she must have blasted him, he was begging her forgiveness for being so harsh and told her she did him a huge favor in getting rid of me.My s/o insisted that our relationship be exclusive, I guess that only applied to me. The love and tenderness that my s/o is showing his ex is so unbelievably painful. I e-mailed him last night telling him that what he is doing is infidelity no matter how they try to justify it. I then block him from e-mailing me. This is so unbelievable, I feel like a fool
I believe my husband is having an emotional affair with a married woman with two young children. We moved to a new state in 2005. He met this woman at a public place. She had taken his cell phone and put her number in it and sent him a text message saying "any place, any time". Well, they eventually became what they describe as "best friends". He confided in her that he felt neglected. My husband shared with me that for about four years he felt neglected, and unappreciated and that I acted like I didn't care. I didn't realize how bad it affected him, and I do take responsibility for that. We do however have three children, I work full time, and was going to school to better myself. I have always loved my husband and have a tremendous guilt for making him feel this way. I have been working very hard to change that behavior and even sought counseling. I have been a better wife and mother. The problem is that he continues this relationship with the girl. They spend a lot of time together out to lunch, on the phone, texting, and he even has had her over to our home. They see each other at least 4 times per week. I have caught him on the phone with her as late as 3:30 am in the morning. There were times when we couldn't go out without them texting each other multiple times. I have found pics of the two of them on his cell phone with their arms around each other. They went to a concert together and were all over each other. They spent a lot of money on each other for christmas when our own childern didn't get that much. She got him an expensive gift for his Birthday which was about 300.00. He spent a lot of money on her for her b-day, and he isn't even working so it was my money. Same thing with the lunches and breakfasts out. He isn't working so its the money I am working for. She has a myspace and he does too and she is always leaving comments that say Love you, along with xoxoxox. They tell each other that they love one another, I am sure about that. She has already had two affairs on her own husband and it looks like she is on her third. My husband says everyone assumes to much and that they are just friends. He also treats her children like their his own. She recently had her tonsils out and he had to be at the hosptial with her, and then stay with her at her house, and visit her everyday. He got her get well gifts, but not one thing for me for mothers day. My children are very upset over all of this because they feel their father is neglecting them. My youngest became very upset because her father promised to watch a movie with her but instead talked to this girl on the phone for an hour. He will tell me he is out by himself but I can sometimes hear her in the background and he will tell me its his radio.
I want my marriage to work, and I feel totally terrible for ever making him feel bad, and have been working so hard at being a good wife. However he is not meeting me half way. Recently a group of family members, Aunt/Uncle and cousin told my husband how they feel about his relationship with this woman and how wrong it is and my husband got extremely angry. He said he doesn't care what people think. Its not just reatives that feel this way, its people who see them out together all of the time. Her own husband has threatened to end their marriage if the relationship doesn't stop, but she doesn't care, she also continues. My husband wants to move back to our previous hometown now. He said its because he thinks it will make everyone happy to get away from this woman except him. My opinion is if your just friends then you wouldn't be looking for a way to escape and making comments that it will make you unhappy. Looking at the 10 Red flags above has confirmed what I have known for a long time, my husband is having an emotional affair and is in denial.
I hope that writing this turns out to be cathartic.
I am a married man who has been involved in what I have come to find out is an emotional affair for at least a year, intensely, and probably a lot longer on a less intense level. The affair is with a married co-worker who, like myself, is involved as part of the ownership structure of the company I work with. What started out as a professional working relationship changed over time. Early on, this was not a person who I had an immediate bond with - pleasant, professional, but totally not my type and on what I perceived to be a totally different emotional plane.
Over the span of many years, I became the person she would confide in. I truly felt for and sympathized with the distance she felt within her marriage, the struggles she faced with her family, perspectives she asked for on spirituality, everything. We crossed emotional boundaries which I have only ever crossed when I was in the early phases of a romantic relationship with someone. We spent tons of time together, work and non work, goofed off together, shared a lot of happiness and a lot of the depths of our souls. I'm not pretending that the feeling was not mutual, but she needed me, and does need me. And for me, needing to be needed and wanted is a huge part of my existence.
There has been nothing physical, nothing sexual. Part of me longs for that, fantasizes even, but I would never want to cross that line because that is what I once considered the point of no return. Know what? Even without the sex, without the physical attachment, I now believe that, for me, the point of no return was long ago.
My feelings for her have become a demon I have struggled with and continue to do so. As time passed, I found myself exaggerating stories about little frustrating things in my marriage, things which sympathized with her experience but which I knew were not completely true. I wanted to be part of this private club of misery in hopes that it might draw her towards me. I wanted to push the envelope as far as it would go. I enjoyed her mostly innocent flirtation and what was a real emotional connection with someone. I found myself thinking that this woman was really my soulmate, and even though I knew that a more intense relationship was not possible, just let my feelings keep going.
I began thinking about her all the time. The burden of my emotions and the connection I had with her became so consuming and even painful that I prayed to God to end them. Because of professional issues, I knew that she would not ever be completely out of view unless things changed radically, but I was hopeful that I could just turn off my heart and mind and focus again on being a husband to my wife and a father to my family. It worked. For a while. And then, I found myself in this same vicious cycle all over again.
I can only imaging that it is like what alcoholics refer to as falling off the wagon.
A while ago, I found out that she had rekindled a relationship with an ex-boyfriend, or he had with her or something. I don't know all the details, but I know enough to hurt because of it. I'm miserable. I thought I was the only one with whom she shared so many things. And I completely realize the hypocrisy of having jealous feelings for someone of whom I have no business being jealous. I was wrong to have any feelings in the first place. I was wrong to have the subsequent feelings. Everywhere I turn, I was wrong, wrong, wrong. And I am miserable.
I'm sure that I will find my way out of this. But for now, I am miserable. Miserable for the time I lost with my family, miserable for the love and intimacy I denied them, and miserable for the way I feel about my situation and the hopelessness I feel. I'm broken-hearted and too afraid to discuss my feelings with my wife or even my best friends. I am a deceiver and I deserve everything I have gotten.
So, please, if this reaches anyone who thinks they might be going down a dangerous slope, stop. Just stop. If you're smart enough to realize that it might be a no-win situation which if you were honest about, would cause pain to your family, or you, stop. Just don't do it.
I wish I had.
Maybe an emotional affair is a sign that perhaps one has married the wrong person? Everything I've read about these emotional affairs seems to stress how wrong they are, how damaging and hurtful, and while I'm not disagreeing with the pain they can and do cause, I've yet to see a single article even hint that maybe, just maybe, the emotional affair is a sign that perhaps the marriage itself is wrong. An emotional affair does not right that wrong, however; I'm just pointing out that, in face of all these articles urging people to fix their marriages at all costs, that it would be nice just to see one that's a bit more open to all the possibilities in its view of relationships.
I'm in the same situation as Vox. Not quite as long, but nevertheless still as painful. I became close to the woman at work. Nothing intense at first. She would come into my office and tell me about her bad relationship with her husband of 13 years. She has four children ages 13 -23. I have been married to my wife for almost 30 years. I thought happily. I found myself confiding in this woman more and more and giving her advice regarding her personal life. I began to think of her more and more and we became increasingly sexually suggestive. She left our office last week and I want to talk with her so badly. I know it's wrong and I haven't succumbed. I have been reading everything I can get my hand on about emotional affairs. Just putting this in writinghas helped.My wife doesn't know about it and I hope I have nipped it in the bud. I'm telling you it's like getting off of an addictive drug.
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