Emotional Affair – Part 1

Emotional affairs are fun, exciting, alluring and meet unmet needs. Otherwise no one would have one.

Emotional affairs are dangerous, hurtful, deceitful and can destroy a marriage. That’s why they’re kept as secrets.

What is an emotional affair really? Is it a full-out affair without sex? Is it a romantic fantasy with an imaginary friend?

An emotional affair happens when a woman (I’ll deal with this from a woman’s perspective) moves her emotional relationship from her husband to someone outside her marriage. She gives her heart away to someone other than her husband. It is an affair of the heart and mind. Her body, tasks and responsibilities remain within her marriage but her emotions and heart receive nourishment outside of that marital relationship.

Are emotional affairs common? Yes. Unfortunately they are. The trouble is, especially with Christian women, we don’t want to be seen as unfaithful so we keep our passions and fantasies deep inside. And we refuse to call them ‘affairs’, instead we call them close friends.

Emotional affairs can be lopsided – where one person is ‘just a friend’ and the other one is ‘in love’ – because they don’t require commitment. We often ‘justify’ our emotional affairs as well, not admitting that we’ve given our heart away outside our marriage – because he’s just a friend, right?

How does an emotional affair begin? Very simply. A man and a woman become acquainted, move toward friendship, and take emotional steps toward a deeper relationship.

Going for coffee, talking on the phone, chatting online, volunteering together, working together on a project at work, sitting together at the kids’ soccer games, being on the same committee at church, or in the same Bible Study or choir – all of these and more are easy ways to begin an emotional affair.

However, it really begins when your heart starts to pull away from your spouse. Usually a hurt, neglect, or other unmet need begins to fester and draw attention. When a ‘friend’ comes along who knowingly or unwittingly fills that need, the seeds for the affair have been planted.

Each woman who has had an emotional affair has their own unique story, their own set of needs that were more easily met outside their marriage than within it. For me it was time and attention.

Because of my Married Single Mom status, I missed having my man around. With my husband gone weekdays and evenings, weekends and often for weeks at a time, I felt very alone. Conversation with four young kids is certainly not very stimulating to the adult mind either. So when someone came along that had every evening free, didn’t ever work weekends and had several weeks of vacation time during the summer months it was like finding gold. Conversations became lively, deep discussions and I felt fulfilled and valued. The compliments and shared experiences were icing on the cake. Stability was very important to me.

Friendships between a married woman and a man who is not her spouse can make her feel like a young girl again. Feelings and dreams, secrets and hopes are shared because it feels like you’ve become important to someone. You are special all over again. Spring is in the air no matter the season!

How do I know if I’m having an emotional affair or if we really are just friends? It’s quite simple to determine if the friendship is more than just a friendship. Symptoms of a divided heart begin to appear. If you are in or have had an emotional affair you might recognize some of these in your life:

Dressing for your friend’s tastes and compliments rather than for your husband’s

Planning your schedule/day around visits, phone calls or emails with your friend

Finding reasons to call or get together with your friend

Thinking about your friend frequently throughout the day with pleasant anticipation of the next encounter

Feeling jealous of any time your friend spends with someone else, especially another woman

Missing your friend when he’s away or unavailable for a few days

Becoming more and more frustrated with your husband

Telling your friend what’s on your heart instead of your husband

Feeling like it’s a ‘bad day’ when you are disconnected from your friend

Wondering and fantasizing about a physically intimate relationship with your friend

Becoming more critical of your spouse

Having difficulty focusing (or not even trying to focus) on your husband during bedroom moments

Avoiding physical intimacy with your husband

Keeping secrets from your husband

Setting yourself up to ‘need’ to be with your friend (volunteering for the same event, etc)

Feeling happy, excited and full of life when you’re with your friend

Feeling lonely, unappreciated, tied down and depressed when you’re with your husband

Telling yourself your friendship is ‘okay’ because you are not having sex… he’s just a friend

When you feel ‘chemistry’ with your friend but not your husband

There are other signs as well. These are just a few.

One of the most difficult things to admit is that it really is an affair. As women we are so good at justifying our actions! We can make one thing look like something else, so we try to pass off our emotional affair as a ‘healthy’ friendship. We might even believe it for a time. We’ve convinced ourselves that the only kind of affair that matters is one that includes sexual encounters. So we create an unspoken communication that says ‘I am free to love and be loved as long as it doesn’t involve sex.’

You know your relationship is more than ‘just a friendship’ when you react negatively to the thought of cutting that relationship off for good.

Today I’ve dealt with some of the nuts and bolts of an emotional affair – what it is, how to know if you are in one, as well as how and why they begin. By no means am I implying that having an emotional affair is wise, good or godly. Not at all! However, I will tackle more of that in a future post!

If you have ever had an emotional affair, I would appreciate it if you would post in a comment some reasons you did. What were some of your unmet needs? How did you meet?

PLEASE COMMENT ANONYMOUSLY to avoid hurt, gossip and sharing unnecessary information unless your story is already public knowledge.