If so, your spouse may be having an emotional affair.
You may be asking yourself ” what is an emotional affair?”…
It’s quite simple yet it can be extremely confusing. It happens when someone who is married has a friendship that gets too close and crosses the line to where it is something more . Here is an example:
Jane is a married woman who works in an office. Bob works there too, and from time to time they chat over a cup of coffee in the break room. They talk about their spouses, their kids, they joke around and then go back to their desks. It’s all very platonic and innocent.
One day, Jane has a minor fight with her husband and comes to work upset. During their now daily “coffee chats”, she confides in Bob about the fight and asks his advice. He gives some, and she thanks him. they chat a bit and go back to work. In the back of his mind Bob is thinking about what a jerk Jane’s husband must be to have gotten her upset, she deserves someone better. He puts that thought out of his mind and finishes the day.
The next day he’s eager to get to work to see Jane and find out how her evening was. He’s kind of short with his wife, but doesn’t think much about it, as his mind is on Jane and her problems ( which, in reality, aren’t that bad. her husband is a nice guy who is really quite good to her and loves her and their kids a lot).
Meanwhile, Jane has taken Bob’s advice and she and her husband have made up. She’s happy, but in the back of her mind she’s wishing he could be a bit more like Bob. The next day, she’s just as eager to get to work so she can see Bob and tell him about how his advice worked.
Bob gets to work, sees her at her desk with a happy look on her face and he smiles too. At break, he can’t wait to talk to her, and she can’t wait to talk to him. They enjoy a pleasant conversation, she tells him about taking his advice, and he’s happy that he helped her and made her happy.
The next day, their get a bit of a surprise when their boss assigns them to work on a project together. It’s a big one that will take a lot of work, but they are both secretly happy to be working together.
They both go home and tell their spouses about the new project, but for some reason, they don’t feel right telling their spouses who they will be working with. It’s strange, as before they wouldn’t have thought twice about it, but for some reason, things seem different now.
They next day, they start their new assignment, and work closely together all day. Bob jokes around and Jane giggles…it’s actually kind of fun. During break, they exchange cell phone numbers and home email addresses in case they need to reach each other quickly to talk about the project details. .They also add each other as “Facebook friends”.
That evening, Jane logs in to her Facebook account and sees a friend request from Bob, which she accepts. She goes about answering some emails, etc., when all of a sudden she gets a chat message form Bob. She responds, and soon they are chatting away. The next morning, they meet each other at work, joke aorund a bit about their conversation and get to work.
The next day sees a repeat. Jane chats with Bob, he lets it slip that his wife is upset that he’s spending such long hours at the office and bringing his work home with him. Jane sympathizes, as her husband has the same issues. They keep chatting about their spouses and how bossy or controlling they are, and soon they are running their spouses down to one another.
The next evening, it’s more of the same, but now when their spouses comes into the room, they hide their chat windows and pretend to be doing something else…Jane’s husband asks her why she’s spending so much time on the computer lately, and she snaps at him that it’s for work and he should leave her alone. He does, and as soon as he’s gone, she’s right back chatting with Bob about her husband and how awful he is. This makes Bob angry, as how could someone treat someone as special as Jane that way?
So it goes, they chat online, sometimes for hours, and after getting so much grief for asking about it , their spouses leave them alone. Both spouses know something is up, but not what it is. They each ask what is wrong, but are met with a surly ” nothing..what’s wrong with you?”. Deep down, though, both Bob and Jane know something isn’t right about what they are doing.
Jane and Bob want to be in even closer contact, so they are soon texting one another. Just as with their online chatting, they actively hide this from their respective spouses.They are spend hours chatting, texting etc., and spending less and less time with their husband/wife, children and doing other activities they used to enjoy.
Meanwhile, their spouses are becoming more and more unhappy about the state of things, they get fed up and say something about it. Both Bob and Jane become angry at the accusations and insinuations, and they lash out with ” you don’t trust me” and ” I don’t have a problem, you have a problem”( a great example of "gaslighting"). There is a real air of tension and anger in their homes which draws them even closer together.
Neither of them really realize just how close they’ve gotten until one evening after work Jane suggests they go out for a drink to unwind after all the hours they put in on the project. They have their drink, and Bob suggests that he drive her home rather than her having to take the train. She agrees, and when they get into his car, his hand brushes hers and before they really realize it, they are hugging and kissing one another…
I’m sure you know the rest of the story…
What exactly happened here? Neither Bob nor Jane was looking for an affair, both of them have a marriage that was good ( up until that point), and there had never been anything physical between them.
The problem is that they had been engaging in an emotional affair. They were bonding together, hiding things from their spouses, running their spouses down to each other and telling each other things that they wouldn’t want their spouses to know about. They were also becoming angry and short tempered with them and neglecting the marriages. Part of this may have been out of guilt, part of it may have been because they saw their spouse as taking time away form chatting with one another and part of it may have been that their spouse knew something was wrong and called them on it.
When you’re married, you can and should have lots of friends. same sex or other sex doesn’t matter, as long as you have good boundaries and know when a friendship is getting too close. The minute you feel that you need to hide something about the friendship from your spouse ( or a need to hide something that was said between the two of you) you know it’s time to take a step back and walk away. If you are hiding texts, closing chat windows, or lying about meeting with your friend, you know you have a problem.
Emotional affairs can hurt just as much, if not more, than an affair that’s just for sex. While they can sometimes lead to a physical affair, they don’t always do so ( especially if it’s a long distance online sort of thing) but they are every bit as hurtful to a betrayed spouse.
The minute you feel like there is a change in the relationship and it’s starting to feel like more than a friendship, walk away. In spite of what many will tell you, emotional affairs don’t “just happen”…on some level, one always knows something is up.
What about Bob and Jane? Their emotional affair became a physical one, which went on for a few weeks. One day, one of their co-workers overhead something”unprofessional” between the two of them, and the office rumor mill got going.Soon, everyone at the office knew, and word reached their boss who called them in and they were both taken off the project and disciplined.
As for their spouses, Bob’s wife happened to stumble across an email between the two of them, and figured out what was going on. She looked a bit further and found more evidence. She confronted Bob, who lied, but she knew the truth. She found out Jane’s name and phone number and called her husband so that he would know what was going on…
What happened after that? You decide
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