# What constitutes an EA?



## dontworrybehappy (Apr 17, 2018)

So question I have been trying to make sense of this for years and I think that this is why I can’t let go. 

Me and my husband were married and had children very young. We fought all the tome and were happy, but not what a marriage should be happy. Anyways we drank and partied to much with some toxic people that we didn’t see how toxic until too late. One night out friends the friends he has known since he was a kid. Had an issue the wife and seen her husband wander off from a party with the women he had an affair with. She lost it and kissed my husband. 
After that kiss my husband was thrown in a loop. He was confused and so forth and that’s understandable we are all human. So he made a decision to kiss her a few months later to see if he could and wanted to stay married. 

But the thing is they never flirted or had talked about us only that night. They didn’t text each other or long phone conversations. When we all drank they would talk about just life but nothing relationship I mean they and we all were friends. But all the signs of the EA were not there? He says he didn’t want her and never wanted her. He said if he did he could have made a pass at her years ago he had known her for a long. So I guess I am confused of how to process this and move forward. HELP!


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## Mr.Married (Feb 21, 2018)

It's called drinking too much mixed with poor choices. Doesn't sound like much except very poor boundries


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## SentHereForAReason (Oct 25, 2017)

Mr.Married said:


> It's called drinking too much mixed with poor choices. Doesn't sound like much except very poor boundries


98% of her post seems like this but the 2% that doesn't make sense is him being thrown for a loop by it and having to kiss her again to see if he wanted to stay married? That is very strange and my guess is one of two things;

- there was a lot more than is known between her husband and the OW

or

- the husband from a mental or emotional standpoint isn't very strong or mature in that sense


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## dontworrybehappy (Apr 17, 2018)

stillfightingforus said:


> Mr.Married said:
> 
> 
> > It's called drinking too much mixed with poor choices. Doesn't sound like much except very poor boundries
> ...




I agree this is why I am lost he says absolutely no feeling and didn’t want her in that way. She even told him that night when he was talking to her that she didn’t want to it was a bad idea. And he still pushed for it. So he knew she didn’t like him it’s just weird.


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## arbitrator (Feb 13, 2012)

dontworrybehappy said:


> So question I have been trying to make sense of this for years and I think that this is why I can’t let go.
> 
> Me and my husband were married and had children very young. We fought all the tome and were happy, but not what a marriage should be happy. Anyways we drank and partied to much with some toxic people that we didn’t see how toxic until too late. One night out friends the friends he has known since he was a kid. Had an issue the wife and seen her husband wander off from a party with the women he had an affair with. She lost it and kissed my husband.
> After that kiss my husband was thrown in a loop. He was confused and so forth and that’s understandable we are all human. So he made a decision to kiss her a few months later to see if he could and wanted to stay married.
> ...


*IMHO, kissing another woman other than a spouse, even for experimentations sake, is preeminently an EA!

And it doesn't take a while lot to go from point A to point B, thus making it a PA!*


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## Mr.Married (Feb 21, 2018)

stillfightingforus and arbitrator have some good points. 

doesn't take a while lot to go from point A to point B .... indeed


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## dontworrybehappy (Apr 17, 2018)

I would agree with you guys, but if that was the case why did he turn her down when she tried again and why would he not have flirted or text. I personally had an EA I didn’t cross the line of anything physical, but I did cross the boundaries of emotional ties. So that’s what I am saying what was his?


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## 3Xnocharm (Jun 22, 2012)

Wasn't this ten years ago?? You have posted about this before, it doesn't seem like you are making any kind of progress with how to deal with it. You are allowing this to consume you. Are you in therapy?

This does not sound like an EA in my opinion. An EA is when one partner is investing time, energy and emotion into another person who is not their partner. Texts, phone calls, maybe spending time together in some cases. What you describe here isn't like that, to me, anyway.


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## She'sStillGotIt (Jul 30, 2016)

dontworrybehappy said:


> I agree this is why I am lost he says absolutely no feeling and didn’t want her in that way. She even told him that night when he was talking to her that she didn’t want to it was a bad idea. And he still pushed for it. So he knew she didn’t like him it’s just weird.


 So that's the story these two are going to stick to, is it?

Let's be realistic - it happened 10 years ago and ALL YOU HAVE to go on is their story.

They've* both* already shown you just how easily they can lie to your face, haven't they? Because you didn't even find out about this supposed "_kiss that she didn't want_" until one year after it happened. Both snakes were going to take it to their graves - until you found out about it. 

Maybe you still aren't right with this whole thing 9 years later because deep down, you can smell what a bull**** story this really *is*. Quite honestly, I can smell it from all the way over here.


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## azimuth (May 15, 2018)

If you're going to stay married I think you should read some material about how to let go and release this incident. I don't think you've forgiven yourself or your husband for how far it went. There are methods you can use to deal with traumatic events. Release yourself and move forward with life. Make some new memories. Go travel somewhere you'd never think of going. If you can't get past it, maybe you could go to MC with your husband or IC on your own. Ten years is too long to be holding onto the pain.


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## GusPolinski (Jan 21, 2014)

An EA is a romantic relationship that isn’t (yet) physical.


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## Vinnydee (Jan 4, 2016)

An EA is pretty much what you define it as. It would be sharing things that you feel should only be shared between spouses. I do not care what my wife shares but you may not want your spouse to share how they feel about your marriage or aspects of it. If my wife needs another person for a need of hers, I am fine with that but if you think that you can somehow satisfy all of your spouse's needs then you would have a problem if she found someone else to satisfy those needs that you may not even be capable of satisfying even if you wanted to. That always leads to unhappiness and eventually cheating or divorce.

My wife and I do not feel that we own each other's bodies, emotions or minds and after 46 years of marriage, I think we are correct in our belief. Thinking that your spouse can fulfill all of your needs or vice versa often leads to a feeling of disappointment in them and the marriage. We cannot fulfill every need of another human so is it a good idea to tell them they just have to suck it up? I think not, but with a 50+% divorce rate and a higher cheating rate, I think our way works better since we are married for 46 years. I do not own any part of my wife, including her mind and body and she owns none of mine. 

However we all define our own marriage, but most accept the structure handed to them by society even knowing it has a better chance of failure than success. Would you buy a pen that had a 53% chancer of not working? Probably not but you will enter into a marriage with those same odds thinking that you will be different and beat the odds just like the people in the Casinos do. EA is only a problem if you make it so. Would I like it if my wife talked go a guy about things that I would not be comfortable with others knowing? Nope but I would not consider it an affair or cheating, just a privacy issue to be addressed.


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