# Whats your definition of an affair?



## want to be loved (Nov 13, 2013)

Just curious what your opinion is of the definition of an affair. My husband had a PA three years ago. We have been working through it and I thought we were doing great. A few weeks ago, I found out he has been emailing another woman for the past year and a half. He set up a secret email account so he could communicate with her and lied to me several times when I asked if he was seeing or talking to anyone. ( I was seeing several red flags that concerned me) I feel that this is an affair. He says its not because it was not sexual and did not include any flirtatious or sexual talk. He says it was just a friend that he could talk to. Supposedly she lives across the county and he has never seen her in person. I told him three years ago that I would not go through this again. Am I right or is he? What makes an affair an affair?


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## Maneo (Dec 4, 2012)

From what you described it sounds like what is commonly called an Emotional Affair which IMHO is more devastating to a relationship than something purely physical.


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## Hortensia (Feb 1, 2013)

Sex and/ or emotional investment with/ in anybody other than your official partner.


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## ne9907 (Jul 17, 2013)

Hortensia said:


> Sex and/ or emotional investment with/ in anybody other than your official partner.


:iagree::iagree:

that about sums it up!


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## want to be loved (Nov 13, 2013)

Thats what I think too. He says that they never discussed anything sexual or shared any feelings of attraction. He says he was just talking about things that he would talk to any friend about. I asked him to let me see the emails and he had already deleted them so there is no way to know what exactly they talked about


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## nogutsnoglory (Jan 17, 2013)

want to be loved said:


> Just curious what your opinion is of the definition of an affair. My husband had a PA three years ago. We have been working through it and I thought we were doing great. A few weeks ago, I found out he has been emailing another woman for the past year and a half. He set up a secret email account so he could communicate with her and lied to me several times when I asked if he was seeing or talking to anyone. ( I was seeing several red flags that concerned me) I feel that this is an affair. He says its not because it was not sexual and did not include any flirtatious or sexual talk. He says it was just a friend that he could talk to. Supposedly she lives across the county and he has never seen her in person. I told him three years ago that I would not go through this again. Am I right or is he? What makes an affair an affair?


both of you read "not just friends" by Shirley Glass. Your husband is wrong .
It is cheating. If it is not cheating, then why was he hiding it? Simply by hiding the relationship and for so long, he has chosen to invest in another woman, emotionally. He is giving her the attention he should be giving you. The secrets are unacceptable in marriage, most especially if the one keeping the secrets is a former cheating POS.


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## Weathered (Dec 15, 2009)

Why is your husband even communicating with this other woman? If there is an emotional investment then it is inappropriate and he needs to stop this. His ongoing 'relationship' with her is just going to spiral down into destruction. Some people just cannot see it when they're involved in it, so you would have to broach the topic and explain how this relationship is affecting your trust, which in turn will affect your marriage. He needs to stop.
_Posted via Mobile Device_


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## harrybrown (May 22, 2013)

He would call it an affair (emotional) if you had spent a year and 1/2 emailing some other man.

So if he would call you doing this an affair, when he does it, it is an affair.

So did he stop contacting her and give you all his passwords?

Is he asking what he can do to help you get over this? Is he sorry that he did this or sorry that he got caught? 

Sorry that you are going thru this again.

I hope he wakes up to realize that he could lose big time on this affair.


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## life101 (Nov 18, 2012)

Definitely EA. Some would say EA is more devastating than PA, some say otherwise. Then there are some who say that it doesn't matter whether the peepee goes into the coochie in real or in dreams. Either way it is a betrayal and it is cheating. 

He is not going to change. May be some life altering event will bring changes, but you will be assuming too many things if you stay. Move on and find someone who will love and respect you as much as you do in return. There is no unconditional love, except for parental love. He has failed to meet those conditions over and over again.


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## want to be loved (Nov 13, 2013)

thanks everyone for your replies. Yes he has said he has stopped contact and he shut down the email so she cannot contact him. Its just so hard to believe anything he says after being lied to for so long. I will definitely get the book. Thanks


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## LdyVenus (Dec 1, 2012)

If it is only friendly chat, he should be willing to let you see the old emails. He also shouldn't mind if you sit with him while he writes to her.


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## Horizon (Apr 4, 2013)

What did Dr Phil say? Something like - anything you would do that you didn't want your partner to know about is cheating.


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## azteca1986 (Mar 17, 2013)

want to be loved said:


> Thats what I think too. He says that they never discussed anything sexual or shared any feelings of attraction. He says he was just talking about things that he would talk to any friend about. I asked him to let me see the emails and he had already deleted them so there is no way to know what exactly they talked about


One key element of all affairs is deceit. If their relationship and content of their communication is innocent, why the need to:


Have a secret email account?
Delete the messages?
Keep the person separate to his spouse?

All these things are deceptive and point toward the fact that he wants to keep HIS relationship secret from you.


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## jnj express (Mar 28, 2011)

You need to take him off electronics altogether---whether he likes it or not---

His price to pay for being ALLOWED to stay in the mge

Your H, doesn't seem to learn does he----

As to whether it is inapropos---how many times do you e-mail or text your best friend in month---it probably does not compare in number to what your husband is sending---he is out of line

Isn't it about time he signed a POST--NUP


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## 86857 (Sep 5, 2013)

It's an EA. An EA is a PA that hasn't happened yet. Actually I call an EA a 'PPA', that is a pre-PA. You would get mighty close to someone after 18 months of emails. OW didn't have to deal with 'untidy' stuff like a PA and would have always been sweet and understanding. How cosy for him. People in long distant EAs almost always end up meeting. Read some threads. 

I'm an expert. My POSWH emailed a woman for 9 months and met her though she lived on another continent. You should have read the excitement in their emails in the weeks before they met. There were no sexual references. There didn't have to be. It was all there in the sub-text. By the time he came back they were also texting each other daily.

Where did your BS find his penpal? It was very premeditated to make a secret email account. If he has the cheek to say it was 'innocent', be VERY firm and reply matter-of-factly with, 
"It wasn't. Otherwise it wouldn't have been secret and you wouldn't have deleted the emails. Period!" Don't argue with him about or try to prove it to him. Instead keep repeating that statement like a mantra. He knows it. You know it. We all know it. 
_BTW, sometimes deleted emails can be recovered, Yahoo? Check it out.
_
When a partner develops a secret friendship with someone of the opposite sex and engages with them behind their spouse's back it's no longer a marriage in the sense of what the world at large, except for cheaters, defines marriage as. Unless the vows were:
_"I promise to love and honour you and have secret friends of the opposite sex if I feel like it!"_

Did OW know he was married? You should email her husband if she has one. 

Are you going to start another R with him? Put a keylogger on his computer this time. It's called verifiable truth. In your false R he lied by omission by having a secret woman friend. He lied again by saying he wasn't in contact with anyone when you asked. He had already put you through the pain of a PA. 

Just what part of the word 'truth' or 'marriage' does he not understand. 

What are the other red flags you said you noticed?

I'm SO sorry that he has put you through this.


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## want to be loved (Nov 13, 2013)

Thank you everyone for your replies. Right now I dont know what my next step is. There is so much going on with my extended family right now. The same day I found out about this secret affair, we also found out that my dad has pancreatic cancer. I need to attempt to try to put this on the back burner for now so that I get through this with my parents.


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## badmemory (Jul 31, 2012)

No matter what you call it; an EA or crossing a marital boundary - you shouldn't accept it. Even if he'd never cheated. 

But since he has cheated before, his consequence should be commensurate.You have a couple of options as I see it:

1 - Divorce him, as it's apparent he hasn't changed his stripes.

2 - Divorce him if he doesn't stop contacting her, if he doesn't send her a no contact letter, if he doesn't become completely transparent, if he doesn't start demonstrating remorse.

I think you probably realize that him accepting option 2 is quite unlikely. If that's the case, I urge you to do what you know you should do.


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## 3putt (Dec 3, 2012)

Horizon said:


> What did Dr Phil say? Something like - anything you would do that you didn't want your partner to know about is cheating.


That's always been my approach. Hell, simple common sense should tell you that.


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## hopefulgirl (Feb 12, 2013)

So sorry to hear about your father's cancer. Of course that has to be your primary focus.

But do order the book by Shirley Glass - your husband can start reading it even if you don't have the time right now.

One of the things she talks about in the book is being accountable. Your husband now has to start to prove that he is trustworthy, and this is going to take a long time and a change in the way he does things. 

His best approach, according to Glass, should be one of *"I'm going to help you check up on me."* 

No more hiding anything, he has to volunteer to hand over his phone and all his email accounts for you to read ANYTHING that you want, any time. Credit cards, bank accounts, paypal, amazon - anything else that he may have passwords for, you get ALL of the passwords, and you get to check any time. And he should offer his phone to you occasionally - you should feel free to pick it up and check the phone log and read texts whenever you like. He needs to check in with you more often when he's not home, and let you know where he's going and if he's going to be late, even a couple of minutes. (The book explains WHY this is so important for your healing - this won't go on for years, but for now it's very necessary for him to prove to you he wants to be on the up and up.)

He has really messed up with this connection behind your back with the other woman. It was a correspondence that was done in secret, and he knew you wouldn't approve, and if he wasn't ashamed of it he wouldn't have erased it all - he would have showed it all to you to show you it was completely innocent. So he knows that it wasn't. So now he has WORK to do. For your own mental health, please insist that he read the book and start doing the work that he needs to do to be accountable now that he's been caught a second time. Take care.


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## kristin2349 (Sep 12, 2013)

I used to think EA 's were BS. Until my husband entered into one. I was shocked at the pain and level of betrayal I felt. I'm no sure how I'd feel about a PA I did a ton of checking before confronting. So it wasn't even all that "romantic" or even sexual but occurred during an awful time in our marriage. He was going through a MLC treating me like crap and spending hours on the phone and texting her. Hid the whole thing, every bit. 24 years of marriage, I didn't think he could lie like that it was very out of character. 

The Shirley Glass book is really a must read for both of you.

Sorry this is happening at all much less while you need help not a selfish spouse.


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## arbitrator (Feb 13, 2012)

*Something of an unethical social nature, overtly or covertly done with another person, usually of the opposite sex, that you would never knowingly reveal to either your spouse, significant other, or to your family, church, and most friends! And in most cases, your employer!*


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## Allen_A (Nov 18, 2013)

If it's not an emotional affair yet that is where he is headed.

You just tell your husband plain and simple : 

You do not have the right to secret email accounts, relationships, or conversations.

If you want someone to talk to, then find another man to talk to, go to your pastor at church, or find a reputable family therapist.

Talking to a female, in secret, via a secret email account is disrespectful. It does not really matter if he is cheating or not, don't get hung up on terminology... It's disrespectful and it will stop or he IS having an affair.

That's the test.. press him to quit, if he fights for her, that's what you needed to know.

I prefer Dr Phil's definition of cheating : If he wont' do it right there in front of you, while you are watching him, then it's cheating.

Invite him to join her in a chat room while you are sitting there beside him.. without warning her first that you are reading... see if he accepts that...

My bet is he refuses... which means something is being said behind your back to disrespect you.


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## MattMatt (May 19, 2012)

Time invested in a "friend" is time not invested in one's spouse.


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## 86857 (Sep 5, 2013)

Secrecy.


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## Hazelrah10 (Oct 31, 2013)

I think men are "wired" differently....or talk themselves into the innocence of being "just friends". My WH didn't know what an EA was or think it was a problem. Then it evolved into a short-lived PA. He just had his first IC session which will evolve into MC. I think he may be "getting it"....so there is hope!


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## lifeistooshort (Mar 17, 2013)

You know, I lost my dad a year and a half ago to cancer, and it has really put a lot of things in perspective for me. Like that your life really is too short you waste on people that don't bring positives to your life. Stop arguing with him over idiocy and semantics; it's clear he wants to pursue other women. Don't waste anymore of your life on him, because you only get one and it's really short.
_Posted via Mobile Device_


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