# Definition



## HappyAtLast (Jan 25, 2010)

Every one sees things differently, so I was wondering what your definition of an emotional affair is. Quite a few of us here on TAM have gone thru this, sad to say, so I was curious as to how you view this yourself. Thanks for your input.


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## Jellybeans (Mar 8, 2011)

An affair of the heart or an affair involving emotions, not necessarily physical.


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## Amplexor (Feb 13, 2008)

My marriage survived one. I defined it as attaching to some one besides your spouse as your "Emotional Center"


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## PBear (Nov 16, 2010)

When you start investing your time, efforts, and emotions into a relationship with someone other than your spouse, you're in an emotional affair. 

C
_Posted via Mobile Device_


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## Geoffrey Marsh (Aug 11, 2011)

"An emotional affair is a secret relationship that involves intimate sharings with some one other than a spouse.
If a person is no longer confiding thoughts and feelings with his/her spouse, the individual is either in an emotional affair or ready for one."

I got this from ask.com and I think it fits the bill.


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## Lon (Jun 6, 2011)

I think an "affair" of any kind is when a committed relationship starts to "leak". The seal is ruptured, and things that are supposed to stay in the relationship get out, things that are not supposed to be in the marriage get in.


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## HappyAtLast (Jan 25, 2010)

Lon said:


> I think an "affair" of any kind is when a committed relationship starts to "leak". The seal is ruptured, and things that are supposed to stay in the relationship get out, things that are not supposed to be in the marriage get in.


:iagree: Exactly.


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## Duddy (Apr 29, 2011)

That leaky seal image is great. I'd like to build on it if that's ok? For me, a strong problem-definition also includes the solution. 

The way I see it, there's 2 kinds of love and 1 kind of sex. 

There's the kind of love we have for a loving protective parent when we're kids; and, there's the kind of love we have for a friend. 

The love we have in a healthy marriage is that kind of love we had for our parent as a child. We need this kind of love like we need food and air, both as children and as adults.

When this kind of love is threatened or diverted in a perceived or real affair, we can feel the same kind of distress that a lost child in a shopping mall feels. This can make us prone to self-protective anger, which blocks proper couple-communication. 

These bad emotions in the marriage can then start to fuel the affair as an escape-mechanism. 

This child-like distress is also at the real heart of verbal criticisms and "marital contempt" , which reliably predicts divorce. This is often true even when we think we're arguing about money, sex or in-law conflict etc. 

The kind of love we have for a friend is not as critical to our emotional well-being as our spouse's love. 

There's also a more formal kind of "friend" or "friendship" - like a co-worker or person of the opposite sex in your karate or craft-club. This is a formal "friendship" because you don't really love them. You just work, craft or practice kicking in class with them. 

Think of the differences in how the death of an informal friend vs a loving, deeply connected husband or wife would affect us.

In my view, an emotional affair is defined by crossing that line from formal to informal friend of the opposite sex. This is where Lon's "Leak" comes in I imagine. 

Notice I said opposite sex. The problem here is that when we're talking about an informal friendship with a person of the opposite sex, this can very quickly "facilitate a sexualization" (sorry for the big words, I'm a counselor) of that relationship, like it doesn't with a same sex friend or family member. 

Of the hundreds of distressed-couples I've worked with, in every case the affair happened because they simply never learned about that difference between a formal and informal friendship; - between a leak-proof or a leaky friendship. They didn't get the "risk-level" until it was too late. 

If you don't cut off the informal opposite-sex friendship before or right when it starts, it can really grow and seriously rob your marriage of it's critical love energy. 

3 out of 10 woman and 5 out of 10 men report making this mistake according to Dr. John Gottman. And too often it leads to unintended sex. 

It's usually not because the offending spouse is crazy or evil, it's usually because they don't understand these important relationship differences. 

If they did it because they were crazy or evil then it was never really a healthy long term relationship to begin with. It would be a mental health issue. Temporary insanity describes an emotional affair better; - based on temporary ignorance (hopefully). 

Emotional intimacy is the rocket-track to sex, that's why it belongs only in marriage. Any other view of the role of emotional intimacy probably comes from a history of watching sit-comes and movies. 

Is that what they were hinting at with the title "Friends?" The best relationship science-proves the risk too. 

There can be sex without emotional intimacy or love, but that causes an emotional injury in an otherwise deeply loving, offended-partner. Different act, same injury. 

This is what we pro-marriage counselors mean when we say "protective-relationship-boundaries", - "stay away from informal friendships with the opposite sex." 

It goes without saying, don't have sex with anyone but your spouse when you're married.

Identify and avoid your "high-risk" situations like the plague. Avoid them like you would avoid deeply wounding or emotionally abusing (some researchers say) your loved one. 

Avoid having an affair like you would avoid strongly risking break-up and divorce; - because that's what you'll be doing. 

It's not a real emotional affair otherwise. It's a couple-dance definition. 

If you sense any bit of informal emotional or sexual attraction, bring it to and problem solve with your spouse immediately. Plan for these high risk situations in advance. 

Work, internet and cellphones are commonly reported high-risk situations for emotional affairs (part of the definition). 

What better expression of love than such powerful honesty and emotional protectiveness of your partner's heart? And it only gets returned in exchange! 

Find you're partner's inner-child in the proverbial shopping mall before they ever get a chance to start feeling lost and alone in the fist place. Think of those potential tears when you're potential high-risk situation (or person) presents itself. 

People can definitely get over emotional affairs and even use them to make their relationships stronger and healthier than ever before. But both partner's must be committed to and understand it's a process. 

If emotional or sexual cheating has irreparably destroyed your marriage (usually perception more than reality), knowing what emotional affairs are and how to pro-actively (before hand) manage their risk will make your next relationship that much stronger, healthier and "safer".

Thought provoking question! - Thank you.


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## Entropy3000 (May 11, 2011)

HappyAtLast said:


> Every one sees things differently, so I was wondering what your definition of an emotional affair is. Quite a few of us here on TAM have gone thru this, sad to say, so I was curious as to how you view this yourself. Thanks for your input.


I can tell you that from a technical perspective it is when a person other than your spouse is meeting one or more of your emotional needs instead of the spouse. The result is a big dose of dopamine and oxytocin are being generated from that relationship. 

Been there. It results in literally addictive behavior.
In my case it was the work place and a friend relationship grew past the boundaries. It was an intense environment over an extended perios of working very long hours. So I was not allowing my wife to meet my needs and I was liking very much being around this friend. I was very naive but am a much wiser person. I learned that I cannot have a very close female friend like this again. I did not realize how improper it was until I was well into withdrawal. Stupid? .... yes very. Intentional. NO. No excuses. I learned a hard lesson.

There are many signs of this of course.


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## Entropy3000 (May 11, 2011)

Lon said:


> I think an "affair" of any kind is when a committed relationship starts to "leak". The seal is ruptured, and things that are supposed to stay in the relationship get out, things that are not supposed to be in the marriage get in.


The only thing I would add here is that an EA can happen even if the marriage is good. I do agree that a solid marriage is more resilient to this. But this can happen in a good marriage especially if there are ill defined boundaries or just flat that the environment is right for it.


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## Lon (Jun 6, 2011)

Entropy3000 said:


> The only thing I would add here is that an EA can happen even if the marriage is good. I do agree that a solid marriage is more resilient to this. But this can happen in a good marriage especially if there are ill defined boundaries or just flat that the environment is right for it.


Well in my mind there are always cracks even in the best of marriages, its how we maintain the integrity of the marriage and stay on top of the maintenance aspects that prevents the cracks from becoming a threat. Like like you say even the strongest marriages can and do rupture, sometimes without incident, but sometimes it leads to catastrophe. Its the job of both marriage partners to repair the damage, deal with the consequences then keep filling it up again, but sometimes it is just too hard to coordinate the repair work or easier to write it off when its a total loss.


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## Entropy3000 (May 11, 2011)

Lon said:


> Well in my mind there are always cracks even in the best of marriages, its how we maintain the integrity of the marriage and stay on top of the maintenance aspects that prevents the cracks from becoming a threat. Like like you say even the strongest marriages can and do rupture, sometimes without incident, but sometimes it leads to catastrophe. Its the job of both marriage partners to repair the damage, deal with the consequences then keep filling it up again, but sometimes it is just too hard to coordinate the repair work or easier to write it off when its a total loss.


I totally agree.


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## Geoffrey Marsh (Aug 11, 2011)

Duddy said:


> This is what we *pro-marriage counselors* mean when we say "protective-relationship-boundaries", - "stay away from informal friendships with the opposite sex."


Just curious, are there anti-marriage counselors? Or are you saying you're a Pro at being a marriage counselor?

I'm really not trying to be a smart butt...I really want to know...I thought all marriage counselors would be pro-marriage.


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## Duddy (Apr 29, 2011)

Geoffrey Marsh said:


> Just curious, are there anti-marriage counselors? Or are you saying you're a Pro at being a marriage counselor?
> 
> I'm really not trying to be a smart butt...I really want to know...I thought all marriage counselors would be pro-marriage.


No problem Geoffrey. Great question if fact. 

By pro-marriage counselor I mean just that: pro-marriage; - in favor of marriage. There are many counselors who refer to themselves this way. 

In research, theory and practice terms, the "pro" in "pro-marriage" refers to a "bias". It's about underlying assumptions that drive how we work, research or write as counselors.

You can see this kind of pro-marriage bias or preference, in the best science-based marriage counseling approaches like EFT, BCT and CBT (emotion focused therapy for couples, behavioral couple-counseling and cognitive-behavioral couple-counseling etc) to name a few. You also see this bias, vibrant in faith based marital counseling. 

Not only will you see this pro-marriage bias from strong spiritual orientations, but the best relationship science backs it up, having proven the incredible emotional, behavioral and physical health benefits of a strong, resilient monogamous marriages. 

I'm not sure if there is an "anti-marriage bias." But I know that there are some orientations like say "radical feminist" or "Freudian" and related theories, that hold healthy-marriage is not so essential to human life or they simply focus on other things instead. 

These counselors (lots of them) have more of a marriage-neutral bias.

A marriage-neutral counselor usually doesn't know the best relationship science or applied marriage counseling research very well, because their locked into or distracted by their pet theories. They're more likely to miss proven opportunities to save and transform a marriage as a result. 


This is where you get those marriage counselling sessions that can last for years instead of the 7-12 sessions proven to get results with even the most "distressed-couples"; including situations where one partner has clinical depression, trauma or abuse history and, of course in situations where the marriage is threatened by emotional and/or sexual cheating. 


It's also where you get common counseling errors like paying more attention to or "siding" with one partner and/or mis-attributing common emotional behaviors of distressed couples to otherwise valid treatment concepts like "passive-aggression" "co-dependency" or "transference" instead of "healthy emotional-interdependence". (Sorry for the clinical terms but I don't have time to fully explain them). 

There are very, very few exceptions to when a marriage can't be saved and positively transformed. The best example is where one partner simply refuses to participate or commit to the process. 

There are even proven counseling approaches that are very good at treating couples that have a serious substance abuse and/or partner violence problem to deal with. Internet and sex addiction can also be treated very effectively in this kind of couple-counseling context. 

To really clearly express all this stuff would take several days of posting, because there are so many more practical and important examples. 

The best marital research in the world proves that people are designed to need and to give and receive love, comfort and emotional safety from their partner, in the same way we're designed to need and benefit from food and oxygen. 

Strong marriages are the basis of strong families, being strong parents and building strong communities. Pro-marriage counselors do all they can to help couples become as strong and as healthy as possible. (notice the word strong- lol)

This is what I mean when I say "Pro-Marriage Counselor".


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## HappyAtLast (Jan 25, 2010)

Duddy said:


> That leaky seal image is great. I'd like to build on it if that's ok? For me, a strong problem-definition also includes the solution.
> 
> The way I see it, there's 2 kinds of love and 1 kind of sex.
> 
> ...


Thank you so much, Duddy...what you have written here is what every married couple, especially those going thru some rough times together need to read.


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## Duddy (Apr 29, 2011)

HappyAtLast said:


> Thank you so much, Duddy...what you have written here is what every married couple, especially those going thru some rough times together need to read.


Your very welcome HappyAtLast. Thanks for asking such a critically important question. It really got me thinking too!

Gratefully,


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