Possible Emotional Affair

[221bBakerStreet]

This is my first post. Today I read a Dear Abby column about something called an "emotional affair", and it sounded unsettlingly familiar. I started doing some internet research, and found more information on it, as well as a quiz about whether or not we are "More than friends".

 

I am writing about a friend of mine at work that I will call Jack. My problem is this--I think Jack (he is an Executive, I am a Marketing Assistant; he is married, I am a single mother) and I may be involved in an emotional affair. Only problem is, all the quizzes and checklists I can find to diagnose an EA are from the "attached" party's point of view; i.e., 'Do you tell your friend more details about your day than you tell your primary partner?' --I can't find anything from the potential affair (ME!)'s point of view, so I can't tell for sure.

 

But so far, based on what I have read, I think, if he and I are not there already, we are rocketing toward an EA. He confides in me about everything, including negative details of his marriage, and I also confide in him. We never touch or flirt, but we do behave differently when we are alone than we do in front of others. We are EXTREMELY close, relying on one another for emotional support during tough times, and when one of us is not at work, the other is calling (it's mostly him that calls me, and, oddly enough, NEVER when his wife is around). We talk almost constantly at the office (my work takes me away from my desk a lot and his office door is perpetually closed as a rule; these two things make it difficult for others to pick up on how much time we spend together behind his closed door), and 85% of our interactions are initiated by him, not me.

 

His behavior has been above reproach so far, and we do not flirt, nor do we physically touch, or discuss sex or even tell dirty jokes. But I do not want to be responsible for damaging an already frail marriage, especially one with children involved (2, both under 5). Any help on how to diagnose an Emotional Affair, or any information written with the potential affair in mind, is welcome. And, assuming that this IS an EA, what the hell do I do now? I don't want to have to drop my friend; is there some way I can remain friends with him and not feel like an adulturess? I have been married before; the relationship Jack and I share is NOT one I would want MY husband sharing with a woman who was not me.

 

I admit to having a slight crush on him, but it is the same kind of crush I have on Sean Connery, and I am NOT interested in breaking up a family. Any advice on how to handle this delicate situation is very, very welcome.

[ThisGirlNameKD]

You say the both of you act differently in public than you do when you're alone with one another, you said you have a crush on him, and that the relationship you have with him is not one you would want your husband to have with another woman. So you've already identified that there's something improper in what you are doing and how you are feeling, even if you don't want to go as far as to break up the marriage. The only way you can have "just a friendship" with this man is if that's all he wants from you. If not, it's not going to work. But I do feel you can have a friendship if you set boundaries in your relationship.

 

If there are negative things going on in his marriage, you need to let him know firmly that you are not the one who should be hearing about it, and you need to be selective and set limits on what you choose to discuss with him as far as your personal life is concern. If he's calling you when his wife is not around, you need to let him know that you're no longer comfortable with him doing that. When it comes to the office, it maybe best if you limit your contact with him there. I understand you may have to make trips to his office, but if it's not required, refrain from doing it. Set limits and see where this takes you. If he becomes upset or angry with you, or starts avoiding you altogether, then you know this guy wants to be more than just a friend. If he's cool with the limits and it works out, then it all may turn out good.

[midori]

First, you should realize that "emotional affair" describes a kind of relationship, it's not a diagnosis. You don't have to take a test to figure out if someone is a "good friend," a "best friend," or just an "acquaintance." Whatever online quizzes you've found about "emotional affairs" are Cosmo magazine-type quizzes that are no more valid than the "are you a typical Picses?" checklists that such publications also feature.

 

But that doesn't mean they don't raise an interesting and important point about emotional affairs -- that they exist -- and if that's what it took to make you aware of what was going on, then they weren't a waste of time.

 

If you think what is going on between you and your coworker is an emotional affair (or soon to become one) then as far as you're concerned it is, and you need to act accordingly. Stop casting yourself as all-sympathetic and always supportive shoulder to lean on for your coworker's personal affairs. Stop treating him as your source of emotional support. Keep your conversations focused on work, or on lightweight topics: sports, films, etc.

 

An example:

 

Him: Last night was such a nightmare. I almost walked out of the house and if I did I don't think I would have gone back. My wife kept on ....

 

You: Oh wow, that sounds tough. Sorry to hear it. Anyway, have you seen the February report? I need to check something on it.

 

You have made yourself available to him to vent his frustrations about his relationship. You're right in thinking that such emotional intimacy between two co-workers is not a good idea. You're not an unbiased party because you're his work friend, you don't really know the dynamics of their family life because you only see him at work and hear his side of things. Etc. You're not a trained therapist.

 

There's no way he would reveal himself like this to a male coworker. Griping about homelife a bit, sure (usually in a jovial sort of way). Long heart-to-hearts, no way. I'm not saying that male/female coworker relationships must be identical to same sex coworker relationships, but you have to recognize when boundaries have been crossed.

 

There are a couple of dangers in your situation, some of which you've already mentioned. There's the fact that because he can pour out his frustrations to you, he's able to avoid talking to the people who could actually help him constructively address the problems he has in his marriage. There are only two appropriate people he should be talking to on a regular basis about this stuff: his wife and/or a professional counselor. You are neither. So this emotional intimacy between you two is not helping his marriage. It's not a benign attachment.

 

Another danger is the fact that you are allowing him to become your emotional support. And he's not available to you. You might think you know him, but you only know his personal life as he chooses to describe it to you. One day, seemingly out of the blue, he could cease to confide in you and withdraw from you; perhaps because he recognizes how inappropriate your relationship is, or perhaps because shifts in his personal life make confiding in you no longer necessary for him. And where would that leave you? Suddenly without your main means of emotional support. He's got other emotional resources, you haven't. That's a rather vulnerable place to be.

 

Coworkers can be friendly and supportive, and it's great when they are. But if your personal life does not overlap in any real way with your coworkers, if the connection basically ends at the office door, then engaging in deep and complex emotional exchanges is not very wise. The office is an artificial environment for that sort of thing -- removed from the real world of children, social obligations, chores, checking accounts, etc.

 

You've recognized that you and your coworker are inappropriately close. It doesn't matter if he recognizes it. You need to scale things down. For your sake and for his.

[BadMan]

Originally posted by midori

There's no way he would reveal himself like this to a male coworker. Griping about homelife a bit, sure (usually in a jovial sort of way). Long heart-to-hearts, no way.

 

This is wrong. I have heart to hearts with a couple of male friends

here at work quite frequently. I feel more comfortable talking about relationship problems with other men than women. And no I'm not gay! I think men understand mens problems far better than women. Besides confiding in a woman at work just seems wrong to me. Mind you I AM married.

[midori]

well that certainly makes sense to me.

[221bBakerStreet]

Well, your advice about not being a sympathetic ear about his marital problems is right on the money. Several months ago I recognized that I could not allow Jack to steer me into a pattern where he and I get together and decide his wife is evil. So I started taking her side and defending her everytime he complained, and I still do. Having been a wife myself, I know all too well that a) there are two sides to every story, and like midori says, I am only hearing his; b) she knows him a LOT better than I do; and c) he has good judgement, and he married her, so she must have some redeeming qualities. Also--and i have said this to him--she is the mother of his children, and as a mother of a small child myself, I believe she is entitled to have her man be not only faithful, but loyal to her as well.

 

Complaining about his wife is, therefore, a small part of Jack and I's relationship, but it IS there. And you were also correct about the fact that he would NEVER confide in a man this way. We work in a VERY competitive atmosphere. The small clique of execs that he is part of--the other three are happy in their home lives, and he would die before he let "The Boys" find out ANY of the things we discuss.

 

The part that really rang true for me was the point that I am leaving myself in a very vulnerable position as far as emotional support. Should he ever get his marriage back on track, I would lose my best friend. I never thought of that.

 

One thing that might help, is I am currently looking for another job. He has, however, told me that if I got a job in the same industry we are in now, he would pick up his goldfish and follow me Jerry-McGuire style. He's my friend. I don't want to pull away from him. This is tough.

[Carly]

I can understand how that little emotional affair can be so seductive. I've been there. Yup. We were two colleagues who are greatly matched in so many ways, both of us in strained marriages, and (as if that wasn't enough) we were sent to travel together for months (five day stretches). Even worse, it became a big fat joke at work, because EVERYWHERE we travelled people would assume we were married, and we soon became somewhat of an item Like you, I thought he was, above all, my "friend."

 

No, we never got physically invlolved, but he started "joking" about us running away and gettign married one day, and I revelled in the fantasy.

 

Yeah, it felt good. Damn it, it felt great. For a while. We were on a high. We thought about each other all the time, and admitted it to each other. We thought that we made each other so happy.

 

But looking back on it now (two years later) I realize that it wasn't a healthy kind of happiness. It was more like the kind of enjoyment I would get from eating a chocolate bar -- the sweetness being shortlived and cloying. It was never a wholesome kind of feeling. We were both married, after all, and we were both doing something that we knew was immoral and shameful. And I can see so clearly now that he was anything but a true friend.

 

Like your married guy, we also talked about our troubled marriages. We weren't really sharing our marriage problems in order to play co-counsellor with each other. That kind of talk was just a "code" to let the other know that although we were each married, we were still available to each other. It also fed the fantasy that one day we would be divorced and available for each other. (Fantasy, yikes, there would have been seven kids, two ex's, four houses, and a whack of lawyers between us!!)

 

It was all just dangerous games that we were carelessly playing with each other, and I suspect your married guy is doing the same with you. I also suspect that (like with me) the friendship isn't so sincere as you believe it is. I think he wants to keep you for his littel escape at work. Friends don't jerk around colleagues like this.

 

Do I feel guily about this relationship? Nope. Can't analyze why I don't, but I just don't.

 

Would I feel guilty if we had crossed the line and became physical? Yes, absolutely. I don't know how I could face myself, my husband, or our kids if I (a married woman) had any intimate physical contact with him (a married man). I am so thankful that we didn't go there. I think you are at risk of becoming physical, and I hope you don't go there either.

 

Do I regret the whole affair? Yeah, I do, for a number of reasons:

 

I regret it because it was such a false high that I was on. And we all know how coming down off that false high can hurt!

 

I regret it because I wasted so much energy and attention that could have been directed to more genuine and wholesome pursuits.

 

I regret falling for a MARRIED man who would go as far as he did with me emotionally. In my heart of hearts I have much more respect for men like BadMan who is married and so would never go there emotionally with a woman, than men like the one I fell for who was careless and wreckless with his emotional responsibility.

 

I regret it because of course I was just as wreckless and careless as he was, being a married woman and behaving like that. Not very classy.

 

I regret it because I saw him as a "friend" even though true friends never hurt and entwine each other like we did to each other.

 

True, our troubled marriages placed us at risk for what we did, just like with your married guy. But that could never condone (or excuse) the fact that we were playing with fire, just like you and your married guy are doing right now.

 

Fortunately he and I were seperated for a few months at work, so we had time for common sense and decency to prevail. Now that we are back together we just pretend like it didn't happen, and our behavior is back within the boundaries of two professional colleagues. Oh, and no, I don't dislike him at all (we were both at fault and both ended it). But I see very clearly that there was never really a friendship between us, and there never will be.

 

I strongly doubt that there is much of a true friendship between you and this married guy either. Go ahead and do an internet search for the meaning of "friendship," and you will come up with terms like honesty, integrety, loyalty, respect, concern for each other's well being, caring for each other's happiness. Respect for each other's families (including spouses and children) also comes to mind when I think about true friendship.

 

This married guy at your work is oh, so damned seductive.

 

But he is not really a friend of yours.

 

We have both learned from our mistakes, as I suspect you will too one day.

 

Good luck.

[BadMan]

Originally posted by Carly

In my heart of hearts I have much more respect for men like BadMan who is married and so would never go there emotionally with a woman, than men like the one I fell for who was careless and wreckless with his emotional responsibility.

 

 

I'm not sure I deserve your respect but thank you for the kind words.

 

Very interesting discussion going on here.

[221bBakerStreet]

I appreciate everyone's input so far. I do, however, feel the need to make a distinction between Carly's experience and my own. Like I said before, talking about his marriage problems is about 1% of our friendship. He goes home at night, and spends time with his family, and I with mine. When he talks about his wife, I am certainly not under the impression that he is letting me know he is "available".

 

Jack is not the man you describe, Carly, though I know you'll shake your head and mutter that I am in denial and someday I'll be sorry. I am no fool, however, and I know opportunistic, predatory, irresponsible men when I meet them. Jack is none of those things, and he is all of the things you describe finding in your internet search for friendship.

 

Seductive? Hardly. I admit having a crush on him--what I didn't say is that I had a crush on him LONG before we became friends, simply because he is physically attractive. Our friendship is completely separate from that. I have the same crush on a man who parks near me in the parking garage.

 

Maybe I am wrong, maybe it isn't a real friendship; only time can tell on that. Maybe our relationship is just one of convenience. Today I had a girlfriend ask me what will happen with Jack and I when I get a different job. Not owning a crystal ball, I had no answer for her. But--if I can help him win a fight against a deadly illness by making him laugh and feel good about himself and have a good outlook, and just LISTEN to him....TODAY...should I deny us both the expirience because it may be different tomorrow? So maybe someday he'll cut off our friendship and get closer to his wife--okay, that's fine. In fact, I hope so for his sake. But for the rest of my life, I'll know that I made a difference in the life of a worthwhile individual, and even if I never saw him again from now on, I would not be sorry I made his acquaintance. In fact, I am a better person for knowing him. How many people can you say THAT about?

 

Hershey sells a LOT of chocolate bars, Carly. Don't knock the temporary fixes.

[skotup]

easy 1, cos ive been in ur situation. Just be a friend and nuthing more, dont bitch about his wife with him, dont share every lil detail and secret, dont have need to talk to him every second of the day, behave around him in the same way u would if some1 else was there with you, thats the kind of friend u should be

[Chrissy]

As a single parent, I can identify.

 

You meet someone that you can talk to, you are not looking for a relationship. Just an adult, with adult conversation. A married man is "SAFE", you are not expecting it to go beyond certain boundaries. But having that person to talk to eases a sense of loneliness within yourself.

 

The conversations steadily become more intimate. (NOT sexually intimate.) You just start sharing more and more of your lives with each other.

 

Slowly, the conversations are no longer 2 sided, but mostly about HIS problems. More and more he runs to you for emotional support. His friend, the only person he can talk to.

 

If this sounds like what is going on between you and your friend...

 

He's playing you! And it is an emotional affair on his side. (He's working on more than an emotional affair.)

[DragonLady]

I know how Jack feels... I had an emotional affair with my PRIEST... I was going through a rough time in my marriage, and the priest was there to talk to in Confession... I felt like he was my best friend. My feelings of friendship for him grew closer until my husband got jealous. I admit, I had a couple of romantic fantasies, that I got divorced and he left the priesthood and we lived happily ever after. But I never would have acted on those thoughts. And I kept them to myself. I had never heard of an emotional affair, so I didn't know I was doing anything wrong.

 

We actually had to start attending another parish because my husband got so jealous. My husband thought it was the priest having the emotional affair with ME, not the other way around. After we left his parish, I admitted to my husband that I had been having some feelings for the priest. My husband still blames the priest - he feels that in his position he should have been able to perceive what I was feeling and put a stop to our friendship.

 

I miss my friend. We've tried several other parishes but it isn't the same. I wish I could go back in time and change what happened. I wish the priest had been insightful enough to see that I was having an emotional affair with him and put a stop to it before it caused such problems in my marriage. I wish we could be friends again without all that other emotional baggage.

 

Having been in Jack's shoes, I suggest you discuss the topic of "emotional affairs" with Jack. Let him know that you think he is having one with you and that you don't want to be a stumbling block in his marriage. It is important that he recognize these feelings in himself before his wife does. That way he can deal with it, or get counseling, or whatever, BEFORE it makes his shaky marriage even worse!

[Missinhim]

This is a test before I post a reply.

[Missinhim]

I met a guy some 30 years ago. We dated for a few months and then lost track of each other for 15 years.

 

When we first met, he was separated from his wife, I was single. When we met again 15 years later, he was divorced, I had been married for 14 years.

 

The 'emotional affair' began with absolutely NO PLANS for it to go any farther. Who was I kidding? I had feelings for him from before and they only grew stronger.

 

I have moved some 2000 miles away. We keep in touch. I am still missing him and he is missing me. When I left it was "the bridges of Madison County" scenario. I cannot even watch that movie without bawling my eyes out. I know how she felt.

 

Nothing will ever come of us getting together unless something would happen to my spouse. I am where I chose to be a long time ago and I can't/won't change that.

 

Sometimes I miss him sooooo bad. We could have a good relationship if circumstances were different - they are not.

 

Why can't we go around twice?