heartwhole Posted November 3, 2016 Share Posted November 3, 2016 I completely understand why this loss has hit your hard and you need to grieve and process it. I would encourage you to read up more on emotional affairs so you can shift your thinking from "my picker is wrong, how can I trust my instincts again?" to understanding that this is about boundaries, not about your instincts. Any committed man who develops a secret or unspoken emotional bond with you is somewhere along the slippery slope of an affair, and it doesn't have anything to do with your value as a friend or your ability to judge people. For most of human history men and women did not work and socialize together as equals, and as a result we have to figure out how to be monogamous creatures who are simultaneously free to bond with members of the opposite sex whenever we choose. The problem isn't that you picked a bad person to be friends with but that you didn't question the emotional bond you were developing with someone you weren't free to date. He doesn't sound like he has much sense of these issues either if he is right back to flirting with others. I think he gets an ego boost from flirting and getting attention from others, and only when you two were very close did he realize it had crossed a line. It may not feel like it now, but I think you are very lucky that it didn't go any further and he stopped leading you on once he got a clue. Link to post Share on other sites
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