Infidelity: An Emotional Affair Can Help Spouses Get Closer — or Cause a Divorce
John and Mary struck up a natural friendship when they met at their local book club. They immediately acted on their mutual attraction to each other. They talk on the phone regularly, have coffee and sometimes even lunch and very often confide in each other.
Here’s the rub: Both John and Mary are married. But not to each other, which begs the question: Are they having an emotional affair or is it just a friendship? “When the friendship interferes with your relationship at home, that’s an emotional affair,” said
Danine Manette, 40, an Oakland, Calif., career criminal investigator and author of “Ultimate Betrayal: Recognizing, Uncovering and Dealing with Infidelity.”
“In an emotional affair, you check out mentally from the marriage. You are mentally gone because you are so busy wrapped in what this other person is doing, thinking and feeling. You are making decisions based on how the other person will feel about them. Emotional affairs are very dangerous. They really are because often, you don’t know you are in one until it is too late.”
The difference between an emotional affair and a physical one has been the topic of much discussion since Cynthia Rodriguez filed for divorce from Yankees third baseman Alex Rodriguez, alleging he’s had a series of affairs since they were married four years ago.
C-Rod also alleges that her husband, with whom she has two children, had an emotional affair with pop superstar Madonna. It was, according to C-Rod’s divorce attorney, Earle Lilly, an “affair of the heart.” The Material Girl has been dealing rumors of her own — about her potential uncoupling with husband Guy Ritchie — has denied any emotional affair with A-Rod, adding she’s happily married to Ritchie and plans to stay that way.
This issue’s become so hot that Toronto fans tried to throw A-Rod off his game this weekend by holding Madonna photos while he was on the field. And Monday, casinos in Reno, Nev., tried tempting sports fans with a bet: how many career home runs willA-Rod have by the pop star’s50th birthday on Aug. 16?”
“The Madonna and Alex Rodriguez situation is a public announcement of a private situation and we are hearing one of three sides to a story. We don’t know if Alex and Madonna were having an affair of any kind but we do know that most men and women would not appreciate their mate slipping in and out of another person’s home at any time, let alone after midnight,” saidrelationships expert, Brenda Della Casa, author of “Cinderella Was a Liar,” a bookthat offers real-life relationship advice.
Whether there’s any physical connection or not, the whole mess has become damaging to both couples, said Tina B. Tessina, Ph.D., author of “Money, Sex and Kids: Stop Fighting about the Three Things that Can Ruin your Marriage.”
“Emotional affairs can be as damaging as sexual affairs,” she explained. “The issue is disrespect toward your wife and family.You can have an innocent crush on someone, and it doesn’t need to become disrespectful. Married people, especially parents, need to grow up emotionally and learn self-control. If you’re a celeb, and acting in ways the paparazzi can document as out-of-bounds, that’s not respectful to your wife and family.”
While many people have never even heard of emotional affairs, psychologists and those who work in the field of marriage counseling, say they are common. Many times, emotional affairs crop up when a spouse is feeling neglected at home or not emotionally fulfilled. Meeting someone who can fill those feelings can enhance the attraction between two people who may not realize on a cognitive level that there is something missing in the their marriages and are seeking that emotionally elsewhere.
“There is some blockage already in the marriage. You take each other for granted and that is where the whole thing begins,” said
Tessina, 64, a Palm Beach, Calif.-based psychotherapist. “You find a connection with this other person. There is a thing that happens in your head where you start to believe that this other person is so much better than your spouse in various ways. When that comparison thing happens, that is the moment of betrayal. After a while, part of you is actively withheld from your spouse and reserved only for this other person.”
And when that happens, something else takes place, too, she said. You start to distance yourself from your spouse and the relationship between you and your new friend reaches a level of secrecy, while the one between you and your spouse continues to erode. “Emotional affairs are often first steps out of the existing relationship. They can rob the current relationship of richness and chances for happiness,” said Leslie Beth Wish, 60, a psychologist and social worker based in Sarasota, Fla. who has been counseling couples in relationships formore than30 years.
“Oddly, they can have a positive effect, too, she added. Emotional affairs can also can stabilize a difficult relationship at home that might just be staying together for the sake of the children, for example. It can allow the person to feel the care, concern and connection that are missing at home,” she said, adding that she doesn’t endorse this to keep a marriage healthy, but there are relationships she has counseled where a platonic, emotional affair with an outsider has kept the marriage together.
Other therapists agree. “Emotional affairs exist because I think a lot of people stay in marriages that are not the best for them. This way, their feelings and emotions get taken into account somewhere else,” said Alice Aspen March, a Los Angeles-based author of The Attention Factor. “They are appreciated somewhere else, loved somewhere else, respected somewhere else, where they aren’t at home. It might just be keeping that marriage together. Sure they can be dangerous, but not necessarily.”
“The danger point, however, is when an emotional affair threatens a marriage by superseding it in priority and importance. If the affairee shuts down emotionally at home, that can be a dangerous thing,” she said. “If he or she withdraws at home, the kids are going to know this. If mom is rushing to the phone or Internet to get her emotional needs met, then that’s not good. It means she is making choices that exclude her family and takes her focus away.”
“Of course, a lot depends on the specifics of the relationship. In therapy, we don’t deal in black and white. Somebody who develops a friendship or closeness with someone outside the marriage, if it’s not sexual and they are just friends, no, I don’t think it’s dangerous. Why can’t you have friends in addition to your spouse?” said Jay Granat, 55, a couples counselor in private practice in Riveredge, N. J.
But he added, it doesn’t mean that boundaries shouldn’t be in place with friendships with the opposite sex. “That’s not to say it can’t lead to something, especially if you are sharing things that you don’t share with your spouse. It becomes a problem when it becomes romantic in one person’s mind. That’s the gauge: Once it crosses over to having sexual feelings toward the person. The sexual element does create something different.”
Tessina agrees. “Emotional affairs have a sexual component that friendships don’t have. A lot of times, that sexual issue comes up between friends and you have to deal with it. If you have good boundaries, you have to maintain them, because emotional affection does lead to physical affection. If you don’t have boundaries, it is likely to move into that sexual direction.”
That is the bottom line, say the experts. Boundaries. One measure of those boundaries could be how the person who is involved in an emotional relationship would feel if his or her spouse were watching, said Michele Weiner-Davis, founder of www.divorcebusting.com and author of several books about marriage/relationships, whose practice is based in Boulder Colo. And Woodstock , Ill.
The person should ask themselves, “If my spouse were looking over my shoulder, how would my spouse feel about this.’ If the answer is “betrayed,’ then it’s time to rethink the relationship,” she said. “In our culture there is such an emphasis on making oneself feel good and following bliss. The fact is that healthy relationships are about mutual care-taking. The most important concept is real giving. We tend to give to each other in way we want to receive. We need to learn to give in way that our partners want. That’s what healthy relationships are based upon.”
And dealing honestly with our spouses might be the another measure. “An emotional affair is a secret. A satisfying secret but still a secret. And as we used to say… you are only as sick as your secrets”, added author March.
TIPS (FOR YOU OR YOUR SPOUSE) TO AVOID AN EMOTIONAL AFFAIR
1. Talk, Talk, Talk.
“I would encourage any couple to do is communicate and create guidelines for what they consider out-of-bounds,” said Della Casa. “I know couples who share one another’s e-mail passwords and have agreed not to have individual relationships with people of the opposite sex and others who think cheating is only an issue when physical contact is involved.”
2. Share your Disappointment.
Emotional affairs occur when one person is unable to share theirdisappointment, according to California clinical psychiatrist Mark Goulston, author of “Get Out of Your Own Way.””Acting out (as in an affair of any kind, many compulsive habits or even self-destructive habits) or alternatively acting in by shutting down and withdrawing are not an expression of disappointment, but coping devices to keep from experiencing the disappointment fully. The reason people try to avoid experiencing the disappointment fully is because they fear that it will lead to some irreversible action that they don’t want or are not ready to take.”
“Ironically when you can admit disappointment and feel it fully, exhale, pause and when possible express it to the other person using, ‘When you do ‘A,’ I feel ‘B,’ and it makes me want to do ‘C,’ which I don’t want to do, so that is why I am getting it out now,” the disappointment ebbs and flows and then dissipates,” he said. “Marriages don’t end because you stop loving each other, they end because you can’t stop hating each other.And it gets to that stage because disappointments are not communicated with early on and then build up into frustration, anger, and finally hatred. Like acid, hatred corrodes the inner fabric of love.”
