Reply to Would you confront your husband/wife's Emotional Affair lover?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]OP, did you ever talk to your supposed affair partner about the status of your relationship, i.e., that you saw it as a kind of affair?[/quote]

There's no response to this question, but I'll hazard a guess that the answer is "no."  Why?  Because what's really going on here in this, and what most women call "emotional affairs," is a crush dealt with at middle school level.  In middle school most of us were probably virgins, both sexually and pretty much emotionally.  A girl with a crush on you could let you know it, make you think sex or something like it was possible, even likely, and maybe even make you fall in (puppy) love.  Whole "relationships" like this could exist without either party acknowledging their existence, explicitly.  Then she could start acting funny to you, avoiding contact, maybe making you feel like you had done something wrong.  As a practical matter, given how awkward both of you were anyway, she could easily steer any conversations you had away from a discussion of what passed or was passing between you.  Although no doubt she experienced discomfort, maybe even pain ("lovesickness"), she ultimately had [i]control[/i] of the situation, by being able to ration access.  Boys in this situation (and most middle school boys) are basically puppy dogs.

By the time we hit late adolescence, sex was a real possibility, we could talk about relationships, at least somewhat, and the crazy, unacknowledged "emotional affairs" of middle school receded into the past.  But now, in our 40's, with spouses, the middle school dynamic happens again.  Certain "women" get crushes on "men," know that sex is off the table as a practical matter, and regress to middle school crush level.  I see it all the time in these pages, and you can read a great example of it in this Salon article:

http://www.salon.com/2012/09/07/am_i_an_unconscious_tease/

The columnist has a fairly sympathetic take on the female here, but he also captures accurately how this feels to the male and males in similar situations -- including OP's "lover:"

"I think you could benefit from some bluntness: You are having an emotional affair with this man. He thought it was going to lead to sex. He was all ready to go. You contributed to his belief that it would lead to sex. You knew this in some way but hid it from yourself. Then you pulled the rug out; you pulled the curtain down; your door was booby-trapped with a bucket of water. He got doused and naturally was angry and baffled."

And then he gets to the essence of what most "emotional affairs" really are for women, middle school crushes:

"There is something deeper going on.

This power and control, this state of being desired, may be so intoxicating that you want to just continue on the edge like this.

This may be where you feel most alive, here on the edge of surrender. This may be where you want to be."

[/quote]

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