Reply to Not going to cheat, but need help getting over emotional infatuation

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Ha! For a minute I thought my husband wrote this. We're reeling from this situation right now, though his friendship with co-worker deepened with a lot of texting. They crossed a boundary -- not a physical boundary or sexting or even confessing romantic feelings, just the enjoyment of the bond -- and we're working on recovering though it's hard.

Yes, even when it's just a deep friendship, it's a betrayal, and then all parties are stymied with how to proceed.[/quote]

Can you elaborate a bit on what deepened in your husband's relationship with his co-worker? What hurt you, and if they didn't express romantic feelings how was it different than a male-female friendship?[/quote]

First, I had no idea that the friendship was deepening. He struggles with not understanding social norms between married men and women, so that combined with tension at home and lots of responsiveness from her made it easy for him to start leaning on her friendship more and more.

When I was out of town, he met her for lunch (on a weekend, in a location close to her, "for her convenience"). I happened to be looking at the credit card statement while I was away (for unrelated reasons) and saw he'd been to lunch in an unfamiliar place somewhere in the metro area; it didn't raise a flag because I figured he had made plans with a group of friends. When I got back and mentioned seeing the charge, he became unexpectedly defensive, saying he'd met a friend, and "I'm allowed to have friends!" I was thunderstruck by this. Honestly, I'd had no suspicions whatsoever. (And if the lunch charge had come up for some random Applebee's a few miles closer to home, I likely wouldn't have ever questioned it.)

When we began addressing the issues, he was at first stuck on the "just friends" language while I couldn't understand why I was feeling as betrayed as I was. I went from trying to be cool about it, saying that I wouldn't mandate that he cut off contact because friends are important, but over time he has agreed he needs to put up walls though it's hard to lose the enjoyment of the connection. I saw it was going to be all too easy for him to both continue to enjoy his attachment to her as-is AND reap the benefits of more openness with me. (The "NOT Just Friends" book mentioned in this or another thread has been very helpful.)

They work together (in different offices), have in the past confessed having little crushes on each other, share some interests that are fun to chat about, and on a few occasions he has confided in her about problems in our marriage. She has been divorced and apparently (according to him) urged him to work things out with me. I may still have been in the dark as he hadn't come to the realization that he had crossed a line until we began discussing it together. One of the ways these "platonic" friendships cross the line is when there's an element of having a sweet secret that couldn't possibly be bad, since there's nothing physical going on. The person with the secret isn't "doing anything wrong" yet still gets the thrill of having a source of pleasure that he (in our case) isn't sharing with the spouse, and it's all innocent because no one's being hurt.

In the weeks we've been working on this, I've been very happy at our ability to open the lines of communication, but it's also been hard in that it's still a process for him in cutting this person out of his life, and my twinges of anxiety whenever I see him on his phone.

I've been pretty specific, so I'm actually hoping his friend reads DCUM and recognizes this. I don't think she's a bad person; I do think she was very flattered by the attention and also enjoys the friendship. But she must also know that she crossed lines even if she was following his lead. I can totally see myself having a savior complex over a nice guy coming to me for attention. Of course, knowing what I know now, I'd be building walls.[/quote]

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