Anonymous wrote:The grass is greener where you water it. Spend your energy reconnecting with your DH, not with some random fantasy where you could mess up your and your DH's life.

+1000

Anonymous wrote:Mine didn't get physical. But remember, that wonderful guy who is so witty and charming is not the person you argue with about money, picking up the kids, cleaning the house, etc. So naturally the other man looks better.

This. The reality of every relationship is messy. The person you married is likely someone else you had chemistry with before you jad to navigate reality together. Everyone has their issues. Not worthit.

Anonymous wrote:for those who have been involved in these, at what point did it become physical? this has been a few years in the making, and it is starting to cross the line into an emotional affair. I am thinking about him a lot. We have a ridiculous chemistry, and similar tastes in a lot of things, help each other a lot with work.

i don't know where this is headed but would like to hear from others who have had emotional affairs. do they always go the physical route? i am falling bit by bit, year over year and it is getting harder to avoid the chemistry.

If you want to stay married, walk away. EAs hurt the relationship for years. DH may forgive, but will never forget (my experience anyway and this happened decades ago before there was a word for it).

The grass is greener where you water it. Spend your energy reconnecting with your DH, not with some random fantasy where you could mess up your and your DH's life.

Male perspective here. I recently stumbled into something that had the potential to become an emotional affair out of the blue. A childhood acquaintance connected with me through social media which lead to an email exchange which over the course of a couple of weeks became successively more personal and emotional. I learned that she divorced many years ago. If there’s such a thing as “chemistry” that can develop in email, it was there. We have a lot in common and there was an obvious connection/attraction. I was careful never to cross the line and complain about my marriage. She finally put a stop to it by acknowledging things were becoming emotional for her and that it was not okay. I agreed. This whole thing sent me into soul-searching mode. I recognized where I was not putting enough work into my 15+ year marriage. I realized that the energy I put into connecting with this person should have been spent on my marriage, my wife, and my children. I was lucky that she stopped it and that she lives thousands of miles away. Going down this path particularly with someone you work with or encounter on a regular basis is fraught with peril.

Yes, the worst part of it is feeling lied to and made a fool of. I understand and accept that people can fall into emotional and physical affairs, for a variety of reasons, and it is a forgivable thing. The most brutal and enduring damage comes from the betrayal of trust.

I hope my wife would just tell me she wanted a divorce before making a fool out of me.

Anonymous wrote:Well that's good. I am having fun but don't need the complications of an actual affair.

Hold on- just because you haven't screwed doesn't mean there aren't complications nor that it wouldn't "actually" hurt your spouse if they find out. As with most things on this board, ask and give advice but don't assume that others' experience will directly translate into your situation. For example, if you're having an emotional affair- lunches, flirting, even after-work drinks- and keeping it a secret from your spouse, if/when your spouse discovers it, they may not believe that no sexual contact happened. And your spouse may not care if there was no sex, the emotional affair could be just as damaging and hurtful. My advice- make sure your emotional affair partner has just as much to lose as you, if not more, and that you two are on the same page.

And if he's not married he's got nothing to lose.

When you are hiding things, that's not just a friendship. It's a problem.

Yes, it could be one sided. I try not to say bad things about DH to him. I definitely share more daily details and spend more time with him than with DH. No sexual or suggestive talk and in fact we carefully avoid that. I think it may qualify as an ea because although we do spend much of our time together in public, we do go out of our way to pick destinations or outings where we won't be seen by others we know and are extremely careful to hide the extent of our friendship from the people we both know. I also know that if DH saw the texts or emails or even the volume of communication and gifts it would not be good, and that if he were to find a girlfriend she may have a problem with the extent though perhaps not the nature of our communication. So I do not know and may never know. Perhaps he does see me as just a close friend.

Anonymous wrote:Well that's good. I am having fun but don't need the complications of an actual affair.

It may only be one sided which would make it a crush. Do you share details of life only with each other? Do you share disappointments about your spouses w each other? Do you talk about sexual or other provocative things that would be otherwise inappropriate with someone of the opposite sex besides your spouse?

Sharing things in common and good communication are hallmarks of friendship.

If none of the above it could just be a close appropriate friendship with someone of the opposite sex. And now you've got a crush that you want to be an EA.

How do your spouses feel about this emotional affair? Are they okay with it?

Well that's good. I am having fun but don't need the complications of an actual affair.

I'm not sure what playing with hands is, but right now you're barely in the fitting realm, so while he probably wants to have sex with you, he's got no clue that you want to have sex with him.