Letters to the Editor
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Call it whatever you want, just leave me out of it.
It's all about trust. Trust wisely placed; blind trust; trust betrayed; trust never regained.
I had a great boyfriend, who'd been close friends with a girl from his crowd long before I ever met him. I absolutely trusted him, I had lots of hippie openness, and I thought it was cool he had a female friend (previous boyfriends didn't seem to know how to be friends with women).
About a year into our living together, I went out of town on a business trip, and when I came back he was acted squirrely and weird and nervous. Duh, guess what. The two "friends" had screwed, and of course "she got me drunk."
So on the subject of a boyfriend/husband being all friendy to some girl, yakking on the phone, probably complaining about you? Here's my stand on it. A man who has any respect for the woman he's having a serious relationship with does not get all emotional-y and reveal-y and confidante-y with another woman. It's playing with fire and the two people know damn well it is; they're just enjoying the suspense.
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Terminology, okay.
I guess the reason I get my fuse lit over this is the idea that "It isn't an affair" or "it isn't cheating" tends to imply that whatever it is that is going on doesn't actually need to stop. No matter what we choose to call it (I have no problem with "unconsummated affair," btw), there is something at work undermining the primary relationship. The idea of "no sex, no undermining" is naive. Otherwise people would not leave their marriages to be with their cyberchat partners.
I agree that it needs to be about coming to terms on boundaries. Some people make unreasonable demands. Example: "You are allowed to talk to your opposite sex friend once a month, and no more." It is not necessarily cheating to not agree to that, though it would be cheating to agree and then sneak in extra calls. Other marriages have wide-open boundaries (e.g., "open marriages") in which some activities are permissable, and others are still out of bounds. Even in an open marriage, it's still possible to make your spouse feel insecure.
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@avast2006
Couldn't have said it better myself.
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Yes
Now avast2600, we are on exactly the same page. ;)
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not to sound too pragmatic about all this, as far as I can tell "people" in a very generic sense tend to be pretty promiscuous ...
and I don't think that people are necessarily "more" promiscuous now than they were 20 years ago or 40 years ago or 60 years ago ... what has changed is the talking outloud about it and how the guilt/shame is parsed out ....
Did Angelina Jolie break up the Pitt/Aniston marriage? Remember Liz Taylor and Eddie Fisher?
None of it is "tasteful" ... I suspect some of the reasons for refusing or simply declining may seem a bit feeble ... since "everybody's doing it, doing it doing it" except they're not and never have been ... and people who did it "then" are past it "now" ...
I donno .. beyond that, I have no idea. I'm 55 and have no kids so I don't know what "they" (the young'uns) are up to but I know that even in the 60's, 70's and 80's when I was "active," there was a lot less going on than you'd IMAGINE and a lot less happiness, security...
I see today's society as scary materialistic and scary conformiST and that tendency to coopt and create a marketable "trend" out of every tiny green shoot and every outlier ...
Pairing-up has always had distinct social and economic benefits not available to solo ... and I'd guess "marrying up" remains an attractive Prince Charming sorta hope ... and, god known, sleeping your way to the top is hardly a new phenomenon ...
I have no idea how most people manage day to day .... which makes the "take it where you find it" ethos seem more sensible than some petrified "morality" might allow.
I think the demise of far-too-much of the "social contract" has left a lot of folks unmoored ... and "MORE" becomes the demand, bigger, better, faster, MORE!
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or --- in other words -- it still comes down to "do unto others as you would have them do unto you" ...in the old fashioned sense.
people experiment, they make mistakes, there are consequence, people learn, they regret, they get hurt ... life goes on.
there's no formula that guarantees much of anything ...
in a lot of ways the "good old days" weren't all that good ... anyhow, that was then and this is now.
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Emotions are icky!
No just kidding, I've been reading the exchanges between AKA Smith and others and I sort of agree with everyone. For me it comes down to threat levels and how respectful is he/she being to the person they've made promises too?
For example, during a rocky period in our courtship my husband was spending most if not all his free time with his friends. Playing sports, video games, drinking and I started to get the feeling things weren't going very well. All his friends are guys. So we had a few conversations about why he spent all his time away from me, did he still like me and we admitted that neither of us was very happy. I wouldn't call that an emotional affair, but he did prefer to spend all of his time with other people instead of me.
Now, that was an easy hump to get over because his friends pose no sexual or romantic threat to me, he will never marry of screw his pals, he is very close to them, known them for years, longer than he's known me and I'm sure they know things about him I don't and vice versa. I'm sure he bitches and moans to them, I've heard his friends do the same with about their girlfriends and wives and I know it's just venting. Now, if he had been spending all that time away with a "new" female friend(newness being very important) then that would have been harder to work around because it would tell me he was looking for back-up, exploring his options, thinking about leaving, versus just avoiding the issue until it came to a head. There would be the option of escalating it to a sexual affair which for me would be no, it's over get the hell out time. It's one thing to develop a crush or lust for someone else, we all do it. It's the nurturing that crush that would be a problem because that's when you are crossing the respect line. There is a really hot guy in my office and for months I would just think and think and think about him, I couldn't help it it was driving me nuts. I never asked him out for drinks, I never tried to come up with reasons to talk to him because then that would be testing the waters. Hmm could I cheat with this guy if I wanted, would he be interested, is he even worth it? Spending time with him would be wrong because I know I would be doing it to nurture the fantasies, the crush, the lust and I wouldn't think that was fair to my husband. Plus I think when you start nurturing romantic feelings for other people, eventually your spouse will pick up on it and while some people are comfortable sharing their crushes, I and my husband are a little more on the jealous side. Sure, she's hot, he's hot are find conversations, but a oh man I'm so hot for so and so and I think about her all the time and do my best to find any reason to spend time with him/her, uh no.
It's perfectly okay for him to flirt with other ladies, he's a flirty guy, he's got female co-workers I know he lunches with and sometimes they drop him home cause we live in the same neighborhood, I've had lunch with all of them and I can tell by these interactions that they are just as platonic as the relationships with his guy buddies. People like to pretend they can hide emotions but it's like most office affairs, the people in the affair are shocked when they learn everyone knew about it already. It is generally pretty obvious when people romantically like each other versus platonically liking each other. For another example, my husband and I met in a college class. Everyone started asking so you two were friends before? Uh no we just met here we'd say and they'd say oh but you two get along so well and knowingly smile. People would mention to me how lonely and quiet he seemed when I wasn't there and some of them practically threw a party for us when we started dating. It was obvious to everyone around us how hot we were for one another, while we coyly played each other and flirted and were unsure of moving forward.
So are emotional affairs possible, I think they are and I think that they can be just as damaging as a sexual affair because it does come down to motives and nurturing feelings, looking for escape routes before actually dealing with the issue.