Comments on: Emotional Infidelity — Is Your Marriage At Risk?

By: Dear T.

Dear T. — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 05:49:07 +0000

I applaud you for trying to give up the porn for the sake of your marriage. If I may, I would like to try to help you understand a woman’s point of view to add to your efforts. No woman feels perfect about her body. We all have imperfections that we agonize over. We all want our husbands to help us feel that “to him” we are the most beautiful woman in the world especially when we are about to make love. How can she feel that way, when she knows that images of those perfect bodies are likely in her husband’s mind perhaps when they are making love? That is a big turn off for a woman when it comes to love making. Secondly, a woman wants to also feel that her husband only has eyes for her. This makes her feel special and again this causes her to want to respond in the bedroom. When a man looks at every other woman with wanton eyes, it makes a wife feel cheap, used, or just like a old shoe, useful at times instead of special. And if you knew what kind of life most (if not all) of these women and girls in these porn pics have had you might not want to look at them. Most have been sexually abused by relatives as children. Selling their bodies is all they have learned to do. Don’t you men want to marry a woman with standards and morals, who makes you look good by being a trophy wife as well as a decent mother for your children? Would you want one of these women in the porn pictures to do that job for you? Most likely not, yet you GIVE them your time and attention (of your eyes and mind) instead of your wife. What does that tell your wife that you value? I am very blessed to have a husband who does not look at porn but stares at me at age 53. And I am not a bathing beauty. I used to have a weight problem and my skin shows it. Yet my hubby tells me I am beautiful every day. So I give myself to himself very willingly. And he makes me happy and that in turns give him peace and happiness too. You can turn your life around and I admire your attitude for wanting to work on it. One of the 12 step programs would probably help you the most. Hope you will keep it up until you win for the sake of your wife and your marriage. You will never regret it.

By: Stacey

Stacey — Sat, 01 Sep 2007 15:08:11 +0000

My husband was involved in an emotional affair with his high school sweetheart. She contacted him after 20 years. Unfortunately his emotional affair got hot and heavy while I was recovering from breast cancer surgery. He said he turned to his ex-girlfriend because he needed someone to talk to because I wasn’t there for him. Several months into the emotional affair I found emails between them on a secret email account. In the emails they talked about their rekindled love and had a lot of spouse bashing in them. I confronted my husband. Initially he felt he didn’t do anything wrong because they never got physical. After many discussions and counselling he realizes he made a big mistake and has cut off all communication with her. Rebuilding the trust is difficult. I can forgive but it’s so so hard to forget.

By: Barb

Barb — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 17:44:21 +0000

The article validates what I have gone through. He had an “emotional affair” for five years with a coworker. There were even times that she was sent to another out of state location and he had to travel and work there and seldom called home. I trusted that he was working and having dinner meetings – had no clue about his fling.He claims it meant nothing – but the emails I found broke my heart.
She works for another company now and sometimes he has to communicate with her for work. I asked that he tell and show me those communications and he has deleted phone calls from her and hid emails which I found. And he claims it’s over and can’t explain why he can’t be honest with me.
He also says I’m beating a dead horse when I try to talk about it. He admitted it went on for five years and can’t answer how you go from the flrting emails to working with someone in the next room (which they did for years) and it be strictly business.
I just found this site and will be back – at least now I know for sure that I’m not overreacting and imagining my pain and grief, in feeling betrayed, and alone. During that five years he did things for her, remembered things for her, and ignored my needs – a siple request for him to take a night off he couldn’t remember for me. And it’s not like I made demands all the – maybe I was too trusting and easy.
No more – I have children and grandchildren and will not spend the rest of my life this miserable. I have tried to tell him what I need – reassurance, communication, etc – to no avail. His silence is the worst – I can ask a question and not even get an acknowledgement that he heard me let alone any answers.
And he does seem to be trying more – he says he loves me and misses me when he travels for work – sometimes it makes me sad to remember all the times he didn’t call and say those things.
Thank you letting me vent – I hope he’ll wake up before it’s too late for us – I’m a very strong person and can only take so much. I’m trying so hard to focus on the good things now and forget the past – but it keeps haunting me. Just a month ago he lied to me about contact with her. Someone I believed in stopped being there for me. He cared about someone else and shared himself with someone else. And never saved any energy for us.
Will keep reading and trying to make this work on my terms – it’s been all about his needs for too long.

By: P

Wed, 08 Aug 2007 00:58:13 +0000

My husband and I have been married for 22 years. I am certain that over the course of our marriage we have both been involved in emotional affairs to varying degrees. For the most part my behavior has been primarily complaining to many of our male friends about our relationship and looking for their advice from the male perspective to try and reach my husband. This has stirred up some emotioanl feelings for me but I have never physically stepped outside my marriage vows or gone out of my way to communiccate with these men via email or phone calls. I havae been tempted on many occasions but do not want to hurt my family.

Several times during our marriage I am certain he was emotionally unfaithful. Some very specific and painful times were during my pregnancies after my children were born and after my father died and when he lost a job. Seven years ago my husband crossed the line and became physically involved with a married woman, our next door neighbor and a family friend. We have children that are the same age and both families were close friends at the time. When the affair became public my husband was convinced he was in love with this other woman and thought about leaving me. I convinced him to stay married and try and work it out. I could not share my children and feared the financial repurcussions of divorce. I also could not bare the embarassment of loosing him to another woman. She would no longer let our children play together. She called me at work and insulted me. We ended up moving to a different house in the same town. Neither of us could afford to leave our jobs. It was a terrible experience for my family, emotionally and financially. We cannot ever escape the memories of the experience because we live in a small town and run into each other frequently. I cannot and will not go through that again.

Unfortunately when we decided to stay together I really thought we were both making a committment to WORK on our marriage and that did not end up being the case. He refused to go into counseling. We have yet to even make time to take a romantic weekend ALONE somewhere. Lately he is hypercritical of everything I say and do, the way I keep the house, cook, look, how much I earn, even my parenting skills. These were some of the same signs of his infidelity as before. He is disconnected from me, does not listen to me, does not spend time with me. We are still physically intimate but sex has become more of a selfish act on his part. There really isn’t any love making involved. I feel as if my relationship has been reduced to that of the housekeeper, cook, laundry person, and sometimes whore. I have been regretting my decision to stay together after his initial physical infidelity. Now I fear that it is happening again. I also worry that he stayed wth me to avoid embarassment and to protect our children and not because he loved me.

I have confronted him. He denies anything- of course. He says he does not see a problem and continues to refuse to see a marriage counselor. When I suggest some alone time he shuts me down- no time, no money, etc. I have told him that I fear our marriage will not last once our children are gone to college. My oldest is leaving in two weeks and my youngest is a junior. Lately I feel myself checking out emotionally it is becoming so difficult to be the only one trying. Lately I find myself maried with two children and lonelier than I have ever been in my life. I know we are more vulnerable at times of change and when there are new stressors in our married or individual lives. I know that with my daughter heading off to college this is a time of transition for our family. I am also finding myself tempted more and more frequently to become involved with another man. We have talked and there is definitely chemistry but I do not want to hurt my family. I wouldn’t be talking to another man about my feelings if my husband would just listen. His friends and family tease him all the time about how he tunes me out. It is not funny to me.

Can I fix this if I am the only one trying? I have tried talking to him about how I am feeling. How do I affair proof my marriage- from either emotional or physical affairs. Is it time to throw in the towel after 22 years. I do not want to go on like this.

Thanks for the article. Really made me think. Now I just don’t know how to fix this.

By: ST

ST — Tue, 31 Jul 2007 21:19:29 +0000

My husband and I have been dealing with this for the past 6 months. He says it is nothing and doesn’t seem to realize the pain that I am going through. We both have talked about divorce which would devestate our children. We are both willing to try and make this work but he is not willing to give her up. How do I move past this and move on with my life when he is not willing to separate himself from the problem.

By: T

Mon, 18 Jun 2007 02:35:13 +0000

I am the culprit in an emotional infidelity, but not the sort that has been brought out in this article. My wife has caught me looking at pornography on several occassions over the course of our eight-year marriage. I suppose that in some instances and some relationships, this would not be an issue, but in ours it is. First, I was hiding the fact that I was doing this from my wife. My reasons are immaterial because it was the hiding that turned a potential non-issue into a truly inappropriate act. Second, my wife finds pornography to be exploitative and wrong. I don’t need to be convinced that she is right, but it further makes what I did a very emotional wound. Third, each time she caught me, she asked me to stop, to the point of threatening to end our marriage if it continued, and each time I did it again. I’ve since spent quite a bit of time soul-searching on why I would do what I did. I’ve always found her to be the most attractive woman I’ve ever known and, except for frequency, she had more than satisfied me sexually throughout our marriage. In the end it is the emotional aspect of what happened that has done the most damage to my marriage. She felt I disengaged from our romantic life because it was easier to turn to porn and, in turn, lost much of the respect and feeling she had for me in the beginning of our marriage. I have a lot to do to repair what I’ve done and to discover what caused me to treat my wife and our marriage so recklessly over something to which I never felt connected. What I’m driving at is that the concept of emotional infidelity is largeley in the eyes of the observer. Even if I never felt an emotional rush or got any sort of relationship benefit from it my wife felt robbed– “shortchanged” from the article–of my emotional attachment to her because of it. I believe this makes it an emotional infidelity. What I did was wrong, I’m seeking help to get this monkey off my back (because that’s all I can imagine it to be), and I’m going to spend the rest of my life trying to make it up to the woman I hurt if she’ll let me.

By: sara

sara — Thu, 24 May 2007 21:00:44 +0000

I was involved in an emotional affair that lasted about 3 years. It started out being a shoulder for a friend. He is much older than me and i think i needed a “father figure” that would accept me as i am, not as i should be. i also felt i had to be a certain person to my husband and with this other man i could show my fears and so could he. his marriage was on the edge of divorce, he did divorce about a year and a half into the relationship but that would have happened regardless. i tried to get him to seek counseling with his wife to no avail. i never once considered leaving my husband. our relationship became physical but not to the point of intercourse – just very close. i just couldn’t cross that line. i have since severely cooled my friendship with this man but am still very close and am there for him when he’s been experiencing much heartache in his life. he is friends with my husband also though i don’t think my husband was ever really certain there was anything between us

By: Jeff

Jeff — Mon, 07 May 2007 01:34:03 +0000

This was right on the money, regardless of gender. My wife went through an emotional affair starting in January through May of last year, at which point it turned into a physical affair, which lasted until his wife intercepted some emails my wife had sent him – this happened in September, by which time we had been separated for almost three months. Happily, we are back together, I have changed many of the things I was doing which led her to the emotional repair and she is working very hard to repair the damage she did to our relationship with the physical affair. Above all, we are COMMUNICATING our thoughts and feelings on a much more regular basis.

There is still the tendency to play the blame game and the “who got hurt worse” challenges – those are hard to overcome. It’s especially important to discuss the emotional items and hurts as calmly and rationally as possible – above all, avoid the “four horsemen” mentioned in the current issue. We did a lot of that in the early stages of our reconciliation – I tend to be the criticism/insult expert, she’s the pro on defensiveness and stonewalling. it has taken a lot of work and a lot of discussion on both of our parts to get past those humps, before the real communication had a chance. Most importantly, if both of you don’t want it to work with all your hearts, it won’t – realize that before you put your heart on the line. It is going to hurt and it is going to hurt both of you, but for us, the end result is well worth it – we have a relationship now that is stronger than at any point over the 14 years we have been married.

That said, would I go through this again? No way. If the topic ever arises again where it even looks like we will end up in the same situation, I would rather give up the most important people in my life (my wife and two sons) than go through the agony of the past year again. My job is to make sure that I do everything in my power to make sure we never end up in that situation again, and to trust my wife when she says she is doing the same. At least now we both know the warning signs, so we can nip anything like that in the bud.

Thanks again, it was a thought provoking article and very accurately described what my wife says she went through during the development of her infidelity and the procession from emotional to physical affair. If we had been able to read this article 15 or 16 months ago, or even earlier, it could have saved both of us and our families a huge amount of pain and suffering.

Best,
Jeff

By: RDulin

RDulin — Sun, 06 May 2007 14:29:16 +0000

Fellas–I too agree with many of the replies left and see the bias from the writer, but at the top of the newsletter page that you clicked this article from it says “for Men”. There may be something geared to the women if you click on the “for women” tab. We are all responsible for this Men v. Women distrust or grudge however you look at it. Let’s quit being reactive and start being proactive! We have all been hurt, but let’s do unto others as we would have done to us. Show kindness husbands and wives alike and allow ourselves to be vulnerable to the ones we want to protect.

By: Lorralei

Lorralei — Sat, 05 May 2007 23:01:13 +0000

I just recently ended (something like) an emotional affair. I am married and he is single, but not really looking for anyone. I worked with him for a long time, and there has always been some sexual tension between us. (Nothing physical -beyond a hug- ever happened.) I think it was ’safe’ for both of us because I am unavailable. The relationship consisted of email and the occasional meeting (we now work different hours and in different locations). I thought about him a lot though. Looking back on it now, I feel that 1) it gave me some excitement and something to look forward to (kind of a ‘rush’) 2) it fed my ego to feel like someone was interested in me 3) it was an escape from my boring routines of life (emailing, thinking about him, fantasizing, etc.). I feel like I wasn’t thinking rationally at the time. I was so desperate to feel desirable that I wasn’t in touch with reality, i.e. that I have vowed to forsake all others! My ‘wake up call’ came when I began contact with someone else. This man is also married. I began to think obsessively about him, but he wasn’t at all interested. He tried to avoid me and seemed to think I was a bit nutty! At the time, I felt really hurt and tried to make excuses to myself about my behavior. But I really was acting weird, and I am glad now that he valued his own marriage and my marriage and had sense enough to stay away. It gave me a chance to see how foolish I had been and that I really do value my marriage and my husband. The experience really snapped me back to reality. I realized that my vows are important to me, my husband and children will never experience the turmoil infidelity places on a family (my dad cheated on my mom, leading to divorce), and what I really need to do is to concentrate on feeling good about myself. I was avoiding things like losing weight, exercising and feeling better mentally and physically. I need to feel good about myself, not look for that external reinforcement from someone else. I am in a good place mentally right now, ready to face what I need to do. (Sorry this is so long, but I thought it might help for someone going through this to see that it is possible to get beyond it and to regain your sense of self.)