Couple Shares Outcome of Emotional Affair

The guest blogger today is a couple who have survived and redesigned their marriage after the husband’s emotional affair.

They write to tell their story and help others who might be experiencing an emotional affair as well.

Here’s what the husband writes:

Linda often tells me she doesn’t understand how I could have let myself get involved in an emotional affair with another woman. I can honestly say there wasn’t any singular reason or that I was looking for some kind of mid-life thrill. It was something that just happened. Unusual circumstances at work brought Tanya and I much closer than married co-workers should become. Combine that with dissatisfaction in her marriage and the marital “rut” that Linda and I were in, and there was a recipe for this type of marital affair to occur.

We found in each other certain feelings and personality traits that were missing in our marital relationships, and the result was a kind of euphoria that wasn’t existing at home. Only through Linda’s diligent efforts to save our marriage and my snapping back into reality did I realize just how stupid I had been. If I would have just been smart enough to confide in Linda when I initially felt like we were having marriage problems, I’m certain none of this would have happened.

The foundation of our love and our relationship was still sound: our kids, our home, our history together and all the things we have in common. But somehow we let the trials and tribulations of everyday life stop us from continuing to build upon this solid foundation which resulted in my devastating emotional infidelity.

Infidelity and the Truth: Not in the Emotional Affair

Do you believe that if you confront the other woman, she will tell you the truth?

Hardly, since an affair is built upon deception.

The emotional energy demanded by this type of affair can be intense.

Read this case study and my comments:

1. What was your purpose for confronting the OP and what did you say/do?

To find out how far the emotional affair had gone.

2. What happened? What was the outcome?

She denied communications with my husband, which I already saw from the cell phone charges and knew she was lying. She also blamed him for contacting her and that she was just talking to him to help him work on his marriage. The outcome was my husband was angry with her for blaming him for a friendship she initiated, and she no longer wanted anything to do with him because he was married with a family.

3. If you were to do it again, would you do it differently? What did you learn?

Yes, I would have confronted her the first time she hung up on me when I answered the phone(6 months earlier). I wouldn’t have contacted her – I knew what was going on. I should have separated from my husband and made him face what he was doing without a cushion of being home with his family. I will have less compassion for my husband or the lonely other woman.

Coach’s Comments:

I’m guessing we’re dealing with a form of the “I Fell out of Love… and just love being love” type of affair. This affair revolves around the emotional component.

And, someone involved in an emotional kind of affair is usually (please note, there are exceptions to patterns) a fairly dependent person who focuses his/her life on eliciting from others feedback that will make him/her feel good. Good feelings often come as a result of outside triggers rather than from inside one as they live out their life with purpose, standards and well grounded values.

This person will “play” those people in his/her life to create and guard his/her feelings. Deception is often part of this “playing” since s/he must manipulate his/her world to maintain those “feelings” and keep others away from discovering or her/his disclosing her/his inner emptiness.

Don’t expect the truth here.