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Joined: May 2006
Posts: 750
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Joined: May 2006
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Alright, here is one definition of infidelity I came up with, Ambrose Bierce style:
Infidelity -- a disease affecting committed couples. It often causes two people who were once deeply in love with each other to begin communicating exclusively through high paid attorneys.
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Joined: Sep 2005
Posts: 10,044
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Joined: Sep 2005
Posts: 10,044 |
Cheating isn't just sneaking out to a hotel room with the office hottie.
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By Peter Jensen Sun staff
February 24, 2002
Are you a woman who shares secrets with a male friend? Are you the kind of man who reviews his weekend plans with a female co-worker? Or do you go out for drinks with a colleague of the opposite sex?
If you are married and answer yes to any of these questions, then therapist M. Gary Neuman has a word to describe your behavior: Unfaithful.
"We can't fool ourselves into believing that we can have intimate relationships at work and still have a great relationship at home," says Neuman. "My message is that if you want to infuse passion and have a buddy for the rest of your life, you have to keep that emotional content in your marriage. Otherwise, it's not going to happen."
Neuman, a Miami Beach psychologist, has raised hackles in the marriage counseling field with his recently published book, Emotional Infidelity, (Random House, $24) that decries male-female friendships outside marriage as a form of adultery.
The funny thing is that while Neuman's views may seem extreme, even his critics say his central premise - that friendships between members of the opposite sex can harm marriages - is probably valid.
"It's a concern," says Shirley Glass, an Owings Mills psychologist and longtime researcher into marital infidelity. "Many love affairs begin just that way."
Marital infidelity, the sexual kind, is hardly an uncommon phenomenon in contemporary America. Nor does it show any sign of abating. According to a 1998 survey by the University of Chicago, about 25 percent of married men and 17 percent of married women in this country admit to having been unfaithful.
Glass suspects those numbers are too low. Her own research suggests it is probably closer to 25 percent of women and 40 to 50 percent of men.
When is friendship an infidelity?
How many married men and women might admit to an emotional infidelity? Probably 55 to 65 percent, she says, and she thinks the numbers are growing.
Her own definition of emotional infidelity is somewhat more cautious than Newman's, however. Glass thinks a friendship between members of the opposite sex must have 3 traits to be an infidelity: emotional intimacy that is greater than in the marriage, sexual tension, and secrecy.
"Friendship becomes a problem when it becomes a replacement for a marriage or takes place outside a marriage," says Glass.
Hamit Aizen, 38, of Reisterstown says she used to think that other-gender friends were fine for married couples - but after nine years of marriage she no longer feels that way. Instead, she puts a greater priority on preserving intimacy with her husband.
"I don't think I would ever cross the line, but I'm really cautious," says Aizen, a part-time teacher. "The longer you're married, you sometimes start looking for other things."
A Baltimore native and married father of five, Neuman, 37, believes society has generally underestimated how harmful these emotional infidelities can be. He has counseled too many couples not to have noticed that marriages suffer when men and women seek intimate relationships outside the home.
Even if the relationship doesn't escalate to sex, it can be debilitating to the marriage. "If you put the majority of your emotions in the hands of someone other than your spouse, you're still shortchanging your spouse," he says.
Consider, he says, the husband who gripes about work with a female co-worker and then comes home and doesn't really want to repeat his complaints all over again with his wife. The result? She is isolated from a significant part of his life.
Or what about the wife who flirts with other men? Will she feel better or worse about her marriage when she compares their reaction to her husband's behavior? He may seem much less fun and exciting.
Divided loyalties
In his book, Neuman points to the workplace as Ground Zero for the problem of emotional infidelity. Research shows it's where the majority of extramarital affairs get started - perhaps as high as 73 percent, according to one study.
He sees opportunities for inappropriate behavior behind every lunch, every trip for drinks after work, and every business trip where men and women are thrust into prolonged social contact without their spouses.
Modern "team building" retreats where male and female co-workers climb walls or rappel down cliffs? Neuman would like to see them come to an immediate end.
"We have hard and fast decisions to make," he says. "What's the most meaningful thing in your life? We can't fool ourselves into thinking we can have these intimate relationships at work and still have a great relationship at home."
Neuman admits his views are unconventional. But in the three months since his book hit the stores, the volume of hate mail he's received has surprised him. Many of those letters are from women who angrily accuse him of condemning the presence of educated women in the work force and rekindling a kind of Victorian attitude toward them.
Even Glass thinks he overstates the harmfulness of a friendship. "It's fine as long as it's not a replacement for marriage. You just have to ask: If you say or do things you wouldn't want your spouse to see or hear then you need to take a few steps back," she says.
Nevertheless, Neuman insists he has not overstated the destructiveness - if only because marriages can be such fragile things that get neglected and too easily reduced to "kids and bills."
"I'm not the crazy one here," says Neuman, who stirred far less controversy with his past writings (mostly about how to protect children from the harmfulness of divorce). "We need new standards."
He points to the Internet as an example of how men and women can have emotional entanglements without physical contact. He has heard stories of people who have spent hours on the Web sharing secrets with people they'll probably never meet - and in the process denying their spouse the same intimacies.
Marlene Maheu, author of Infidelity on the Internet (Source Books, 2001), agrees that such relationships can be a "serious disruption" to a marriage. In an increasingly wired world, e-mail can be a 24/7 presence, its content witty and provocative, placing no demands on the reader other than to be read. What spouse can compete with that?
"If you're telling someone your secrets and confiding in them and telling them what's going on in your real relationship, the other person is in a position to tell you whatever you want to hear," says Maheu, a San Diego psychologist.
Susan Townsend, a Towson psychologist, says it is usually the emotional intimacy that develops in affairs that devastates marriages, not the fact that one partner has had sex with another. Whether that develops over the Internet or from direct contact doesn't seem to matter.
"People can end up feeling isolated and lonely in their marriage," says Townsend, who teaches a course called PAIRS (Practical Application of Intimate Relationship Skills) to couples who want to improve their relationship.
Neuman's solution is to curb friendships with the opposite sex. He admits that not all such relationships are doomed to turn into affairs or even weaken marriages, but he believes all marriages would be stronger without them.
"Some people can handle it, yes. For those people who have a good friend and a good marriage, I can't disagree," he says. "I just say, why not take the challenge, stop the outside relationship and see if your marriage gets better?"
That would be fine for Barry Glazer, a 57-year-old lawyer living in Federal Hill, a student in Townsend's class, who says he's never believed married men and women should have close friendships outside marriage. Mother Nature, he says, just doesn't work that way.
"It's way too complicated. I worry it would be open to something more," says Glazer, who is in a long-term relationship. "Maybe that's not fair, but when you try to make nature fair, you're banging your head against the wall."
Still, Townsend and other therapists say such friendships are possible when both parties understand their boundaries. One of the first steps toward "affair-proofing" your marriage is simply to make sure a couple spends some time on a weekly basis having a meaningful conversation.
"The more a couple knows each other, the better off they are," she says. "If you strengthen the bond between the couple, there is not so much temptation to look elsewhere."
Glass suggests that friendships become a problem when there's some attraction involved. If you sense that chemistry, she says, that's when it's time to put the walls up - maybe avoid some social situations that "create more of a male-female situation."
"A reasonable safeguard is not to put women in burqas and have no contact," she says. "Maybe it's to take that person home to dinner with your spouse or take a few steps back."
Even safer, says Kim Michel, a 39-year-old Timonium resident, is to avoid friendships with people of the opposite sex. Last fall she enrolled in the PAIRS course after the breakup of her marriage. The experience has reinforced her view that marriages can be fragile things and deserve respect.
"Eventually, there comes a point where the line will be crossed in my opinion," she says. "I just don't see how there can be a great friendship. You need to make your husband or your wife your best friend."
10 Rules for Avoiding Emotional Infidelity
1. Keep it all business in the office.
2. Avoid meetings with members of the opposite sex outside the workplace.
3. Meet in groups.
4. Find polite ways of ending personal conversations.
5. Take particular care not to have regular (perhaps daily or even weekly) conversations about your life outside work.
6. Don't share your personal feelings.
7. Be unflinchingly honest with yourself.
8. Avoid cordial kisses and hugs, or dancing with members of the opposite sex.
9. Don't drink around the opposite sex.
10. Show your commitment to your spouse daily. Just came across this yesterday... thought it might fit your thread.
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This is very interesting and actually confirms Dr. Harley's belief about friendships with members of the opposite sex.
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