Has anyone here experienced emotional cheating...where it was found before it got physical? Or at least I think I found out before it got physical. I'm really having a hard time dealing with everything and yet if I know the truth and it never got physical I feel like I'm being ridiculous compared to what the rest of you are dealing with. :\

Hi keepn,

Welcome to MB. Yes, absolutely there is such a thing as an Emotional Affair (EA).

I'd suggest you spend a bit of time here reading the Basic Concepts (check the links at the top of the page) and some more of the posts here on the board. You will see how extremely common EAs are, and virtually all of them lead to PAs (physical affairs).
Mulan

Sorry you find yourself here.

My H had an EA w/a coworker. On one hand, I am glad I caught it before it went to a PA but on the other hand, you have to be careful thinking, "Good thing I caught this before it became serious" because EAs are as dangerous and as addictive as PAs...

Can you tell us more of your story?

Without major, high quality snooping you can not be sure it is EA not PA (thought my spouse was in an EA and it was a PA really all along.)

I would suggest that you treat it as a PA either way.

The same steps would apply.

My H was in an EA with an old gf. While I'm not entirely sure it never did go PA, they did have 2000 miles separating them. Even so, in my mind, a ONS with a hooker would have hurt me less than reading months and months of email and chat claiming undying love, soul mates, cyber-sex, etc.

knf88,

I "experienced" emotional cheating ("emotional affair", aka EA) from the wrong side... I was the one cheating.

My wife had no reason to suspect me & every reason to give me the benefit of the doubt. I'd been a devoted husband, involved dad, upstanding member of our church, decorated employee at work, all that. Married 16+ years, hardly ever even argued with my wife. As regards other women, I'd always been a friggin' boy-scout -- I'd have sworn that I could never get into an affair ... until I did. (And the woman I got into an affair with -- caring stay-at-home mom, Pampered Chef salesperson, & who taught music to preschoolers, fer cryin' out loud.) We were just the most wholesome people you could find! But we each got off-track and shifted our internal boundaries, even as we kept up beautiful facades outside.

I had my wife almost totally fooled -- she barely suspected a thing, the CIA could hardly have done it better. The one time she hinted that my being around OW made her kind of uncomfortable, I said that there was nothing going on that she needed to worry about and promised I wouldn't be alone with my OW to practice songs any more if it made my wife uncomfortable. In other words, I lied. Twice.

And she believed me, because I'd always been a good man to her. [By that point, my OW & I had already exchanged kisses.] As it turned out, however, my flicker of resolve to stop seeing OW lasted less than 2 weeks, after which I went into a full-blown PA for 5 & a half weeks, paying cash for hotel rooms, the whole sordid bit.

It seems surreal to me now (as well as to my wife), but it happened, or I wouldn't be here. This is not to blame my wife at all (after all, I was the one who lied to & deceived her); but when my wife & I look back, both I & she wish she'd put her foot down harder on that occasion & been less inclined to give me the benefit of the doubt. Just maybe I might've stopped before hitting complete bottom, and might've caused less grief for everyone whom I hurt.

I'm not sure what your particular situation is, but I hope you'll keep this in mind: Cheating is cheating. An emotional affair is an affair just the same. If you found an emotional affair before it became a physical affair, all that probably means is that you caught it earlier. But it's no less serious a threat to your relationship, and (aside from the fact that you might not need an STD test) the steps you need to take to fight this affair are virtually no different.

Please don't be afraid to put your foot down now. Please read on this site about EXPOSURE... it may be the best card in your hand, and may help snap your mate out of his/her addled state. (In my own case, I didn't begin to snap out of it until my OW's husband -- who'd been suspicious of her & started snooping -- found her out. This finally forced me to come clean to my wife & make a choice about whether I wanted to save & better my marriage. Unfortunately, this only happened after I'd been sleeping with OW for 5 weeks, and involved in the deepening emotional affair for 5 weeks before that.)

P.S. - Like OurHouse & claygal have related, my own wife was deeply hurt by the emotional aspect of my affair. She told me once (and this is a direct, unembellished quote): "The thing I find hardest is the thought of you actually loving her! I almost would've prefered the idea of a prostitute to this!" So don't feel "ridiculous" at all for being upset by this. Your spouse is likely to want to try to "minimize" what he/she's done, if it was "only" emotional. Don't you stand for it.

I can relate to where you are coming from. My H was involved in a mostly EA (there was some physical stuff, but it didn't go "all the way") for the first 10 years of our M. It basically started a week after our wedding, when his ex-girlfriend showed up at his work and kissed him. This sent my H into an emotional spiral, as he realized he still had feelings for her and he was married to me. For the next 10 years, he would cut off contact with her for awhile, then resume contact and EA, start feeling guilty, confess to me, end contact again, resume contact and EA.... It just went on and on. At one time, our family was even friends with the OW's family, as my H convinced me that his feelings for OW were purely platonic and they all just wanted to be friends. What finally snapped my H out of it was one night when the EA became more physical than it had ever been before and he realized that he and OW were on the verge of entering into a PA. That's when he finally decided to end it for good, even though it took him 6 months to tell me why we were no longer talking to OW or her family or going over there with the kids like we used to.

It was difficult for me to come to terms with my H's EA. I often thought that I didn't really have a right to be that upset about his relationship with OW, because it wasn't as though they were sleeping together or anything. It wasn't a REAL A, after all. I have since learned differently. EA's are every bit as real and painful as PA's. It hurt me very deeply to know that my H held onto these feelings for his ex-girlfriend for so many years. It made me feel as though I would never be anything more than 2nd place in his heart. In many ways, I think I would have been able to deal with something like a one-night stand better than my H's long term EA. For me, the emotions involved in my H's affair were so much more difficult to deal with than the little bit of physical stuff that happened between him and OW.

So, don't minimize your feelings about this. EA's hurt just as much as PA's. You aren't being ridiculous. I didn't allow myself to deal with my H's EA for a long time, because I didn't know if I had the right to even call it an A, since it wasn't physical. And, 3 years after the end of my H's EA, I had a PA/EA because I never really dealt with the fact that my H was in love with someone else for most of our M. I distanced myself from my M so much, that I did something I never would have thought myself capable of. I was an OC (my mother had an A with a married man and had me) and had been hurt so badly by my H's EA, and I abhorred A. It was the last thing on earth I thought I would ever be capable of.

Your feelings are just as legitimate as anyone else's, rather the A was an EA or a PA. It still hurts just the same.

My situation is so much the same as ourhouse, it could be the same story. Even living 2000 miles away from OW. I could have dealt with a one night stand easier, and have. My WH was having 2 affairs almost simultaeously. The other he ended, and has nothing but contempt for the other woman now. The ex-girlfriend is much harder for me to deal with. Like ourhouse, it is the emails I found (same types of emails....undying love, soulmates etc...)that are the hardest for me to be able to get over. Plus the fact that he is still in his affair fog, not knowing what he wants to do. And I wonder if he ever will, or if he will always hold out hope that he can end up with her. That is what hurts the most, and makes me the most afraid about trying to save my marriage. So I would totally agree that the emotional affairs are hardest for BS's to recover from.

My wife had a seven-month EA with a stranger she met over Twitter who lives 1200 miles away. My thread here was "She had an EA and still longs for him" which unfortunately got nuked in the great bulletin board purge of '09.

This is your thread, so I won't go into details, but will offer advice. Treat it exactly the same as a physical affair. Your spouse giving their heart to another person hurts immensely. Don't discount that. I felt like killing myself the night I finally had decisive proof: a recording of the two of them discussing divorcing their respective spouses and merging their families. You are not overreacting.

Buy a copy of Dr. Harley's "Surviving An Affair". Read it cover-to-cover. Treat this as an active affair, and begin your Plan A with an eye toward your Plan B. Snoop your butt off: put a keylogger on your spouse's computer, get access to all the cell phone records, do whatever you feel is necessary to stop being deprived of information regarding your spouse's affair.

Take the time while executing your Plan A to improve YOU. Learn your Love Busters and those of your partner. Learn to stop them. Learn your Emotional Needs, and if your spouse won't open up about theirs, take Dr. Harley's "Emotional Needs Questionnaire" as if you were your wayward spouse, thinking about what his/her primary needs are and filling the top 5 like you've never filled them before. Set an end date for this Plan A that is firm, though, because nobody can give without receiving forever.

Don't be put off because it supposedly didn't get physical. Most EAs are PAs, even if it was just making out in the stairwell at work. Those EAs which don't become PAs are typically those in which the lovers are separated by some distance; if that isn't the case, you have no reason to believe the EA wasn't a PA. You can tell a wayward spouse is lying by the fact their lips are moving; watch their actions, not their words. You need more information right now to know the extent of what has gone on, and to see how deep underground your spouse is taking the affair now that you have discovered it.

Because that is the next part of the script: whatever method you used to discover the affair, your spouse will stop that means of communication and move on to some other more clandestine one. S/he will quickly become a master of deception unless the affair stops permanently and immediately. Typical choices include more in-person meetings, a new mobile phone with the billing address sent to work or a relative or friend's house, new secret email and IM/chat accounts, using the work computer and phone to communicate rather than the home ones, etc.

Read up on the Carrot & Stick of Plan A now to get your feet wet before you finish reading "Surviving An Affair". You may not believe it now, but you are just now seeing the chinks in the dam holding back the pain from the betrayal of your vows; the dam will burst and the hurt will hit you like a flood very soon. It will get worse before it gets better, but if you follow a stellar Plan A, you have around a 1 in 5 chance of saving your marriage straight off without a separation.

http://forum.marriagebuilders.com/ubbt/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=2228130&page=1

I was lucky. After a month of vacillation during which I Plan A'd my butt off toward her, she wrote a no-contact letter to the other man and we are two months into recovery. Yesterday, however, was still a very hard day for me, as it was the day I'd set for myself to go to Plan B if she had not broken things off with her "Twitter friend".

Amen. The sole embrace and kiss my WW and the OM shared after she coerced me into going to see him matters much, much less than the months of denial, lies, and cultivating a relationship she engaged in over my express objections when I saw exactly where it was leading.

I really hate being right sometimes.


And this is the sentiment expressed by most wayward spouses. The less vulnerable to an affair you think you are, the more vulnerable you actually are:
From http://www.marriagebuilders.com/graphic/mbi5062_qa.html

BTW, even though this happened back in 2005/06, I'm still not over my husband's EA. It doesn't help that he tells me now that "it could have been worse"--i.e., physical--or "it wasn't really an affair". Gives me a lot of confidence about him not relapsing. haha.

And though he swears up and down that 'nothing happened' at the high school reunion, I am still not so sure. After a few months of pulling it out of him, he claimed what was an original 'friendly hug',then just a 'kiss on the cheek' became a 'kiss on the mouth but no open mouth, tongue swapping stuff'. He's not moved off of that claim though I wouldn't be surprised to find out much more than that happened.

Hey KF

EA in my opinion are very dangerous, my WH had 4 EA over the internet before full blown PA with a co worker so i think EA's are a start to something that can easly escalate into numerous PA's.
After all a having sex starts with a kiss, kiss on its own can be seen as innocent but put into prospective and what it can lead to its so far from that. I think you need to explain that to your WS and dont for one second shrug it off or downgrade it. I did that and appeared to make a full recovery from EA's only to be hit bang in the face with PA. All A's were with different women.

Wow! I don�t even know where to begin�you gals/guys are awesome! I never thought I would be able to find this much support. So let me start off by telling my story�..
On June 10th my WH told me that they were being called out for a special assignment with his negotiator team. He was to report at 8:30 pm in uniform�which consists of kaki�s and a polo shirt with the units name on it. Later that night when he finally got home�sometime after 1 am�he seemed weird. He told a story (later found out it was a lie) stating that the drug task was able to make an arrest and confiscate a large amount of drugs. Something just didn�t seem right.
The next morning his cell phone was beeping and he had a missed call from Martin. I didn�t think much of it at the time. When I walked out to go to work there was a flyer on his windshield�some advertisement for a body shop. I thought that was weird because who would go through the Police Departments parking lot and be brave enough to put flyers on vehicles. So I took it off and left for work. That day my mind kept spinning. Later in the day he called me at work and later he said I seemed different�like something was wrong. He claims that after talking to me on the phone that is when it hit home for him�that he knew it had to be stopped.
So anyway when I got home he was in the shower. I went to his phone and looked at his text messages. The messages came from Martin. Let me say that it was not uncommon for his contacts to be entered as last names because that is how they refer to each other at the PD. So the messages�if I can remember correctly went something like this�.
Martin: Good morning sweetheart! You awake yet?
WH: Yep already running errands.
Martin: I�m glad you finally came out to join us last night.
WH: Yeah I really had a great time.
There are a few more in between but I can remember them now�wish I would have handled things differently now.
WH: You have plans for lunch?
Martin: I�m running errands with my mom.
This is where I wish I would have let it play out for a few days before confronting WH. To see if he really was prepared to end it on his own.
So I immediately go to the bathroom and say�Who is Martin? He says it�s Craig Martin. I say, then why did he call you sweetheart. Now the look on his face tells me something is definitely up. To make this story a little shorter we go back and forth for some time. And I end up calling the number�and of course she doesn�t answer but I get her voicemail.
So he tells me that he had had this epiphany this afternoon earlier after he had spoke to me and that he planned to end it. He said that it was only conversation by text�only when they were working. OW is a dispatcher for his department. And she works days only but he switches every two weeks. So the arguing goes on�I�m asking questions and he is being very vague. Come to find out he had went to the same bar she was at the night before and had told me that he was on call. He claims to this day that he was there with another guy he works with and only spoke to her once when they were at the bar at the same time getting a beer. I also find out that one of their conversations was about how she wanted to try on his uniform and he made the comment that no one tries on his uniform without him present.
So to shorten the story a little I request detailed phone bills and find that he texted her constantly from at least the end of February (because that is as far as the bills went). The Tuesday before I found out (when they supposedly had the uniform conversation) they exchanged a total of 140 text messages. And they were sending text messages even while he was home sitting watching tv with me. So this went on at least from the end of February until June when I found out. About a week after I found out that he was also texting her friend that worked the night shift. Which I found out on my own.
Each time I asked�begged him�are you telling me everything?! Now almost 5 months later and here I am�still struggling. The OW is 22 and her friend 21�we are both 34. They still work together but supposedly never see each other�even when they were texting. He claims that he thought he wanted their life style�partying�drinking�bars�freedom, etc. We have been married 14 years and have a 4 � year old little girl and a 8 month old little girl�.yes I was pregnant and gave birth in the middle of all this and didn�t know it was going on.  The crazy part was that we were having great sex and seemed to be getting along. So that is part of the reason why I�m having such a hard time�I just don�t understand why this happened. At the time we did not tell everyone�mainly because I felt if we were going to make our marriage work I didn�t need or want our families knowing or judging�it was our business. And with the economy I felt like it really wouldn�t be sensible for him to quit his job�we are far from rich. And he does not want any contact with the OW because he feels that she would cause trouble for him at work and get him fired.
The week I found out he said that he would send her a text to tell her not to contact him anymore. Saturday morning (D-Day being Thursday) she sent him a text that morning saying�.good morning. That evening (because he said he was busy all day with calls) he sent her a final text saying�he loves his wife and kids and wants to be married and made a mistake and he can have no further contact. Since then there have been a few weird things happen that I know are her but we cannot prove it.
So like I said here I am. He want to move on and forget about it and feels like I keep bringing it up. I still feel like there are things I don�t know. I asked him to request phone bills back through another 4 months and he feels that there is no reason. I told him that I need to know for once if he was telling the truth�that it really didn�t start until the end of February. Am I wrong for wanting to know EVERYTHING or should I be letting things go by now??? Some days I do really good and others�well like today�I just cry�I�m so angry. Some days I feel like he doesn�t deserve to keep me. Because even if I wasn�t the happiest�I didn�t cheat on him�I held up my end of the vows! Honestly some days I want to use his EA as an excuse and leave. Some days I feel like I don�t have a choice�money wise and for the girls sake. He did go see a counselor�I have not. I�m afraid they will tell me that my marriage is not fixable. I�ve always wanted to be a wife and a mommy�nothing else. I work so that we can have extra money to do things�not because I want to be prestigious. So I feel like I have failed and failed big time. I have days of depression because there are some days that the EA completely consumes my thoughts and I get nothing done at work or home. So then I get depressed about not getting anything done�and the cycle goes on and on. It kills me to think WH had feeling for someone else. He says it wasn�t that way but I say when she is the first one he texts when he pulls out of the drive way when he heads to work�she has to mean something. I also keep thinking about their last text conversation�you have plans for lunch? I know that it would have become physical�why else would you meet and it�s not like you could meet out in public. So where would that go? He says he would have never met her for lunch that he knew it was wrong as soon as he hit send. My mind is constantly going over this stuff�I wish I could have an accident and have amnesia�not really�but it would be nice to forget about it. EVERYTHING is a reminder!!! And it is so hard!!! I worry that it ended so quickly and that maybe he still has feelings for her. I know she had feelings for him. He says that it is hard to explain but for once he feels like he really truly knows what he wants and that is me�our girls�our life. And now that is so hard for me to understand. I�m so insecure and I don�t know how to fix me. I love him�even if I�m having a hard time being �in love� with him right now. Does that make sense? The counselor warned us about the �honeymoon� period�and she was right. WH was reading his bible�being the spiritual leader�showing me affection�and now we are kinda back to normal. And maybe I�m wrong but I don�t want normal�I�m no longer willing to settle for just normal. I think he should have to show me every day (and I the same) how much he wants our marriage.
I apologize for the length and detail�I wasn�t sure what was the normal. :\ So let the questions and advice roll. 

Me: BW 34
WH 34
DD 4 �; DD 8 mths
Married: 14+ years
EA: 2/09 ? � 6/09
D-Day: 6/11/09

That is what I'm afraid of...finding out something else. I'm also worried about finding out from someone else. I worry about people that know and what they and the OW thinks about me. Everything that I did find out...I found out on my own...so I feel like I haven't asked the right questions sometimes or maybe I have not been specific enough.

GloveOil....I would love to know how your wife is doing. How she has recovered. What she did and what you do daily to recover. Without knowing for sure...I don't think it was a PA my situation seems a lot like yours. WH was always a decent man and I would have never thought it would happen.

I don't want to speak for my wife too much, I'll see if I can get her on here soon.

Do I have it correctly that your hubs still works for the same force as this OW, and is in position to have on-the-job communications with her, even if it's only in line-of-duty?

If so, that isn't going to work for your marriage (don't take it from me, but wait until you hear it from the next 10 posters).

Exposure and No Contact are 2 of the most important principles you can follow, and you can read about 'em on this site.

I'm with GloveOil. You can't trust his word that it's over. Your marriage will not survive him seeing the other woman every day. Negotiate a job transfer or a new job with him.

His willingness to go along will speak volumes as to his waywardness. If he's willing to put into place extraordinary precautions (EPs) to avoid contact with the other women -- EPs that you monitor, not him! -- including the job change, then he probably wants to stop being wayward. If he resists putting those EPs in place, he wants to continue being wayward but keep you from knowing about it...

The OW is a dispatcher for a central office. WH would have to switch to a completely different county...that isn't hiring right now.

keepnfaith88,

I've been D over 2 years. We separated 2 yrs before the D became final. My ex had an EA with a "BestFriend" from the time our son was in Grade 1. I was happy that he had a friend at first, our families became friendly. Things changed after a few years; he became frozen to me. I snooped and found nonstop text msgs, handwritten funny notes and a sort of diary he kept of his life that he would transcribe to a final form to leave at her desk on Mondays, to bring her up to date on his weekends.

Ach. I think I want to forget all that pain. Short story,
in spite of couples counseling, and exercises to restore our marriage, I did not follow Plan A.

Expose, live with the chaos and anger of Wayward Spouse when the sh*t hits the fan, I tell you I never got the nerve to do Exposure. Now our son is from a broken home.

I have a new life and a new love, it became impossible to live with one whose eyes held disgust when he looked at me, who had such a deepseated secret life. It still hurts, though.

I don't know whether the affair became physical. I do know that had he paid a pro and had sex, it would be less devastating than his falling in love with that woman.

Oh, and he still texts her non-stop. Recenlty I sat next to him at our son's Jiu Jitsu tournament on the bleachers. Whenever our son was not on the mat, he had his cell phone held on the opposite side of his body to me, clicking away on the keyboard. I moved to the far side of the auditorium and left him to his clicking.

Expose. Save your marriage.

I agree about exposure. If the OW is married, be sure to expose to her husband.

My H also said he was 'in the process of ending it' when he got busted. I'm not sure whether or not this is true. I read him a letter in our MCs office that basically told him I was aware of what was going on and he sat there and denied it. And then went back home and emailed her! He was pretty quiet and non communicative with her for the week or so before I laid all the evidence out for him, so maybe he was telling the truth. Who knows.

I'm still not convinced he's been 100% honest with me. Wish I had pushed for a poly back then.