What did it take for you to realize that your EA was an affair?

My WH has insisted time & again that this is "no big deal" because there is no sex. I know we will never be able to recover until he stops lying to me AND himself. Just wondering what brought on the "aha moment" for other waywards.

I realized it was an affair when we were sending each other dirty texts, dirty pix, and all I was thinking about was the OM, and that I wanted my marriage to end so I can BE with the OM.

Have you exposed?
How long has he been in this EA?
Are you working on plan A?
Are you snooping?

Just one advice, EXPOSE THE EA!

After my affair was exposed the fog lifted and I wanted my marriage back.

My EA became a PA. But looking back....the first time I talked to/spent time with OM and that little voice told me maybe I shouldn't tell DH....THAT was when there was no doubt it was an EA. When you have to think twice about being honest with your spouse....you are having an A.

Amen!

when OM created a secret email account that only we knew about and posted to.

When I stopped telling my DH about our conversations or downplayed the ones I did tell him about.

I've busted a number of EA's (thanks to MB training on recognizing them!) and I've noticed a few trends. EA's can be rather tricky to define to anybody who hasn't been a BS before. Many people define adultery as the act of having sex with someone other than your spouse. Even exposure doesn't have quite the same impact if no actual sex has taken place. Nevertheless, an EA can be just as devastating, and produces the same fog and waylogic in the WS. It sure doesn't help when EA slips under the adultery definition by a mere technicality.

One thing that's helped me convince others that they were engaging in an EA is to avoid the word "affair" and "adultery" altogether. It puts them on the defensive and you get no where. Leave the words out, but explain to your WH that the actions he has done/is doing are hurting you. Maybe he didn't have actual, physical sex, but he gave that woman love, emotion and attention that should have been yours. It actually IS a big deal because it is important to YOU that your husband love only YOU. Focus on these aspects, and that it was still a betrayal even if it didn't fall into the textbook definition of adultery that requires an act of sex. He can't deny it then and if he does, he's justifying like an active wayward.

Oh, if only I could get Mrs. Linus to read and understand all that has been posted here. She still believes that communicating and establishing friendships with other men via FB, email and whatever is totally harmless, and I am being overly sensitive when I object. She claims another EA will never happen because she is 'in a different mindset now', whatever that means.

She has been guilty of everything posted here, except going as far as PA, and still believes it's all harmless.

Sorry for the TJ - carry on!

If I am truly "just friends" with a man, then the information in our conversations could be easily shared with my DH and if he were to drop by at lunch/read our e-mails or texts or listen to a phone conversation, he would find nothing disturbing or "personal." By sticking with this definition, there is really no man I need to correspond with outside of teachers,coaches and collegues. If I find myself wanting to, I will determine why and discuss it with my husband immediately.

Actually, I follow the same rule with the privacy of my children. I reserve the right to check their e-mail and texts so they should not put anything in there they don't want seen by dear old mom.

Funny enough I spoke to Steve Harley about this today, he said most Affairs starts off an Emotional level and you convince youself this is ok, then all of a sudden you realise that you have overstepped the mark and you are in a full blown physical affair.

SH said that, people are vulnerable to affairs when they are not having their EN's met by their spouse and give someone else the opportunity to meet them.

The question is, why do some people make the choice to give someone else the opportunity, and others make the choice to work with their spouse to give them the opportunity?

Linus,

I think I can sort of answer that. PreA, I was in such a mindset that my "needs" were superfulous and I had no right to ask for them to be met. My DH didn't cheat or beat me, only drank on occasion and provided well enough for our family. Sure there were a lot of AO's and tons of IB but I thought this was normal and if I were better at DS and SF, then he would stick around more and not be so angry.

The OM met needs I wasn't even willing to admit I had. I didn't protect my boundaries because I had none. In one of my first e-mails to OM, I described myself as "happily married." That's where my thinking got so foggy and screwed up. Somewhere in the back of my mind I convinced myself that I was saving DH from having to deal with my petty little needs.

Although I don't have this foggy thinking anymore, I am still struggling with how to share my needs with him and the long held belief that if he loved me he would just KNOW what to do and how to do it. Quite frankly, I know that IRL the OM would have disappointed me as well.

I woke up this morning and was thinking about what to advise you. I think that you should do this in a different way. Your WH does not want to admit that he has had an affair, not because he doesn't think that he had an affair, but because he doesn't WANT to think that he has had an affair. Having an affair is not something that most people brag about because it is WRONG. Deep down, even people who have had affairs know that what they are doing is wrong.

What I think that you should do is not worry about labeling what your husband did. We already know that what he did was an EA so does it really matter right now what he thinks? Not if you want to develop a romantic marriage by using MB. What you need to do is go through the HNHN and LB books with your WH. You should talk to your husband about EP's, POJA, PORH, etc. Use the MB program to enrich your marriage. Get some EPs in place for both of you and it won't matter what someone has done in the past, it will help ensure that this doesn;t happen again. One day, your WH may agree that he had an EA. Maybe not.

My wife and I had one of those interesting discussions about this, too. She insisted there was no affair because they'd never had sex. After a lot of back-and-forth about the definition, she agreed that it was wrong, boundaries were loose, and it was the beginning of infidelity that would have gone somewhere much worse if she hadn't broken it off to preserve her marriage.

That was enough. I don't insist she call it an "affair", but I consistently referred to it when it was ongoing as "an affair that has not yet become sexual". Because that's exactly what an EA is: an affair that hasn't turned sexual YET. The emotional and family damage is IDENTICAL. The recovery process is IDENTICAL. Just because there was no penetration doesn't mean the damage wasn't cone to the marriage.

I identified that I was feeling rather attached and addicted to OM and wondered whether there was such a thing as an emotional affair and googled those 2 words. I'd never heard the term before and had never considered the possibly that an EA might exist. I found this place.

MJ, I think the advice differs when NC is established vs there is still contact.

I believe in the other thread that you have you indicated there is still contact and you are in the process of gathering your evidence.

When there is still ANY contact, the WS likely isn't going to admit it is an EA...they are too foggy...

Once NC has been established and after withdrawal, if the WS is still proclaiming there was no EA, my feeling is there is still fog for whatever reason. Maybe they are still hopeful they can reestablish contact at some point or contact has been taken underground, etc., or they just are still in the wayward state of mind.

At that point my strong advice would be to get coaching with the Harleys. My feeling is that the first step to affair proofing the M is an acknowledgement and understanding of why the EA happened (poor boundaries) as a foundation for which the WS truly understands why EPs are necessary.