I could cut off al ties if it was somebody not related to us but his brother will always be in our lifes. Will there always be a risk of an affair?

Following Dr. Harley's advice I am trying to cut off all contact with him, however is hard not to hear how he is since we see his parents all the time and tell us about him.
Do you have any advice to help us cope with this?

I do know for sure I am in love with my BIL.

I love all the attention my BIL give me when we are together. He is sweet and kind to me and does things for me just to see me happy like offer to help with the kids, with household tasks...

and without saying anything to each other we would just look at each other and just know... it's so hard to explain... it had never happened to me before... our eyes would meet across the room with everybody else around us, and then everything and everyone in the room would disappear...it was like we could see each other's souls...Gosh, so hard to explain!!!

When he replied to my confession he just said he was missing all of us and loved us but his new life is in the new country now and must go on there. He thanked me for being so honest and said he liked my sincerity about how I felt.

our eyes would meet across the room with everybody else around us, and then everything and everyone in the room would disappear...it was like we could see each other's souls.

I love all the attention my BIL give me when we are together. He is sweet and kind to me and does things for me just to see me happy like offer to help with the kids, with household tasks...

So if this is just a crush or infatuation it seems quite safe.

I wish I could say I am 100% sure of that but when I am around him...things seem different

So if this is just a crush or infatuation it seems quite safe.
The possibility of a future affair with my BIL could just be in my mind then.

R. J. described the essential conditions for an affair quite well. First, there is usually a dissatisfaction with marriage that stems from the failure to meet an important emotional need. For R.J., her need is conversation, which is usually missing in marriage when women have affairs. She has a deep and pervasive need to talk to her husband, a need that all the gifts in the world cannot meet.

R.J.'s husband has demonstrated his care for her in many different ways. But he doesn't care for her in the way that would deposit the most love units. Because he has not met her need for conversation, she is vulnerable to an affair.

The best friend of R.J.'s husband (we'll call him Bob) didn't intend to meet her emotional needs whenever he talked to her. He was just being friendly, and carried on conversations the way he would with almost anyone. But whether he intended to or not, whenever he talked with her, he deposited scores of love units. After a while, he might have noticed how his conversations were effecting her, but I'm not sure he would have made much of it.

I'm also sure that R.J. did not intend to fall in love with Bob. Those feelings that he rekindled in her came as a surprise, and she is at a loss to know what to do about it. She knows that they are a risk to her marriage, and yet she feels compelled to draw ever closer to the object of her new love.

There are some who feel that those feelings of love are a signal from God to abandon past relationships and rush into this new relationship. But it's no signal from God. Instead, it's the way our emotions mindlessly encourage us to spend more time with those who meet our emotional needs. If we submitted to our emotions, and chased after anyone who at the moment deposited the most love units in our Love Banks, our lives would become chaotic in no time. And the lives of family and friends, to say nothing about our own lives, would be trashed.

The more sane way to approach unsuspected feelings of love toward those outside of marriage is to confront the problem honestly and intelligently. But R.J. did not want to appear to be an ungrateful complainer, so she violated the Policy of Radical Honesty. She did not reveal her true feelings to her husband so that they could resolve the crisis together.

It's true that in some marriages a spouse will complain about an unmet need, and find their complaint met with anger and recriminations. When there seems to be no hope for satisfaction, these people find themselves particularly vulnerable to an affair. After all, the spouse had a chance to meet the need, but refused. So why not have an affair?

But in R.J.'s case, and in many like her's, the spouse is given no opportunity to learn to meet the unmet need, because it is not clearly revealed.

So far, R.J. is not actually having an affair. She is simply drawn to Bob. He is attractive to her because he is so easy to talk to. Whenever they are together, he makes a special effort to converse with her, and he shows a genuine interest her favorite topics. The friends of good conversation prevail, and the enemies of good conversation are nowhere to be found (see the Q&A column, "What to Do When Your Conversation Becomes Boring and Unpleasant"). The pleasure of her conversation with him deposited so many love units that she fell in love with him, and so it's natural to assume that she will want to talk to him even more. She is finding it difficult to wait for the next opportunity to see him. If she wants to talk to him more often, she will need to create new ways to spend more time with him.

R.J. is now at a crossroads. She can take the next step in developing her relationship with her husband's friend, or she can explain her problem to her husband and try to resolve the issue with him. The advice I gave her was to tell her husband about the entire situation. He should be the one she enjoys talking to the most, and her feelings for his best friend was a good wake-up call. If her husband were to learn to meet her need for conversation, the temptation to have an affair with Bob would be much easier to handle.

But if she were to do what most people instinctively do, her next step would be to tell the man how she felt about him, and ask him to get together with her more often, privately. She would tell him precisely what she wrote in her letter to me, saying that he has "rekindled feelings in me that have been dormant for a long time. I find myself thinking about you often and wish I could be with you. I feel so guilty and ashamed of these feelings, but nevertheless, they are there. I try not to think about you, but I do."

Once this honest expression of feelings is out of the bag, an affair is off and running. Even if her husband's friend had never given her a single romantic thought, the seed is planted, and starts to grow. Such an admission would lead to his thinking long and hard about his own marriage, and he would start seeing R.J. in an entirely new way. If one of his important emotional needs was not being met in his marriage, he would express his frustration to R.J., and she would willingly agree to meet that need. The rest would be history.

Of course, it's possible that Bob, all along, was feeling the same way toward R.J. as she felt for him, and after her declaration of love for him, he would immediately reciprocate, fall into each other's arms, and run off to a motel together.

But it's more likely that they would simply talk to each other more often, depositing even more love units. Sex is actually not the driving force in most affairs -- it is conversation and affection. In fact, most people who have affairs regard the sex as a minor player. What they appreciate the most about the relationship is the love and acceptance that is communicated in their conversation. But sex is usually the inevitable outcome, and since sex works best with great conversation and affection, the sex is also great. Once sex is added to the mix, so many love units get deposited that the couple cannot imagine losing each other. They are both addicted to the relationship...

At the crossroads R.J. faces, she should avoid telling Bob how she feels about him at all costs. And she should certainly not let him know that she is dissatisfied with her husband. As soon as Bob would know about her feelings for him and her marital dissatisfaction, the risk of an affair would be so great that she must end her friendship with him for life. From the moment he knows she loves him, their friendship should end.

So if this is just a crush or infatuation it seems quite safe.