My Emotional Affair Part Two

Part 1 of My Emotional Affair
Final Chapter of My Emotional Affair
In his book, Ragamuffin Gospel, Brennan Manning quotes an old AA saying, “The more extraordinary the story the more ordinary the drunk.” That applies here as I tell about my emotional affair. I turned from God, didn’t honor my wife and I refused to suffer and sorrow. I rationalized, justified, minimized, and denied. Such are the ingredients in an emotional affair. Plus electricity.

There were times in my relationship with Rita that I just ‘knew’ I was supposed to be with her. I rationalized that I was made for her but messed it up by already being married.

I remember her leaning back in her chair and looking straight up at me with her long blonde hair hanging down. My chest felt light and my knees quivered. Another time we walked by each other and slowly slid our hands across each others. My entire being was charged. Little touches here and there are often sparks in an emotional affair.

Looking back I was aware of the infidelity. On my 30th birthday, Ann bought an over the hill cake and brought it to work to celebrate me. I remember telling Rita that I couldn’t go to lunch because Ann was bringing the cake in later. She said she understood. She understood that I felt in love with her and that I felt like I was cheating on my wife. We just never said those particular words. We avoided saying a lot.

Often times in emotional affairs for Christian people they won’t put words to the attraction. So what do they do to make it better? To deal with the guilt and fear they are feeling? They pray together. Rita and I didn’t pray together but I would often put her and her marriage on our prayer list on Wednesday night at church. A guilt offering? Many do pray together. But prayer goes to the core of our souls and often strikes a connection as deep or deeper than sex. It is easy to rationalize the spiritual activity as being the right way to handle the attraction when it merely fans the flame.

After a few more months the electricity lessened for us. One day Rita told me she wasn’t’ going to lunch with me that she was going with Joe. Dumped. I hurt. Could I really say anything since I was married? No. I was tied in knots.

Rita and I didn’t spend much time together for a while. We still talked and my feelings still lingered just like they do in the most stressful situations for some alcohol to numb my anxiety. For the most part we were coworkers that liked each other.

I should remember an impact on my marriage but I don’t. I feel sad over that. I was lost and confused.

Later on that year I went for my two week annual training with my reserve unit. The evening I returned home the phone rang. Ann answered it and said it was Rita. I was very confused. We hadn’t talked much lately and why in the world would she call me at home? She’d been fired. End of part two.

Comments

[Terry]

Hi, your story about your emotional affair struck home with me. I am a single woman who is struggling to get over an emotional affair of sorts. Recently, I met a man through some friends who I honestly thought was my soulmate. We had such a deep connection from the beginning. After a few weeks of talking on the phone, he told me he had a girlfriend. At that moment, I made a decision to ignore what he had told me. After all, we weren't doing anything other than talking. Over the months that followed, we talked almost everyday, sometimes for hours. We shared everything with each other - our hopes, dreams, ambitions and the problems he was having with his girlfriend. We never had the opportunity to have anything more than a phone call relationship (which was a blessing because I am sure if we had been in the same city, we would have had sex). The problem came when I realised that I was falling for him. I started having dreams about him and thinking about him all the time. Being a Christian, a part of me knew that what I was doing was wrong - my participation in this affair could be hurting someone else. Around this time, I came across one of my daily readings that dealt with the 10th commandment...Thou shalt not covet...it struck home and I knew I had to change things from my end of the affair. I told him that we needed to put some limits on what we spoke about - anything he discussed with me he needed to share with his girl. I went a step further and gave him an ultimatum - its her or me! I know it may seem unfair, but I knew that for my own sanity, I needed to know if he felt what I was feeling for him. I guess that gave him the jolt he needed and he told me he was going to propose to his girlfriend but he still wanted us to be friends. I told him that wasn't going to be possible and that our time together had come to an end. This had to be one of the hardest things I have ever had to do because I was in love with him. Within those few minutes, I lost a close friend, a confidant and my dream "man". A part of me is happy that I moved away from a potentially adulterous situation, but the other part of me feels lost.
I think this experience has taught me something important - as a young single woman, I have a resposibility to always be aware of the range of temptations and to never give in to them.

[ben]

Terry, What a wise and courageouse decision you made. It does still leave you with loss and much to grieve. You will be a blessing to the man you eventually marry.

[confused]

I have a wonderful husband and our marriage is good, however,I have now found my self thinking about my "friend" all the time. I have tried to convience myself that it is ok since there wasnt sex. The past 3 days it is tearing me up thinking that I was having an emotional affair. I need help in not feeling guilty and want to move on so that I dont distroy my marriage. I have fallen away from church but I still know what God says. I am very torn, any advice?

[Michelle]

Please pray for me ...I am going through an emotional affair right now ...with a person who has been my friend since 5th grade...I have been married for 10 years to a great christian man.....I thought it was over when he moved to another state but he returned .....I saw him in a store when he relocated back .....I did not call him because I did not want to rekindle the feelings but he called me and it's been rough ever since....I want to be faithful to God and my family...I need God's strength to make it through......

[ben]

Michelle,

Blessings to you as you journey through this. I hope you find a person or two that you can disclose this to and they can help you break free and of course telling your husband would bring it to a head quickly but in the long run may be the quickest route.

[ben]

torn, you put good words to it all. As far as the guilt. Ask yourself why are you feeling it? What are you really saying to yourself? Pull out the part that is good and the part that is bad. Sometimes we feel guilt over wanting to be loved. That's not a good thing. Sometimes we feel guilt over keeping a secret that is harmful to our marriage. Some of that is a good thing.

[mel]

I am attracted to my classmate at a well known bibical university. He is married. We sometimes communicate through email mostly about spiritual matters, however I since that he may be attracted to me also. He wants me to continue to email him. He likes it. I often encourage him in the Lord. Should I? or should I stop.

[ben]

Hey Mel, Thanks for having the courage to post this. First off there is nothing wrong with a single woman and a married man being friends. It's not only ok, it can be a very good thing.

Yet, when that extra bit of electricity is there it is good to take a step back.

Sometimes when Christian folk are attracted like this they talk about 'spiritual things'. Maybe even pray. Prayer is so intimate. In some ways it is more soul revealing and therefore more soul connecting than sex. Prayer is good except when the point of it is to try to hide from your heart but then what you don't want to happen most likely occurs.

I don't know what you should do. I think I would start by asking his wife. What does she think about it all?

[My pastor?]

I am confused and i have been searching for some sort of pardon for how i am feeling. I have been with my husband for almost 18 years and I do know I love him and he loves me. The thing is i don't feel like he takes care of our family as a man yet tries to exert his authority when he feels threatened. yet when it comes to maintianing the household in every fashion, he relies and demands me to handle it. It sickens me because behind his huge roar, he is a mouse, yet he has a really bad temper which keeps me from challenging his authority a lot. One of his best friends who is a pastor of our church is also very close to me as well. We developed a bond over the last decade or so sharing our marriage woes and inspiring each other to persevere. Throughout this relationship, i have begun to view this pastor differently...an attraction where i find myself wanting to be around him, talking to him and just wondering how or what he's doing. I have to add that I am very close to his wife as well and we've talked about our marriage woes also. i struggle with wanting their marriage to work and wanting mine to work and then wanting to be with her husband. Which makes me feel like i am losing my mind. Within the last two years, i have cut the texting, phone calls and ministry ties off and I have minimized the emails but I can't seem to stop all communication with this man. i want to find another church but my husband beleives this is the church for him and me. i figure to be away from my pastor would help me so much but I feel I can't tell my husband this. I've tried in the past being very honest with my husband and he flew into a rage and brings it up whenever he feels afraid. At times when i think I am over this pastor, i may have a dream or run into him or he may call and I will sink back into that lustful ache of desire for him. I pray and cry and i try to talk about it to girlfriends but i am afraid of what they would think especially since a former parisioner revealed that she had a crush on the same pastor and they all "crucified" her. to add insult, I have witnessed him flirting with so many other women, even when we were together on lunch dates or so and it is appalling and I even get angry as if I am his wife but I don't call him on it. His wife even complained to me about this which makes me want to blast him, however i don't. I feel almost hypnotized by him becasue he is so in tune with what i am feeling and really gives good advice and insight...I mean Godly insight. how can a pastor be like that and i feel the way i do towards him. he has never expressed that he is attracted to me but he has said that he found me attractive in the past before we were all got married and he says things to lead me to believe that he is attracted to me but it is always an air of vagueness. I am so tired of feeling this way.

[Maggie]

My husband has been impotent our entire 15 year marriage. I brought three young boys with me into the marriage from a disastrous first marriage. We dated 4 years before we married, both of us wanting to make sure it would work out. We also refrained from having sex before marriage. I had made some poor decisions in my young life and wanted to do things right for God and for my boys. My husband to be readily agreed to that. But after we were married we had intercourse maybe three times over a period of months and then he could not gain an erection and he just gave up. Over the years, I begged and pleaded and cried and became terribly depressed, but mostly I tried to just accept and be happy. My youngest son moved out of our home a year ago. This was very difficult for me, because it was just me and my very uninterested husband. We had done the counseling route twice. I had done it alone three times. I had begged him just to show interest in me in any way, any physical stimulation, he had always known it need not be intercourse. But he did nothing.
Anyway, I felt so alone and wondered about leaving my marriage. I went to the internet first to learn about empty nest syndrome and then I spent time trying to find answers through God. Ultimately, I found a forum with others going through my same situation. I tried to resist the obvious temptation time and again, but I met a male friend half the world away who was very platonic and our friendship became close and was very helpful to sustaining our marriages. The problem is that for the past six months we have wavered back and forth between friendship and sexual or emotional online affair. We can't seem to let go of each other and the only thing that keeps me pulling away each time is the thought of his wife and what this could do to her. He always agrees and tries to keep things above board and we do so for a month or so and then have slip ups.
I saw so many of my excuses in your emotional affair story. Still I can't let go of him and I have become so obsessed by sex that it has much of my mind throughout the day. I masturbate often and sometimes feel like I have no control over these raging hormones that have me feeling like I have some sort of sex obsession. Can you be sexually addicted if you are not even having sex?

[ben]

Maggie, Thanks for sharing your heartwrenching story. It sounds like a painful journey.
To answer you question the answer is yes you can be sexually addicted without having intercourse. A lot of addiction is played out through masturbation which I would consider a form of sex especially since orgasm is involved. I don't know if you are sexually addicted or not but certainly sounds like there is some compulsion there.
There's so much more to ponder. You have a unique form of loneliness in your story. I wonder what God has been up to in your life through it all.
My heart hurts for you but this other relationship isn't the answer.
Ideally you'd let your husband know about the relationship. That usually helps to end it when your spouse is in the loop.
That leaves you back in the loneliness so I hope you have some local support, a small group you can lean on.
Prayers for you. May God bring healing touches to you and your marriage in your intense suffering.

[Maggie]

Thank you for your response and for caring. My heart lives in such a solitary place and just knowing that someone understands and wants to help others is comforting. God Bless You!

[Kim]

I weep as I read your story because for the last 8 years I have felt alone in my prison of an "emotional affair" - I had an emotional affair with my youth minister when I was 18 years old. His wife threatened to leave him and he backed off. We still keep in touch, but our relationship is "normal" now - he would say even "godly" - but I am still in love with him and I don't know how to get over him. I love God with all my heart and don't understand why I still long to be with a married man. I have tried to just cut off all communication, but I still find myself sobbing b/c I miss him and what we had.

Is healing possible? Is freedom possible?

[ben]

Kim,

Yes and yes. And you will be forever changed.

Healing will really begin when you end contact with him given the depth of our struggle. I don't know of any other way. It's not a healthy intimacy but has taken on some addictive qualities.

It will be hard but it will be necessary to give him up to find the freedom you desire.

Give yourself permission to grieve and cry. That will be part of the process. You also need to find someone you trust, who will listen and not judge, but still guide you to God and to your heart to go through this with you. You can't do it on your own.