Emotional Affairs

A great post by Bowden McElroy at Counseling Notes

It's the hot topic these days. Many are lured into a non-physical
emotional attraction, and think it's "okay". It's not.

Thanks Bowden.

Comments

[Jason]

I'm dealing with this with my wife right now. She came out with all these problems at the beginning of April, and to this point things have only gotten worse. We are now seperated. On May 13, my wife met a young man (she's 29 and he's 21) while she was out to dinner with her best friend. He supposedly goes to our church, we attend Saturday night and he on Sunday moring. Since meeting him, she kept her relationship with him from me. At this point I don't believe she has actually seen him in person since the initial meeting, but they have talked for more than 50 hours in only a matter of 20 days. At first when I confronted her with it she said they talked of music, life and spiritual things. Now she says she feels she can tell him anything. They both initiate calls to each other. Some of the conversations have lasted more than 3 hours, and the longest was 8 hours. I don't know what to do about this. I've told her it's wrong and that she is being unfaithful to me. She doesn't think so.

[SAM]

The moment your heart has exited from your spouse to another and secrets are being kept, you have entered into dangerous territory. The relationship does not have to be physical for it to be an affair. If she is unwilling to listen, perhaps it's time to make an appointment to talk with your pastor together. I am deeply sorry for your pain and will pray for your marriage.

[JLNorth]

Please do not give up on your wife, and do not give up on you as a couple. This is a great opportunity for you to grow together as a couple with God as the center. I too was engaged in an emotional affair, and am pleased to say that our marriage is better now than ever. There are "hooks" satan uses to grab us. For me, he made me question my husband's ability and desire to financially provide for our family. I was also searching for someone to "know" me, to discover the "mystery" of me.

I would guess that there is something about this younger man that makes your wife feel special, wanted, needed. It probably has nothing to do with love, at least not yet, but this is certainly a critical time. After a while, I felt that I owed this man something, that he had been meeting the needs I had for companionship and conversation, that it turned physical. We had sex only once, and then I started conversations about divorce from my husband.

My husband would not think of separating. He was devastated, and we began talking more openly with one another. We brought in our pastor, I saw a "shrink" twice (I realized that God was helping me more than he was) and I began understanding what it was I was looking for and God revealed all that I ever wanted was in the man I married. I began attending a book study with two other women from church. While reading "The Sacred Romance" and just conversing with them, I was able to discover all the attributes that my husband did not have were in God, and that He was available to me ALL THE TIME!

I was a Christian before the emotional affair, and God was offering opportunities to get out, but afterwards, I was on FIRE for Christ. He showed me that he could reach into the darkest areas of my life and he could bring life and erase all of the failures and shortcomings.

I hope that you and your wife will be willing to recognize where you have each fallen short in meeting one another's needs, and that you will turn to God to create the most amazing reconcilliation that you could ever imagine.

God wants to bless your marriage, I pray right now that God would bless you both, that you would open your hearts to Him and that your eyes would be open to all the areas you have fallen short as a husband and wife. I pray that any needs you cannot meet for each other, that you would look to God for provision, and that God would bring great Christian friends and couples into your lives. That through them you would find great healing and the ability to turn to God for all things!

God Bless you! Amen