Re: Emotional Affairs
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blarg,
this isn't about casual friendships or flirting, it is about being 'emotionally intimate' (however you want to define that) with someone of the opposite sex. like others have alluded to, i think emotions are tied to physical attraction and sexual desires. i don't think a man a women can be emotionally intimate without being attracted to each other and desiring each other, atleast that is my experience.
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I was talking about being friends, which I think you were originally talking about too when you said that men and women can't be friends.
I think "emotionally intimate" is a bad phrase, too, in that it conflates being emotionally connected with the kind of intimacy that one would expect from a boyfriend/girlfriend or husband/wife, as if there is no other way to share deep emotions. Yet we grow up sharing them with many people we don't want to boink -- parents, siblings, relatives, friends at school, etc. It takes a determined turning away and turning off of emotional possibilities to claim that there really are none outside of one's relationship with one's partner. It just isn't true.
Can you confide in guy friends? Get great advice from them, some real empathy and good feedback and some concern sometimes? I can. Some of that stuff can go down real deep. But I can also get that from a female. And not necessarily have the slightest physical interest in her, or at least be able to keep it well in perspective.
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My understanding of the term emotional affair is that you develop very strong feelings and desires for another person, only you don't act on them physically. In other words, you are Bill Murray in Lost In Translation. You are close to someone and feel strong energy between the two of you and open up yourself to them in an intimate way that you would only do with someone you were physically attracted to... i think you can see how this is different than discussing politics over lunch with a female and not feeling anything for her.
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