Emotional Affairs

[Blarg]

That's a shame. You're losing out.

I'm saying that everything doesn't spring from and devolve to the gonads, even by your own admission. If you insist it that it does, you're selling life, and yourself, very short. And that's where the delusion lies. (The danger part just seems hyperbolic.)

It doesn't even make sense on its face if you fear being friends with an unattractive woman. What are you afraid of -- NOT wanting to sleep with her? Being disloyal to your wife because of a woman you are not even attracted to?

[Cobretti]

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That's a shame. You're losing out.

[/ QUOTE ]Why? There are plenty of attractive women to to hang out with. To clarify, attractive in the sense that you are attracted to her for whatever reason. I do not mean attractive in the simple sense that she is good-looking.

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I'm saying that everything doesn't spring from and devolve to the gonads

[/ QUOTE ]It mostly does when it comes to hanging out with women. The main reason to hang out with women is because they are in fact women. If there was no sexual dynamic to the relationship I would simply prefer to hang with my guy friends and watch sports, play cards, video games, etc. I like hanging with girls because there is a charge to it and that charge is sexual in nature. Now, it is probably possible that there is some girl out there that is so interesting that I would want to hang with her even if I wasn't attracted to her. But, the likelihood is close to zero. For, if I found her interesting I would very likely be attracted to her and would want to eventually sleep with her. I may not do it, but the desire will be there. I am not sure how one can deny the natural male instinct. Males think about sex all day long. Heck, even if a woman is unattractive you likely still think about sex, although you are thinking about how you don't want to have sex with her.

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(The danger part just seems hyperbolic.)

[/ QUOTE ]The danger is that you think you are having a cool innocent harmless relationship and the next thing you know you are rolling around in a bed and you are not sure how you got there. Those cool relationships are gasoline and all they often need is a spark (a flirtatious comment, a couple of drinks, a romantic place, etc).

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It doesn't even make sense on its face if you fear being friends with an unattractive woman. What are you afraid of -- NOT wanting to sleep with her? Being disloyal to your wife because of a woman you are not even attracted to?

[/ QUOTE ]I am not sure where you are getting word fear from. It is simply preference.

[bogey1]

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Males think about sex all day long. Heck, even if a woman is unattractive you likely still think about sex,

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Maybe an age gap here. I'm old and broken. I spend a good part of my day thinking about how bad my damn low back hurts and wondering if I'm supposed to pick up milk on the way home [img]/images/graemlins/crazy.gif[/img]

[Blarg]

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That's a shame. You're losing out.

[/ QUOTE ]Why? There are plenty of attractive women to to hang out with. To clarify, attractive in the sense that you are attracted to her for whatever reason. I do not mean attractive in the simple sense that she is good-looking.


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Yeah but you're saying you don't hang out with them either. Not only that you don't, but can't, because it would be delusional or dangerous to try.

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I'm saying that everything doesn't spring from and devolve to the gonads

[/ QUOTE ]It mostly does when it comes to hanging out with women. The main reason to hang out with women is because they are in fact women.


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This is exactly what I am saying is wrong and is a shame and why you are losing out. Good people are divided pretty evenly between the sexes. Your chopping half of them off from consideration is a huge loss in your life.

Is the only thing good or interesting about you that you are a man? Is that the only reason to have or deny you as a friend? Do you have nothing more to offer?

What you are talking about is hardly the nature of life. It's the nature of you.

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If there was no sexual dynamic to the relationship I would simply prefer to hang with my guy friends and watch sports, play cards, video games, etc. I like hanging with girls because there is a charge to it and that charge is sexual in nature.


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Do you get that same sexual charge from ugly or simply unattractive women? I don't. Which brings us back to the fact that they're just people. And if you can accept that undeniable fact, it follows that you have to allow that more attractive ones are just people too, and may have something to offer besides a lot of skin wrapped around a vagina. Besides, they may not want to offer you their vaginas anyway, and you may not ask, so why assume it's even an issue? Fear of rejection? Sour grapes? Poor impulse control? Having a temptation here and there is no crime.

Further, doesn't it make you feel infantile and like you're accomplishing so much less than being your best self to be so assiduously dodging attractive people(women)? Why should your behavior be ever dependent, a slave to the level of attractiveness of others? In a way, that kind of behavior seems to me like a sort of odd, even spiteful, punishment of a woman for having the audacity(say what?) or misfortune(huh?) to be attractive. I'd hate to see a beautiful woman trying to crush her own light just so some insecure men around her don't go batsh*t or isolate her. Or a guy being punished for his good looks either. Even good-looking people deserve to have friends and treated well. It's incumbent upon all of us to not be so out of control of ourselves to let something as minor as someone's looks completely throw us off and change and threaten our psychology.

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Now, it is probably possible that there is some girl out there that is so interesting that I would want to hang with her even if I wasn't attracted to her. But, the likelihood is close to zero. For, if I found her interesting I would very likely be attracted to her and would want to eventually sleep with her.


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You'd probably want to sleep with her immediately.

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I may not do it


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You almost certainly won't.

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but the desire will be there.


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And then you'll go back to work/get on with your life, whatever. What's the big deal?

Note that this exact same sequence of events happens with every other woman you find attractive, whether you befriend her or not. So it's not like you are escaping anything or ever can, except your reaction, which in anywhere from the vast majority to the entirety of the cases will be an internal matter no one ever has to know or worry about or be troubled by, simply according to your choosing.

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I am not sure how one can deny the natural male instinct. Males think about sex all day long.


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Popular myth was, every three seconds. Since debunked. We think about it a lot, but we could barely do anything more complex or variable than inhaling if we really thought about sex all the time.

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Heck, even if a woman is unattractive you likely still think about sex, although you are thinking about how you don't want to have sex with her.


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No threat there nor harm done. I don't know about you, though, but being unattractive means I do not think about sex with them. There's always someone sexy to think about, so I see no reason to do much thinking about someone who is not.

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(The danger part just seems hyperbolic.)

[/ QUOTE ]The danger is that you think you are having a cool innocent harmless relationship and the next thing you know you are rolling around in a bed and you are not sure how you got there. Those cool relationships are gasoline and all they often need is a spark (a flirtatious comment, a couple of drinks, a romantic place, etc).


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You make this sound inevitable rather than a choice, or like perhaps you were drugged and kidnapped. I target you with far more choice in this matter, as would your wife, I'm sure. There are no accidents, and it would be disingenuous to claim one, were this to happen. You are a person in control of your own life, unless you choose to abandon that control. I haven't been advocating abandoning control or suggesting that doing so is worth considering, at all. I don't think it is. Quite the contrary; I have been suggesting that control is possible, and the benefits are worthwhile.

This is part of your heritage as a human being and an adult, rather than a monkey and a child. I realize some situations are scary, and everyone has their limits. However, claiming those limits as universal truths is getting more than a little bit carried away, and is a drastic dumbing-down of society and the individuals in it.

And that strikes me as one of the worst outcomes of this kind of either/or, prohibitive thinking. Taking one's limitations as a happy and worthwhile norm, or even as a religious or absolute truth, and then endorsing their imposition on others -- perhaps for their own protection? -- is a very dangerous mind-set that we have seen played out in many ways in the world at large, to our repeated great discredit.

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It doesn't even make sense on its face if you fear being friends with an unattractive woman. What are you afraid of -- NOT wanting to sleep with her? Being disloyal to your wife because of a woman you are not even attracted to?

[/ QUOTE ]I am not sure where you are getting word fear from. It is simply preference.

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You have described it in terms of fear and specifically chosen and agreed with words to connote it -- danger, gasoline, delusion. You've also made blanket statements in response to complex questions, which tends to shut down thought and reflect thought shutting down, essentially a fearful response. Preferences are more amenable to some tinkering. Flat pronouncements are not.

[duckman]

I do find one postes tag line "I'll let others elaborate" quite ironic given the length of his postd on this thread.

I know of no males that just "hang out" with women, single, unatractive, disabled or otherwise just b/c they are cool. If they are hanging out it is b/c they are attracted to each regardless of whether one of them is married or in another relationship. In that situation at least one of them is looking for more, probably both.

Who are we kidding -clever conversation is foreplay.

If you are not available members of the opposite sex know it, if you might be persuaded they know it as well.



All other activities that guys care about -sports politics video games cars - are done with other guys. How many guys in relationships phone up a female of the opposite sex and say let's go shoot a round of golf or play squash?

When you have kids you will not even have the time to hang out with your best friend from high school on a regular basis. Looking for a friendship from a "cool" member of the opposite sex at that time would be dangerous and neglecting of your responsibilities.

NEWFLASH How many people have said about their affair "Well I didn't mean for this to happen." They almost all start with a friendship with a "cool" person.

The lies we tell ourselves are the worst kind.

[Blarg]

I'm glad the half-joke didnt go over your head. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

1. Clever conversation is a value in itself. I enjoy it with men and don't find anything sexual in that, and that's the way I like it. Just because a guy talks to a woman doesn't mean cleverness suddenly gets a gender assignment.

2. "All other activities that guys care about -sports politics video games cars - are done with other guys." That's all that guys care about? I don't like most sports, find talking politics is mostly people just airing out their inherited prejudices and leads to pointless and ill-informed discord, don't really like talking about video games with either men OR women, and find car talk boring. YMMV. Your conception of what people are about is more like a resume. We all have different ones.

3. When you have kids, if you're that pressed for time, having any outside friendships would be irresponsible equally, whether with a male or female. Besides, having friends is not the same as seeking them out. I can't recall acquiring any friends by prowling for them.

4. "NEWFLASH How many people have said about their affair "Well I didn't mean for this to happen." They almost all start with a friendship with a "cool" person."

People say all kinds of horsepoop all the time. They also lie. The things that happen to us are the result of our choices. If someone doesn't mean for his dick to sneak out of his pants, it just ain't happenin'.

5. "The lies we tell ourselves are the worst kind." Exactly. And among the worst and most in bad faith are when we say, "It wasn't me -- I was helpless! Mother nature made me do it!"

[katyseagull]

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This whole thread is so delusional. You think this is an intellectual discussion. Its not intellectual, b/c its not intellect that drives this behaviour. Its our emotional and physical needs.
The engineer who cooked for you, the one you can't tell your partner how you felt about him -you think that's OK?

Sounds like this thread is an attempt to assuage your guilty conscience.



.... This is only the most shallow level of human interaction where our romantic partner is only a egoic projection of who we want someone to be - not a real person.
The emotional energy you could of put into yourself or your "committed" relationship was lost in this form of relationship masturbation.

And while I think defintions may vary, the litmus test of inappropriate is - would you have behaved differently had your partner been there? Any relationship that you can't tell your partner about necessarily falls into this category.

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Calm down duckman. How can the whole thread be delusional? We have different people saying completely opposite things! If I'm the one who's delusional well that I can accept. But you can't have me and tarheel and Cobretti all being delusional at the same time. [img]/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img] It's just not possible. One of us has to be right and I'm sure it's one of them.


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Sounds like this thread is an attempt to assuage your guilty conscience.

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I have entertained this possibility. I will not deny it.


As for whether it's an intellectual discussion I can't argue with you about that. It's a forum and we are just saying what we think. I'll take your word for it that it's not intellectual and by that I assume you mean it's stupid. I was just wondering whether the majority of lounge viewers thought there was such a thing as an "emotional affair". I think it's pop psychology nonsense myself. Either you're in an affair or you're not or maybe you're moving towards one but in any case i don't believe in the concept of an emotional affair.

[bogey1]

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I was just wondering whether the majority of lounge viewers thought there was such a thing as an "emotional affair". I think it's pop psychology nonsense myself. Either you're in an affair or you're not or maybe you're moving towards one but in any case i don't believe in the concept of an emotional affair.

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Yea, we kind of lost sight of the original post.

I don't think it's pop psych. I think it's a matter of definition though.

What's your definition of affair? I think, for me, the definition would have to include a non-physical relationship that had a distinct detrimental impact on my own marriage.

If she's spending every night with him for 4 hours, even if they're just making goo-goo eyes at each other, it's an affair to me because it'd be putting a serious crimp in my marriage.

On the other hand, if I had an open relationship, she could sleep with him and it wouldn't be an affair because that's part of "our rules". Though, she still couldn't be there every night for hours because, again, it'd really crimp our own relationship.

[Cobretti]

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Yeah but you're saying you don't hang out with them either.

[/ QUOTE ]I wasn't very clear. I LOVE hanging out with women I am attracted to. I do it all the time. I am still going to have lunch with Natasha even though she wants to "elevate the relationship". I am just under no illusion that there isn't a sexual component to all this interaction.

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Is the only thing good or interesting about you that you are a man? Is that the only reason to have or deny you as a friend? Do you have nothing more to offer?

[/ QUOTE ]When it comes to my relationship with a woman it is my best quality [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img] I was thinking about this today when I got an innocent email from a "cool" woman I met on my recent business trip to Europe. I was all excited to hear from her even though the relationship was innocent. Then I realized that I would NEVER be excited like that if I had received an email from a guy I met on the trip. If was obvious from what she wrote that there was a component of me being a man. There is just simply no denying that our respective sexes play an important role. There is a sexual component in all this innocence. There always is.

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Do you get that same sexual charge from ugly or simply unattractive women? I don't. Which brings us back to the fact that they're just people. And if you can accept that undeniable fact, it follows that you have to allow that more attractive ones are just people too, and may have something to offer besides a lot of skin wrapped around a vagina.

[/ QUOTE ]I am not saying that it is the only thing. I am simply saying that it is an important element that cannot be ignored.

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Besides, they may not want to offer you their vaginas anyway, and you may not ask, so why assume it's even an issue? Fear of rejection? Sour grapes? Poor impulse control?

[/ QUOTE ]That is a funny way of putting it but they may offer indeed, especially if you know how to spark attraction in a woman. Rejection isn't the problem. It is simply one possible outcome in the dance.

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Further, doesn't it make you feel infantile and like you're accomplishing so much less than being your best self to be so assiduously dodging attractive people(women)?

[/ QUOTE ]Again, I was unclear. I seek them out.

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Popular myth was, every three seconds. Since debunked. We think about it a lot, but we could barely do anything more complex or variable than inhaling if we really thought about sex all the time.

[/ QUOTE ]Well, I know how much I think about it [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img] There is no denying that guys think about it a lot.

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You make this sound inevitable rather than a choice, or like perhaps you were drugged and kidnapped. I target you with far more choice in this matter, as would your wife, I'm sure. There are no accidents, and it would be disingenuous to claim one, were this to happen. You are a person in control of your own life, unless you choose to abandon that control

[/ QUOTE ]Here is where I think you are dead wrong. There is way less choice than you think. We are driven by VERY powerful instincts. If a guy has strong game, he can get women to do all sorts of things she never thought she would do if she was thinking rationally. There is a whole industry devoted to how you keep a women from letting her get her rational defenses up. I highly recommend "the game" or to read DeAngelo to anyone who thinks that relationships are about rational choices.

Here is an example from my recent trip. The first day, I was sitting talking to this guy at an outdoor cafe. 2 tables over was this cute girl sitting with her boyfriend. I am great with my eyes and I locked eye contact with her and I didn't look away. Neither did she. I kept the contact up and she proceeded to eye-f (sorry, couldn't think of a more accurate phrase) me for the next 30 minutes every time her boyfriend turned away. I went inside to go to the bathroom and I turned around and she had followed me inside. I could have made out with her while her boyfriend sat outside. I needed to get back so I just dragged my fingers on her arm, which she obviously liked.

Now, in your world, this girl made some conscious choice to treat her boyfriend like crap and to engage with another man while he sat outside. But, I highly doubt it ever even crossed her mind. I sparked attraction and it was simply "on". I bet she didn't even realize that she was following me inside as there wouldn't have been time for her to think,"hmmmm, I like that guy over there but I am with my boyfriend. It would be wrong to go after that other guy. Gosh, I have an ethical dilemma. What to do. What to do...." Instead, her body just picked her up and took her inside. It was purely instinctual. DeAngelo talks at length about this. I wish I could remember his exact discussion but it was basically that you want to do things that bypass a woman's rational mind so that her emotional/instinctual mind takes over. That is where a woman will do things that she normally would not.

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You have described it in terms of fear and specifically chosen and agreed with words to connote it -- danger, gasoline, delusion. You've also made blanket statements in response to complex questions, which tends to shut down thought and reflect thought shutting down, essentially a fearful response. Preferences are more amenable to some tinkering. Flat pronouncements are not.

[/ QUOTE ]Again, I love it. But it is highly dangerous and gasoline and spark are good words to use. Sometimes, blanket statements are accurate. If I said, "If someone cut off my oxygen and I can't breathe then I will die" you would not argue about statement complexities because the statement is simply true. I think the same goes for relationships - if you put men and women who are attracted to each other in a situation where that can grow into something more then it is a dangerous situation. Of course, it doesn't mean that everytime or even a majority of time the couple will get it on or cross some line. I am simply saying that there is lots of risk and it isn't an innocent situation because the couple has placed themselves in a dangerous situation. It is even worse if the guy has game because he has a much higher chance of getting the girl and he is much more likely to use his skills because it is natural to him. The inverse is less true because it is the guy who usually has to take the lead.

[bernie]

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Massages - Are you crazy?


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What's wrong with a massage?

b

[/ QUOTE ]I think Katy (and I) thought that "massage" meant a massage from a friend of the opposite sex. A good massage means you have to take your shirt off.

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Off topic, but a good massage usually means you're nude or in undies at most (covered by a blanket for warmth on whatever parts they're not working).

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Yep.

Some people might be suprised at how unsexual a great massage can be. It was put up there as a massage in general, not just by someone from the office or whatever. If it was the latter, I can see how it can be more of a problem.

b