Emotional Affairs

[bernie]

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If you're on a business trip and she's horny for a night, would you be ok with her reading an erotic story online while she takes care of things?

But not ok if she participates in an essentially interactive story via cybersex?



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What's the problem? It's just text. [img]/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img] [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

My favorite radio psychologist says that email "friendships" can't be classified as adultery at all. I believe her exact words were "Oh please." She said you can't compare internet friendships with real life ones. She's pretty adament about this. Agree?

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This radio psyche is wrong. Emotionally and psychologically they can compare. I think online it just tends to take longer. Apparently she's never seen those that their whole life is linked to their buds(never met) online. Or, I wonder what her take is on people who meet others online and end up getting engaged upon their first meeting(lots of other examples could branch off this). Maybe she should spend some time on forums or chatrooms before blathering.

The more adamant she is about this the more clueless she looks.

b

[Blarg]

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Our jealously and insecurity and the behaviors associated with it put our wives in a tough situation of trying to dance around trigger points like an abused wife dances around an abuser's trigger points. That's where emotional abusers make their living...leaving you constantly guessing if it's your actions that are wrong when it's their behavior that's really the problem.

... Just because we feel hurt though doesn't make it someone else's fault.


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This was a really good post, and I especially like that last part. The externalization of one's fears and neuroses onto others just doesn't seem like a good idea. And I am very leery of claims that someone "makes" someone feel any certain way. Our feelings can be difficult and even overwhelming at times, but that doesn't mean that we should abdicate our rule and give them the full run of the joint without apology. Lots of our feelings are crap and come about because we're jerks or being selfish or childish. They're hardly all holy or automatically worth keeping and refusing to work on. And blaming others for them can really be taking a bad thing over the top.

[Blarg]

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If you're on a business trip and she's horny for a night, would you be ok with her reading an erotic story online while she takes care of things?

But not ok if she participates in an essentially interactive story via cybersex?



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What's the problem? It's just text. [img]/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img] [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

My favorite radio psychologist says that email "friendships" can't be classified as adultery at all. I believe her exact words were "Oh please." She said you can't compare internet friendships with real life ones. She's pretty adament about this. Agree?

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I agree that you can't compare the two, but they can still be extremely damaging. Partly because people do mix the two up sometimes.

[Orlando Salazar]

First things first. I want to have an emotional trist with you and your pretty toes Katy [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img] I mean it in the most polite way possible. I think I'm in love!

I'm not a supporter of marriage. I think if you have to sign a contract to be committed to a relationship and its offspring, you are aren't worth the paper the contract is written on. It also goes against human nature/evoloution.

But, if you do make a commitment like this, there isn't a b&w answer. Lets say one person in a relationship decides to invest shared money in a stock without telling the other. Now the couple is exposed to financial investment risk. Is that fair? Maybe, but it depends on the size of the investment relative to the couple's net worth.

Basically, if a high school girl emotionally cheats on her BF of 1 month, that's far different than a 40 year woman with children having an emotional affair with a coworker. The risk to the current relationship and the spouse's ability to make new relationships are way different due to age and invesment (children, home, family, friends).

[Blarg]

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I get energized by good conversation and getting to know someone of the opposite sex. Every now and then I'll stumble across someone who has a very strong energy and great connection with me. (It doesn't happen all that often either, but when it does it's really fun.) I wouldn't call this kind of thing an emotional affair but I can see where someone might call it an emotional high. Men are just cool.

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I often feel the same way about women, but more just about getting to know anyone who is cool. I try to keep the energy transfer down, so neither I nor someone else gets the wrong idea and winds up mad or disappointed. It's just cool knowing cool people, and they're uncommon enough that it seems silly to throw them away. To me one of the great pleasures of being an adult is that you don't have to live by rote, but can take the occasional chance at improving your life.

[katyseagull]

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By what right do you deny her pleasure, physical or emotional, if it really does you no harm? The harm is in your perception of what that event meant. You've used fidelity as an arbitrary measure of her "love" for you.

Would you deny her a massage? That's a physical pleasure.

Would you deny her a hug from a male friend?

Would you deny her a cup of her favorite coffee from a male friend?

Where do you draw this arbitrary line about what pleasures she can have and why do you draw it where you have?

We all have some limit, some arbitrary restraints on our partners capacity to give of themselves to another, that we use as a measure of their love and committment to us. Or as a measure of our ownership over them, which is made obvious in societies where the women must serve and be demur to their husbands.



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All the above scenarios you mention would drive me nuts if I knew my boyfriend was doing them,

Massages - Are you crazy?

Hugs - No. He would like them big boobies pressing against his chest. I say he should keep 3' of air between him and another girl.

Coffee - well, ok if he absolutely has to. As long as he wasn't making a habit of it.

rolling around on a bed - this is just unacceptable.


I wouldn't do any of these things with a guy friend either. For two reasons - I'm kind of uptight and it would make my boyfriend very unhappy. The only thing I would allow myself to do is have conversations. Funny conversations, cozy conversations, academic conversations. I like it when I find someone I have a special connection with. I think there's a lot of potential in friendship. But I'm certainly not into the physical flirting games. Those embarrass me.

[Dominic]

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By what right do you deny her pleasure, physical or emotional, if it really does you no harm? The harm is in your perception of what that event meant. You've used fidelity as an arbitrary measure of her "love" for you.

Would you deny her a massage? That's a physical pleasure.

Would you deny her a hug from a male friend?

Would you deny her a cup of her favorite coffee from a male friend?

Where do you draw this arbitrary line about what pleasures she can have and why do you draw it where you have?

We all have some limit, some arbitrary restraints on our partners capacity to give of themselves to another, that we use as a measure of their love and committment to us. Or as a measure of our ownership over them, which is made obvious in societies where the women must serve and be demur to their husbands.



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All the above scenarios you mention would drive me nuts if I knew my boyfriend was doing them,

Massages - Are you crazy?

Hugs - No. He would like them big boobies pressing against his chest. I say he should keep 3' of air between him and another girl.

Coffee - well, ok if he absolutely has to. As long as he wasn't making a habit of it.

rolling around on a bed - this is just unacceptable.


I wouldn't do any of these things with a guy friend either. For two reasons - I'm kind of uptight and it would make my boyfriend very unhappy. The only thing I would allow myself to do is have conversations. Funny conversations, cozy conversations, academic conversations. I like it when I find someone I have a special connection with. I think there's a lot of potential in friendship. But I'm certainly not into the physical flirting games. Those embarrass me.

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Katy, you and I are simpatico regarding this stuff. I wouldn't find any of those things acceptable either.

[katyseagull]

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It's just cool knowing cool people, and they're uncommon enough that it seems silly to throw them away. To me one of the great pleasures of being an adult is that you don't have to live by rote, but can take the occasional chance at improving your life.

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Yeah this is how I feel too Blarg. Nicely put. There are so many interesting people out there and if you give them a chance you can find your life enriched. It doesn't mean you have to go out and start an affair or start flirting like crazy, but it does mean that you shouldn't close yourself off and shut out a huge part of the world just because you're afraid of how it would look.

[bogey1]

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By what right do you deny her pleasure, physical or emotional, if it really does you no harm? The harm is in your perception of what that event meant. You've used fidelity as an arbitrary measure of her "love" for you.

Would you deny her a massage? That's a physical pleasure.

Would you deny her a hug from a male friend?

Would you deny her a cup of her favorite coffee from a male friend?

Where do you draw this arbitrary line about what pleasures she can have and why do you draw it where you have?

We all have some limit, some arbitrary restraints on our partners capacity to give of themselves to another, that we use as a measure of their love and committment to us. Or as a measure of our ownership over them, which is made obvious in societies where the women must serve and be demur to their husbands.



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All the above scenarios you mention would drive me nuts if I knew my boyfriend was doing them,

Massages - Are you crazy?
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I wasn't talk about with a guy friend, just in general. If your boyfriend went to a licensed masseuse, are you going to begrudge him that?

It's beside the point anyway. The point was we alll have some point at which we draw a line, but the line is really pretty conceptually arbitrary.

[bogey1]

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Hugs - No. He would like them big boobies pressing against his chest. I say he should keep 3' of air between him and another girl.

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Playing devil's advocate...

Say he loved those boobies against him. So what? He gets his hug from a friend, a minor thrill from the boobies, and goes home to/with you (not sure in your mind if he's at a place with you or by himself).

So, no harm done. He got a cheap, basically harmless thrill. Why would you care? Why should you be bothered?

Say he went to a strip club and saw naked boobies. He again gets a basically harmless thrill and goes home to you. Do you care? And if so, why?