Infidelity In Marriage

Flirtatious e-mails. Cell phone heart-to-hearts. Perfectly harmless working lunches. It's a new kind of adultery. There's no sex, but we know trouble when we sees it.

A lady called Miebaka knew that something was missing in her marriage. She and Ogan used to be passionate about each other, she said, but after 12 years and two children, she felt removed. Ogan never asked her about work or what she was worried about or felt like doing. She was no longer attracted to him, and they rarely spent time alone together. Instead, she threw her energy into raising the children and her job as a paralegal. Life had become bland.

Then there was James. He'd been at the law firm longer than Miebaka and showed her the ropes. They would discuss complicated cases, and Miebaka found his enthusiasm engaging. They'd grab drinks together, and soon drinks became lunch, and lunch led to phone calls and e-mails as their conversations went from professional to deeply personal.

Miebaka thought about James all the time, she hadn't felt this alive since she and Ogan had started dating. While she recognized a crush—her excitement about seeing him, her pleasure in his jokes, her relief in confiding in someone who got her—she told herself there was nothing wrong with what she was doing because they weren't having sex.

Ogan, however, started to notice his wife's coming home later. She was on her cell phone a lot on the weekends, and when he asked who she was talking to, she became evasive. At one point, he complained that they never had sex anymore, that he felt lonely in the marriage, and that he wondered if there was someone else.

Miebaka assured Ogan—and herself—that she wasn't having an affair. While she felt a little guilty, the thought of giving up James, the way he made her feel beautiful and funny and fantastic, was unbearable.

Emotional cheating (with an "office husband," a chat room lover, or a newly appealing ex) steers clear of physical intimacy, but it does involve secrecy, deception, and therefore betrayal. People enmeshed in nonsexual affairs preserve their "deniability," convincing themselves they don't have to change anything. That's where they're wrong. If you think about it, it's the breach of trust, more than the sex, that's the most painful aspect of an affair and the most difficult to recover from.

Few people go looking for an extramarital entanglement. But like Miebaka, they might hit a patch where their relationship isn't fun anymore, and they feel isolated and frustrated. Rather than making a collaborative effort with their partner—and perhaps a marriage counselor—to improve it, women in particular often accept that "this is just the way the marriage is." So while they aren't consciously in the market, they are ripe for an affair of the heart: hungry for attention, craving excitement, and eager for someone to fill the emptiness they feel inside.

Miebaka came to depend on James for emotional highs. The flirting, the accolades, the sympathetic ear all made her feel special. She escaped into this new involvement in a scenario that's increasingly common. Though emotional affairs have always been around, we've all grown so used to watching, reading, and hearing sexually suggestive material that there's no longer an obvious verbal or physical line we think we're crossing. And the exponential growth of e-mail, instant messaging, and cell phones gives us a wealth of private ways to connect. It's a snap to Google an old flame: What would have been idle fantasy a decade ago can, with the click of a mouse, grow into emotional (or sexual) infidelity.

We all know men and women who really are "just friends," and there's usually some romantic frisson, even if neither party admits it. But a healthy male-female friendship isn't clandestine.

Once a man and woman avoid telling their partners how much time they're spending on the friendship, make sure they look great anytime they're going to be together, or confide more in each other, including marital dissatisfactions, than in their spouses, they're involved in an emotional affair.

Often we think that friendship hasn't gone that far…yet. But if the possibilities are tempting, I believe that's the moment to look more closely at the marriage. What is each spouse missing that he or she needs? Ask this question directly and answer frankly, because when a couple can't express their feelings, concerns, and dreams, they're both at risk for betrayal. You need to reclaim closeness and also protect your relationship from third parties.
Three habits that strikes as playing with fire: (1) flirting with others, which can become too intoxicating to give up, (2) "innocently" spending time alone with old lovers, and (3) hanging out with emotional cheaters who make what they're doing seem like no big deal.

Increasingly, people are already enmeshed in an affair of the heart by the time they realize it. They have a very hurt spouse but can't bear to lose their "friend." Marital implosion is close at hand. The first and most important task, you must do is to take responsibility for the affair—same as if they'd had a sexual liaison. Denying it or blaming their partner's inattentiveness prevents you and your partner from reengaging. The only cases where it might not be best to fess up are the rare ones where the partner has no suspicions: Revealing hidden feelings just to absolve guilt is not a great idea.

Second, the affair must end. Yes, it hurts. And no, it's not possible to disengage partway and still be pals. Things get trickier if the infidelity began in the workplace, but all future interaction must be purely professional and kept to an absolute minimum.

Third, try to understand the reasons you got overinvolved in the first place. Was your marriage failing? Did you need to build your self-esteem? Were they repeating the pattern of a parent who cheated? To prevent an encore, you must both  be brutally honest with yourselves.

Finally, you have to build back the trust, which is the biggest obstacle to saving the marriage. This requires a lot of time, openness, and accountability (for example, being clear about whereabouts and coming home right after work is a step in the right direction).
Most people don't appreciate the relationship they do have until they're about to lose it. This is what happened with Miebaka. When Ogan found her e-mails to James ("I miss you so much…I can't wait to see you," along with complaints about her home life), he was shattered and wanted a divorce. As soon as Miebaka realized her husband might leave her, James didn't seem quite as thrilling. But saying goodbye to him, which she ultimately decided to do, was wrenching, and Ogan isn't sure whether he can forgive her.

It's much more difficult to make your way back from a betrayal of intimate feelings than to try to refresh a marriage that may have become flat and distant. When you ignore anxiety-inducing thoughts like "I feel stuck—I wish I could run off and have fun or I feel old and dumpy—if only someone would make me feel young and sexy again," you cannot examine or deal with them in a productive manner. Instead, you unwittingly act them out, with potentially devastating results. Any good relationship takes an investment of time, effort, and emotional energy. What few people want to accept is that we can all become Miebaka and Ogan, and that marriage, while potentially tremendously gratifying, is always a work in progress.