I know what my criteria are, but some people apparently think having any friends of the opposite sex = emotionally cheating.

I am personally capable of having platonic friendships with the opposite sex. Lots of my friends are male, and my friends are like family, my connections to them have been built and evolved over years and years and have been integral to my survival. I'm not going to give them up for anyone.

I would add, though, that if there is flirting I wouldn't consider it a completely platonic friendship. I would think that falls more in the category of "friendship with possibilities".

Do you behave with him differently than you would behave around your brother or a close male relative? If so I wouldn't call it platonic.

It' definitely not platonic more along friends with possibilities. But that doesn't mean its an emotional affair

I don't think I would even rely on the opinions of people on this board, since we all have our own personal standards. What it comes down to is, how would your partner feel about it? You probably know your partner well enough without having to ask. I don't know if you were looking for alternative views of the situation, but ultimately they don't matter.

I agree with Spiky. Although, I will say I did have an "emotional affair" once (prior to my "real" affair). It consisted of daily phone conversations, email exchanges, jokes, etc. He would tell me his problems and ask for my advice, I would tell him about my day. In a sense, I was taking away from my husbands support to me.
It lasted well over a year. I cared very, very, very much for him. Actually probably a deeper connection than I had with my real affair. They say that emotional affairs are the hardest to get over, possibly because you have given them so much of your inner self. It took a very long time, but we are now friends, definitely platonic, we are FB friends and I think I have chatted with him online maybe twice in the past year. The emotional connection is gone.

I wouldn't get too hung up on the term "emotional affair" and whether this fits or not, although my H is gonna post soon with a link to an article about what makes up an emotional affair.

Truth is, based on what you have written here, you are tempted by him. A lot. And there is communication between the two of you that you would not want your H to see. I mean, how would you feel for him to read even your descriptions here of what you are dealing with? At best the relationship you have with this guy is inappropriate based on the fact that you already have things to hide from your H.

The beginning of my whole A time started so very much like what you have described above. "innocent flirting" It was flattering, it was fun, it was mostly by text. I adored him and found him to be very sexy and desireable. I couldn't believe he felt the same about me. what an ego boost that was! In the very beginning my H knew about a man who was flirting with me. He warned me about it. I tired a few times, half heartedly, to make it stop then I just went underground with it and decided just to go with it and see what would happen.

It really isn't what you have or haven't done that is the biggest problem, as I see it, but it is what you WANT that is the biggest problem. With the OM#1 I am talking about here (yes, there was another one later) I WANTED to "be" with him more than I had ever wanted anything and the battles within were fierce fierce battles. I called it the battle of "good girl / bad girl". I mostly won that first battle over OM#1. I resisted until just before he moved away when we had one physical oral encounter and then he was gone. "good girl" was left greatly weakened, however, and I was in a very foggy and addictive state of mind by then so when OM#2 came along i had almost no resistance left in me. The reason for that is because after OM#1 left I did nothing at all to address why I let that happen. I did not come clean, I did not seek help. I needed to and I didn't. I did not even come here until after the big Dday explosion. Had I taken those steps after OM#1 I could have prevented most of the pain and devastation that later occurred for myself, my H and also for OM#2.

Not to say it will go for you the way it went for me, but it is starting much the same way for you. The temptation stage you are in now is real and powerful and not easily overcome by ones self. If you can go to counseling, do it pronto! Also, read Not Just Friends by Shirley Glass. I kid you not, in some parts of that book you will think she crawled into your mind to write exactly what you are going through.

I've been working on a blog post where I define what an emotional affair consists of. I'm not finished with the article, but I'll post the relevant excerpt here:

There are two categories of emotional affairs.

The base meaning is that the affair satisfies an emotional need for the unfaithful spouse. This is true of all affairs to some degree. Even paying a hooker for a night of sex is satisfying the spouses emotional need for those feelings.

The second meaning of an emotional affair is that the unfaithful spouse falls in love with their affair partner. This can happen without ever touching each other. It can happen over the phone or chatting or messaging over the internet.

The broad definition of an emotional affair is when one of the following occurs:

A couple privately discusses intimate marital issues that should be reserved for a spouse or therapist.

A couple spends more non-business time with each other than they do their spouse.

A couple feels the need to communicate daily about non-business matters, often multiple times a day.

Each couple hides their discussions and its content from their spouses.

By doing any of the above items, the unfaithful spouse is depositing into the affair partner's "love bank" as Willard F. Harley puts it in his book, His Needs, Her Needs. Likewise, the unfaithful spouse is adding the affair partner's deposits into their love bank. If that trend continues, it is only a matter of time before the two end up feeling they have fallen in love with each other and eventually in a physical affair.

For a fuller understanding of how this works, the best book on this topic is Not Just Friends by Shirley Glass.

"The base meaning is that the affair satisfies an emotional need for the unfaithful spouse"

"A couple privately discusses intimate marital issues that should be reserved for a spouse or therapist.

"A couple feels the need to communicate daily about non-business matters, often multiple times a day."

Cole --

I have to ask, does all this rely on the person in question being of the opposite sex? Because all these things routinely occur with same-sex friends of married people. Are they all unwittingly having emotional affairs with their buddies?

This really is a sincere question.

I was considering it to be with someone you could potentially have an affair with. If one is not homosexual, these wouldn't all apply to the same sex as it relates to having affairs.

That's not to say there aren't problems maritally with some of it. A close best friend you trust might be someone you can confide in about marital issues. But if there is any chance/opportunity that a romantic relationship could be sparked by that discussion, it would be inappropriate, leading into an emotional affair.

But even if of the same sex for a heterosexual, it may not be called an affair, but if I'm spending more of my free time with a friend on a daily basis than I am Gabi, then that is a ding on the marriage and unhealthy.

A marriage should be about, "You're the most important person to me, everyone else is secondary," but when actions don't reflect that, it indicates something is wrong and off, affair or no affair. But when it is with someone you could have a romantic relationship with, sex or not, it is taking away from one's spouse what you had pledged to them alone, assuming you didn't get married with some type of open marriage agreement. The longer the above conditions go on, the more of an emotional affair it would be.

By way of example, I've related before earlier in our marriage when I was stressed out about not getting enough sex from Gabi, and when I did I felt I had to drag her into it most of the time. A girl at my work, in an office full of women, started confiding in me about the problems she was having with her boyfriend. I don't recall, but I may have initially mentioned problems me and Gabi were having. Then she said how compassionate and kind I was, implied as compared to her uncaring boyfriend.

Around that point the light clicked on where this was headed. If I continued with this "innocent" discussion, it could easily evolve into an affair. I could see it in her eyes. I think, perhaps, at that point, she was already engaging in an emotional affair with me. So I stopped responding to her comments with my own examples and encouragement, and just nodded my head and said, "Uh hu" a lot. Essentially, I refused to encourage that type of conversation. It worked. Though we talked from time to time between activities, we didn't discuss her boyfriend situation, and it never went any further.

If it had been a guy, I wouldn't have worried so much about it.

Cole --

Fair enough. The reason I asked is that I'm kind of tomboyish and have always had more male friends than female. In addition to just liking them, I have always valued my friendships with guys because once the 'possibility of romance' social filter is turned off, they are honest with me and I get to learn a lot about how guys see things differently from (or similarly to) me. These male friends occupy the spectrum from exes to FWB's to 100 percent platonic friends. As for those in the last category, it would literally feel like incest for me to be sexual with them.

As it happens I don't have any with whom I speak on a close to daily basis. It fluctuates, but definitely not the case when I'm in a relationship; the relationship soaks up some of that time.

I have sometimes encountered conflicts with boyfriends about spending face-to-face time with my male friends, which due to limited opportunity is something I'd prefer not to give up. It's like relatives that you only get to see in person once every 3-5 years due to distance and time issues. So I'd like for it to be OK for me to see them when the occasional opportunity exists and I'm more than happy for my SO to accompany me, only they usually don't because they've never met so-and-so and don't feel like socializing outside their comfort range. Or for whatever reason.

Spikey when you are in a relationship do you define these male friends as you just did here? Meaning on the rare occassion you might see one of the fwb, will you define him as such to your bf? Is he aware that some of these friends are with benefits, and some are previous bf?

I think the average person would probably only be comfortable with the guy friend who it would feel like incest. The only guy friend I have that I hang with on occassion and that's usualy with our kids, is an old bf from childhood who would be like incest. For me the bf thing didn't work with him because we were more like brother sister or BFF.

It's a tough situation when heterosexual people have friendships with the opposite sex because it's a lot like when Harry met Sally, unless that incest feeling is present, it seems those friendships can find their way unexpectedly falling into dangerous territory. Friendships can be very intimate in a sense because we share so much with our friends, we cry on their shoulders, and enjoy laughter and old memories with them. I can just see how easily that could turn.

Pink,

I have told my boyfriends when any of my friends were someone that I used to date, as well as vice versa. I don't hang out with FWB's unless I'm single (but wasn't always like that. I've learned that it's a bad idea, obviously).

There are a couple of very close male friends that I feel are like brothers to me and that isn't going to change. One for example is the younger brother of an ex, so we've always had an older sister/younger brother rapport. I met him when he was in high school and I was 22 or so. Last time I saw him, I watched Pete's Dragon with him and his wife. I am also still close friends with the rest of his family. We don't hang out anymore since we're on opposite coasts, but we do talk occasionally on the phone.

Another buddy of mine is someone I fooled around with a couple of times years ago, but has since realized his is gay. I consider him to be platonic/safe.

Something I've noticed even with male friends that I did at one point date or fool around with -- with me, it follows the opposite pattern -- sex partnerships turn into friendships and not the other way around. I think I feel compelled, if I make a male friend, to explore that possibility very early on to see how it goes. That's why I am pretty confident that I'm not gonna be tempted way down the road to try it again. With most of them I feel like I just can't think of them that way anymore.

The FWB's (actually there's probably only one who I still think of that way) are different. They're people with whom I share a mutual attraction, but we don't feel the need to be physical every time we hang out or even most times. As I said earlier in this post, I have realized I have to avoid them if I'm partnered with someone.