Emotional affair

The term emotional affair is used in the media to categorise or explain a certain type of relationship. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th. Edition does not define the term, and its definition is therefore considered anecdotal and subjective.

High levels of non-sexual emotional intimacy in adults may occur without the participants being bound by other intimate relationships or may occur between people in other relationships.[1] "Attachment Theory" research reflects both constructs.[2]

The term often describes a bond between two people that mimics the closeness and emotional intimacy of a romantic relationship while never being physically consummated. An emotional affair is sometimes referred to as an affair of the heart. An emotional affair may emerge from a friendship, and progress toward greater levels of personal intimacy and attachment. What distinguishes an emotional affair from a friendship is the assumption of emotional roles between the two participants that mimic of those of an actual relationship - with regards to confiding personal information and turning to the other person during moments of vulnerability or need.

Definition

An emotional affair can be defined as:

"A relationship between a person and someone other than (their) spouse (or lover) that affects the level of intimacy, emotional distance and overall dynamic balance in the marriage. The role of an affair is to create emotional distance in the marriage."[3]

In this view, neither sexual intercourse nor physical affection is necessary to affect the committed relationship(s) of those involved in the affair. It is theorized that an emotional affair can injure a committed relationship more than a one night stand or other casual sexual encounters.[4]

Incidence and prevalence

Research by Glass & Wright found that men's extramarital relationships were more sexual and women's more emotional. For both genders, sexual and emotional extramarital involvement occurred in those with the greatest marital dissatisfaction.[5]

Chaste and emotionally intimate affairs tend to be more common than sexually intimate affairs. Shirley Glass reported in Not "Just Friends" that 44% of husbands and 57% of wives indicated that in their affair they had a strong emotional involvement to the other person without intercourse.[6]

In University of Chicago surveys conducted by NORC[7] between 1990 and 2002, 27% of people who reported being happy in marriage admitted to having an extramarital affair. The meaning and definition of what infidelity constitutes often varies depending on the person asked. Sexual feelings in an emotional affair are necessarily denied to maintain the illusion that it is just a special friendship. Affair surveys are unlikely to explore what is denied. Many people in affair surveys are not honest with themselves nor with the interviewer.[8][9]

Characteristics

This type of affair is often characterized by:

Cultural examples

In Casanova's Chinese Restaurant, the composer Hugh Moreland, talking of an unlikely couple experiencing love at first sight, denies that they are having an affair: "You can have a passion for someone without having an affair. That is one of the things no one seems able to understand these days...one of those fascinating mutual attractions between improbable people that take place from time to time. I should like to write a ballet around it" .[13]

Therapy as subset

The entrance of a therapist into a couple's dynamics may be experienced by the non-client as the client-partner having an emotional affair with someone granted a greater degree of intimacy and confiding than themselves.[14] The tendency to create a mate-substitute out of the therapist may be especially acute in incest survivors.[15]

See also

Notes

  1. "University of Florida Counseling and Wellness Center Types - Types of Intimacy".
  2. "Understanding our attachments to others".
  3. Moultrup, David Husbands, Wives & Lovers: The Emotional System of the Extramarital Affair New York: Guilford Press 1990. Moultrup also contributed to 'The Handbook of the Clinical Treatment of Infidelity' with editors Piercy, FP; Hertlein, KM and Wetchler, JL. Haworth.
  4. Schutzwohl, Achim & Koch, Stephanie "Sex differences in jealousy: The recall of cues to sexual and emotional fidelity in personally more and less threatening context conditions." Department of Psychology, University of Bielefeld, Germany 2004.
  5. Glass & Wright 'Sex differences in type of extramarital involvement and marital dissatisfaction Journal Sex Roles Publisher Springer Netherlands ISSN 0360-0025 (Print) 1573-2762 (Online) Issue Volume 12, Numbers 9-10 / May, 1985
  6. Shirley Glass S 'Not Just Friends - protect your relationship from infidelity and heal the trauma of betrayal'
  7. "NORC at the University of Chicago - Insight for Informed Decisions - NORC.org". norc.org.
  8. Blow, Adrian J, Hartnett, Kelley "INFIDELITY IN COMMITTED RELATIONSHIPS II: A SUBSTANTIVE REVIEW" Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, April 2005, retrieved from
  9. Blow, Adrian J, Hartnett, Kelley "INFIDELITY IN COMMITTED RELATIONSHIPS I: A METHODOLOGICAL REVIEW Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, April 2005, retrieved from
  10. Jill Hubbard, The Secrets Women Keep (2008) p. 47-8
  11. B. Schaeffer, Is it Love or is It Addiction (2013) p. 104
  12. R. T. & P. S. Potter-Efron, The Emotional Affair (2008) p. 28 and p. 116
  13. Anthony Powell, Casanova's Chinese Restaurant (1980) p. 54
  14. Diane Vaughan, Uncoupling (1987) p. 212
  15. Sam Kirschner, Working with Adult Incest Survivors (1993) p. 129

References

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