“How can I get unhooked from an emotional affair?” There is not easy way, and it will involve a process of time. In that process, several practices are important. First of all, separation is important. The emphasis here is on abstinence and sobriety. You don’t indulge yourself with the other person’s presence. You must stop exposing yourself to this shared life experience. The contact is what keeps these feelings alive; you need to stop feeding the compulsion.
I hasten to add that you just can’t bury these feelings. Therefore, the next step is identification. What is the “something” this person touches inside you? What unmet need does he tap into? Sometimes the infidel can process this with a spouse or a same-sex friend, but other times that will need to be done with an experienced counselor who is committed to restoring the marriage.
My experience is that the longings that underlie infidelity go back to childhood; the infidel brings them with him or her into the marriage. They often were touched upon or satisfied in the initial phases of the relationship with the spouse, but over time have been buried by the crush of life’s responsibilities.
The next process is exposure. Don’t allow these longings and feelings to remain a secret. The longer an infidel allows these feelings to continue as a secret, the more he or she will idealize the person the feelings are attached to. Idealization means this partner becomes perfect, and as a result, no one else (e.g., the spouse) can measure up. The partner is beginning to be seen as “all good,” and therefore the infidel will have to see the marriage as “all bad.”
As mentioned earlier, if you encapsulate these feelings at this point, they will only lie dormant to be triggered again later. I usually encourage the infidel to share his feelings with his spouse, after seeking counsel. After all, the spouse has been involved in this story already (in that all affairs are a triangle, even if the spouse is unaware) and might as well know the secrets that are occurring in his/her marriage.
The next concept here is to journal. Write down the feelings you are experiencing in this rather involved and tortuous journey. Feelings don’t have to control an individual, but their influence is strongest when they are held in secret. The longings that have led to this emotional affair are a part of the childhood magic; journaling them gets them out into the open, into the adult realm.
The next step is displacement. Use this process in tandem with some of the other processes. Here you do something else in lieu of focusing on the partner. You can exercise, get involved in spiritual development, or take on different projects or hobbies. This is the “doing” part of healing.
The final idea is to grieve. Though this is extremely difficult for the spouse to observe, it is important and necessary. Many times this needs to start with a “good-bye” letter (written to the adulterous partner). Most infidels find this very painful to do. It seems so unnecessary initially, because (seemingly “nothing evil has happened,” since they didn’t have sex. Only after thorough processing, and the passage of time, will the infidel be able to look back and see how befuddled his/her thinking really was.
This is also a good time for the infidel to review his/her “loss history,” and this leads naturally to grieving. What other significant caregivers, friends, loved ones, or pets has the infidel lost that parallel the lost feelings in giving up the affair? The infidel will probably want to do this in private and only later will be able to share the depth of the experience with his spouse.
(A caution here: The depression is not about what you feel for the partner, but just what you are feeling, period. Keep the partner out of the equation-it will make it easier for your souse to listen to your feelings, and easier for you to connect with the feelings in your heart that need processing.)
The Healing Process
Neither your partner nor your spouse can release you from the emotional hook you’ve experienced. Many spouses caught in this kind of emotional affair have found portions of The Serenity Prayer helpful:
“Lord, grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change,
the courage to change the things I can,
and the wisdom to know the difference.”
Be careful of changing the components around. Don’t try to change the things you cannot change-that will only lead to frustration and anger. On the other hand, don’t accept the things you should be changing—that will only lead to feelings of victimization, a sense of “What’s the use? I can’t lick this, so I might as well give in.”
Time, the healing process, always requires a backward look. Encouragement is not usually the result if you look to where you need to be, feel like you ought to be, or even want to be. You will see the feelings diminish as you look backward to where you were three, six or nine months ago.
Rebuild and concentrate on the lost relationships that contributed to the vacuum that the emotional affair filled. That could require quite a search on your part, some intense conversations (even confrontations) with people in your life, a lot of focused reading, and even some trips/visits to significant places in your childhood.
Enjoy the process and reschedule the experiences that made your marriage good in the first place. Here I encourage couples to each identify the “eight greats” of their marital experience. Independently, each spouse should identify the eight great experiences, or highlights, of their marital history, then decide together on five that they’d like to repeat. You see, shared history is a critical component of intimacy. Rare is the spouse who won’t join “the almost infidel” in this endeavor and experience recovery from close call. Why, most of us had close calls ourselves.
Some Cautions for the Infidel
Temptations do not an identity make. Some people struggle with the same temptation for years. For instance, just because someone wants to smoke again because he’s tempted doesn’t mean he’s a smoker. Don’t let the temptation to return to the partner shame you into feeling “What’s the use? I might as well give in. I’ll never be free of these feelings.”
Second, remember that in periods of high stress, difficult emotions, transition, and marital dullness, you will feel an increased desire to return to the partner or to renew thoughts of him/her. At times, infidels report that they have yearnings to think about this person just to see if the feelings are still “available” as in the days gone by. This “testing” is common to obsessive-compulsive behaviors, and the intent is to prove to oneself how far one has come in the recovery process.
Be careful—this process can begin to mimic the destabilization process of a Class 2 affair described in chapter 6. As mentioned there, such practices only intensify, rather than lessen, the attraction—and the hook goes much deeper.
Some Encouragement for the Spouse
First, remember that these longings were present in your spouse before you entered his or her life. You didn’t create them, and you probably can’t fully satisfy them.
Second, you did tap into those longings early in your relationship in some fashion. The longings were present in the initial feelings of what love is all about. For whatever reason, the infidel settled for the initial feelings of what love is all about and superficial satisfaction of those longings, versus deepening and maturing them. This is not your fault. Many times it is the result of a combination of circumstances: work, school, family, and so on. But the exciting thing is now you both can go deeper in your love for each other.
Last, both of you will eventually forget the partner. The memories of this experience will fade in the same way that a widow or widower forgets abut the loss of a god first marriage if the second marriage is a pleasant experience.
It is possible to rebuild after an emotional affair has been discovered. Work through these steps and you will make progress. This is the kind of stuff emotional intimacy is built on, and that is the key to any good marriage.
The above article comes from the excellent book, TORN ASUNDER - Recovery from Extramarital Affairs -By Dave Carder. This book is very comprehensive and is a great practical guide for dealing with extramarital affairs. It’s very comprehensive because it carefully sorts out the different kinds of affairs and deals with each kind —giving very practical and insightful information. It doesn’t lump all infidelity together “giving over-simplistic spiritual answers.” It’s practical because “it deals with daily, gut-level issues both partners face.” We highly recommend getting this book!
There are a couple of parts that especially stand out and set it apart from other resources. One in particular which is EXCELLENT is titled: “When Your Spouse Doesn’t Want You Back: The 90-Day Experiment.” We wish we could have put this portion of the book on our web site but it’s too long to be able to honor the author’s copyright privilege and it really can’t be shortened to do it justice. You really need to get the book to have this as well as the other helpful information.
(If you’re dealing with this problem and you can’t get this book in your country then please contact the publisher at the above web site and see if there’s something that can be arranged.)
They also have a section in it which includes a questionnaire that addresses: “Are You at Risk for an Affair?” It’s an excellent tool to identify personal growth areas for you and your spouse to discuss and develop and is designed to help evaluate personal history and lifestyle which parallels with those who have been involved in adultery. We were surprised by some of the questions and what can set people up to have an affair. It might help you too. This book is filled with many other great insights also!
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(USA) I came to this web page a few months ago. I am the betrayed husband in an emotional affair and the insight into what my wife is going though was very enlightening and gave me hope for the future. I recently came back to read again because, as the article says and the discussion proves, these things are very hard to get over. I have spent the last few days reading the discussion and the insight into the other side of the equation gives me a real idea of the long uphill fight ahead, even though I still have a lot of hope. It is hope in things unseen right now though.
What moved me to post, however, is the last posting by Lynn. Since I am on the same side of the fence, in a way, I recognized similarities in my life and would like to share my experience.
A very good book I have read is "Desperate Marriages" by Gary Chapman. There are specific chapters about different situations that will help you. But the introductory chapter or two give some advice that I found life changing. The are summarized in this article: http://www.mainstreetmom.com/marr/reality.htm
In my experience, these are the things that I have found. Focus on yourself and your relationship to God (I am a Christian, but the last year has really made me realize what that really means. Look up the Scriptures about trials and testing.)
That’s it. the rest will flow from that. You say he thinks you’re the problem, you are saying he is. Almost always, you are both correct. You only have control of your half.
I don’t know how active this board is. If anyone is reading, let me know and I will share some more of my perspective. It helps me to get it out sometimes.
(USA) Hi HB, We would love it if you would share more of your perspective. I’m sure it would help many who read the comments and don’t write, as well as those who do. Thanks for the insights and the link you’ve shared so far.
(USA) When I get my thoughts together about what I want to say and how to say it, I will. I hope to let the ones struggling with being in the affair know how the other spouse may feel. I don’t think I am all that different from many out there.
For now, let me just give a list of books and resources I have found very eye opening and life changing. I will talk about them and what they meant based on my state of mind at the time. I have done a lot of introspection and soul searching in the last months and I can look back and see so many things over the last 20 years. I can see that what happened was not surprising, even though my wife is a Christian and did not go out seeking what happened.
I would like to say one thing to the "hooked" spouses reading this. I suspect you were like my wife. But I can promise you, just because your husband was told by you over and over that something was missing, just because he was warned specifically with more and more direct words that he should have understood, but was able to somehow not believe, just because it should not have taken you turning to another before he got it doesn’t me he does not get it and doesn’t mean he does not really love you. He is likely scared to death because he realizes he never learned to talk to you and now knows that you don’t believe he ever can.
My wife asked me to move out last summer. The next day or so she let me know about the affair. At that time I was an emotional wreck, holding on for all I was worth, basically begging. I started to go to a Christian counselor and was guided to a book. It has been around a while, but it probably saved any chance I have.
"Love Must Be Tough" by Charles Dobson. It felt like he was following me around. Explained how unappealing the behavior I was exhibiting really was. Enabled me to start letting go, which kept me from driving her away. A must read if you find yourself in this situation.
A few weeks later, I read "Change Your Heart, Change Your Life" by Gary Smalley. In short, it changed my heart and life. It has a similar theme as many other books I have read since, including the book I referenced in my first post. Replace wrong thinking in your heart with God’s truth from his word. One verse he recommended was 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 about being thankful in all circumstances. How could I be thankful when my wife was in love with another and I was as alone feeling as I had ever been? Then I realized, she has not moved toward divorce yet, she did not sleep with him, and even though I could not get her to give me any hope, she also did not say forget it. I realized that the affair really had been maybe the only thing that could have awakened me, that if things had continued as they had up until it developed, within a short time there may not have been any hope at all, if there was still any.
I read "The Five Love Languages" by Gary Chapman, maybe the best book I have ever read. I wish I had read it 20 years ago, but I would not have felt the need to. If you want to make things better with your spouse, read it. Period, no matter what your current situation is.
I also read some smaller books by Gary Smalley and "Hope for the Separated" by Gary Chapman, which I recommend if you are in the situation I was in. Most of the books that I have read have a similar theme. If you want to get your marriage back, you can’t blame your spouse, you better look inside and see what it is that you can do to give what was missing. Start giving it. You can’t make them change anything, but you can give them reasons to want to. And I mentioned the "Desperate Marriages" book earlier. They have combined to give me hope.
I read a lot of daily devotionals and Sunday School lessons, I have been reading "Desiring God" by John Piper. Everything seems to be pointing me to realize the sovereignty of God and the place trials and testing have in it, how they are used to form us.
Sometime around the first of the year I came back home. But I am not sure how much things have changed. This site has helped me see what I am up against. I do get the feeling that she is struggling to give up the feelings, but I see how hard it is. We are in a situation where complete separation from the other party is not yet possible, so that makes it even more difficult.
If you are a praying person, please pray for my marriage. I don’t want to get it back like before, I want it to be what it should have been all along. I have more hope now that I have in a while, but sometimes it seems like a pretty steep hill.
(USA) Wow -that is all I can say. I am reading about other’s emotional affairs and I feel like I am reading about my life. The one thing I really got out of reading this is that the only way to get over it is to stop seeing him. You all are right -seeing him brings the feelings back all over again. I need to proactively STOP instead of proactively trying to see him! You have all given me hope. I truly believe that the Lord will give me strength and I will be o.k. Thanks for letting me know that I am not alone in this. I like this site better than ivillage.
(MALAWI) I like this site, it has really opened my eyes.
(USA) This article was very eye opening for me. My father has recently "admitted" to my mother that he was in "love" with another woman that he met during his last tour of duty in Iraq. The woman and her family are refugees from Iraq and are currently living several hours away, as he helped them leave Iraq. He will take long trips for work, and will take an extra few days to visit her and the family
I have not spoken to him of his affair, as I do not think that he realizes that I know of it. I just want him to stop seeing this woman, hurting my mother, and ruining what seems to be everything. How do I get him to stop?! I know that he and my mother have been trying to work things out… (especially my mother, she has bent over backwards to try and change) but he still goes and visits her.
I am absolutely frustrated. He tries to pretend that there is nothing wrong.
I am leaving for college this upcoming fall. I am worried that things will get worse while I am away, and that I will come home for holiday and discover that there is no family to come home too.
Sorry to sound so whiny, but what can I do to convince him that my mother and the rest of our family loves him? I have actually met the woman, and I just got this feeling when I met her that she was using him as a sugar-daddy, and I don’t think that he realizes this. What can I do?
(US) I wrote on this site in Nov 2008. I had walked out on my job because of this emotional affair. I went 7 months not seeing him, got word that he asked about me all the time, finally I went by and saw him. He didn’t call me for a month then bam out of nowhere an email. He asked me to come to some event. I did. Now I am all upset again. He emails me, teases with me. He has to know I am not over him…please help.
(US) I emailed back into the group about meeting up with man I fell in love with at work, left my job, proceeded to have a semi-nervous breakdown, all for nothing. I re-established a relationship with him after going by and seeing him and then him waiting a month and contacting me to invite me to boot camp in which he knew I like working out.
He emailed me almost everyday..then I discover while emailing back and forth he is on the chat site on line almost everyday… and it’s not me
so I figure he is a player… and this broke my heart and sent me back. I had asked God to reveal to me the true John and I guess he did.
Now I am back to square one in a marriage I’m not sure I’m happy being in. I just want the security and never feeling like this again… I don’t know what to do and I pray that someone will read this and reply.
He also had the nerve to ask me if I would send him some sexy pics to take with him as he climbs a mountain in Alaska. Is that weird or what? Maybe he was joking, I don’t know. Part of my sick feeling in my stomach tells me he could be just be getting off by all of this. Please help me understand… somebody. Gailbee
(USA) I haven’t posted for a long time, because I’m sure that nobody wants to read about my never-ending struggles, but today I need to sound off and also respond to some of the things that HB wrote. I hope, HB, that you are still visiting this site. First, I want to emphasize and re-emphasize that total separation is the ONLY way to get over an emotional affair. HB, as long as your wife is around this man, even to see him out the window, or from a distance, those feelings will re-surface, and affect her thinking and her behavior. I know that first hand. If you have read my posts here over the last year, you will know that I do not work closely with the man I “fell in love with,” but I see him randomly sometimes once in a 2 week period, sometimes 3-4 times a week. Encounters are brief, normally 3-5 minutes. I have no practical way to free myself from this occasional contact. My husband is disabled and I am the breadwinner. This is the only skill I have and jobs in my field are hard to come by. To quit my job would mean my kids would go hungry and we would lose our home and everything.
To reiterate, I was/am a moral person of high principles and I never would have thought myself capable of have an affair-even an affair of the mind. What I didn’t know was my own vulnerability cause by a long course of circumstances–my husband’s injury, his ensuing depression, inability to perform sexually, and change of personality. My love bank was empty. Not only had I not had any deposits to my love bank, to speak of, but I had a huge deficit. I have dedicated my whole life to my husband–I make the living, I pay for almost everything –the house, the payment on his truck; I cook the meals, wash the clothes, clean the house, take spiritual leadership in the home (not because I want to, but if I don’t, no one will), go to church and school meetings by myself, etc. The only thing he does is transport the kids to and from school and every now and then, he is unavailable for that and I have to ask for favors from other mothers or friends.
And then after 12 years of marriage he stopped touching me and the compliments and communication dried up. So that was the emotional climate of my heart and soul when this man walked into my life.
He is such a gentleman, so elegant, quiet, refined, accomplished. Whenever I see him, no matter how hard I am trying to forget him, my heart jumps and thoughts of how gorgeous, how kind, how attractive he is flit through my mind without my consent.
Today, I am crying inside. Three weeks ago tomorrow, he made his first move. After a year and a half of his sitting in the courtroom, devouring me with his chocolate brown eyes, –oh, those looks of adoration, lust, concern, those winks of reassurance, those deposits made into an empty love bank–he walked up to me 3 weeks ago and talked awhile, asking about my tired eyes, expressing heartfelt concern regarding all the stress in my life, and then he wrote his cell number on his card and gave it to me. Imagine, my husband was out of town and we hadn’t had even a casual conversation for weeks before he left. As always, I was not even consulted regarding his decision to leave for 2 1/2 weeks with his father.
What a temptation! But, I did the right thing. I did not call him. I sent him a written message a few days later that I could not. When my husband returned, I told him about it and again explained my need of his attention. He (my husband) has been very affectionate the last few days, but I don’t know how long that will last. We’ve gone through this cycle before.
I have seen my love in the courtroom 3-4 times since I sent him the message. Today his face is drawn into a deep frown; he is stiff and tense and has deep pain in his chocolate eyes, and avoids looking at me. I am so sad, so very sad, but I’m trying to lift my eyes upward and keep them on the Prize. I must make it to heaven and shunning this wonderful person is part of the price. My heart is bleeding. God help me.
(US) Rebecca, I have followed your post and have read every one. I too know what it is to be so tempted that you can’t stand it or yourself… In my situation as I wrote above, my tall and dr handsome man, I think is fooling around with other women or chatting on line or whatever. I was overcome with grief… I thought I was the only one, thinking he was in love with me too.
Prior to this, I had prayed and prayed for God to show me the truth about j—, and credit to God and through his word, he did…O I don’t know for sure if he is chatting with others, but just asking me for sex pics of myself was a red flag… I hope and pray I can get over him. In my case I worked with him as well, but walked out on a state job with benefits because I simply couldn’t handle it anymore. Do I think God will deal with him? Yes. Do I think God has dealt with me? Oh yes…
I feel your pain with your husband.. a little different story, but mine doesn’t pay a lot of attention to me either, so I am very vulnerable. I’m glad you wrote on this site. I do wish others would. It would help to understand all of this. Gail