It seemed like nothing at first.
The man and woman met at a West Los Angeles school their children attend. The man, who is divorced, and the woman, who is married, spent time together volunteering on school projects. School-related meetings led to meeting for coffee. Talk turned from the non-personal to the personal.
The woman began revealing her feelings of distress about her marriage. The man listened, empathized and offered up the pain-filled details of his divorce. Each time they saw each other, \o7 entre-nous \f7 intimations were exchanged, deepening an emotional connection that fairly sizzled with an underlying sexual tension.
There is heavy petting, and there is heavy emoting. Both constitute infidelity to a marriage or primary relationship. Psychologists call an affair without any physical touching extramarital emotional involvement, emotional infidelity or an emotional affair. In emotional affairs, deep, personal intimacies are traded instead of fantasies of the flesh.
The hallmarks of an emotional infidelity are secrecy and sexual chemistry, according to Shirley Glass, a Baltimore area clinical psychologist who has studied infidelity for the last 25 years. Friendships, whether they are hatched over the Internet or in the flesh, begin and develop quickly when someone connects with a person who appears to be empathic and who shares common interests. The first transgression of an emotional infidelity is when two people share information about problems in their primary relationship that their respective partner would feel was a violation. This flags vulnerability and possible availability, writes Glass in the forward to "Infidelity on the Internet" (Sourcebooks Inc., 2001), co-written by psychologist Marlene Maheu and therapist Rona Subotnik.
Trouble looms large when one person intimates feelings to a potential sexual partner, things they are unwilling to confide to their existing partner, Glass said. Suddenly, the emotional intimacy in the friendship is deeper than that of the primary relationship, drawing the two people closer to a sexual affair. A primary relationship is even more threatened when marital troubles are discussed with someone who has no vested interest in the marriage, according to Glass.
