Emotional Affairs: When closeness becomes destructive – Part I
Friendships are great. We need them, and we are drawn to them. But some friendships can get too close, especially friendships that involve someone who is married to someone else. Do you know the warning signs if this is happening to you, or someone you know?
Go deeper on this subject in Ellen’s blog: “Emotional Affairs: When closeness becomes destructive—Part 1.”
Emotional Affairs
Deep sharing about issues of the heart, even the spiritual journey. Texting, sharing emails several times a day, asking for prayer, or sharing exciting or troubling news. A slow-growing emotional intimacy and mental preoccupation about this person that initially feels so right, maybe even a provision of God in the midst of loneliness. But also hiding: a growing sense that this relationship needs to be kept secret, so as to guard the exclusive nature of what feels like a unique connection, because most people just wouldn’t understand, right?
You know, this kind of deep, all-consuming connection is often what’s promoted as the ideal relationship. But is it really healthy? And what about when this is a relationship between a married person and someone other than her spouse? Or a single person describing a friendship with a married woman?
Warning Signs
Many men and women miss the alarms going off when a relationship begins to move towards an emotional affair. This is what happens when two people, one of whom is married, share a depth of emotional intimacy that rightly belongs to a spouse. It’s assumed that if there’s no sexual involvement, the relationship is okay. However, marital unfaithfulness includes any form of sharing with someone other than your spouse what rightfully belongs only to a husband or wife. Similarly, when a single is involved with a married person of the opposite or same gender in a way that God intends to be experienced only within the safe boundaries of marriage, it’s not okay.
Are You Having an Emotional Affair?
Here are some diagnostic thoughts and questions to help discern if perhaps a relationship in your life has morphed beyond what is healthy, and maybe become something unholy.
Secrecy Is there any hiding or deception involved in regards to your interactions with this person?
Next, a growing intensity in regards to frequency and depth of communication. Be honest here. How much contact are the two of you in, face to face, over devices, social media? And how does that compare to communication with other key people in your life, including your spouse if you’re married?
What about romantic and/or sexual chemistry when you’re around this person, or maybe when you’re just thinking about them? You know, God never intended for those powerful experiences to be pursued outside the lifelong commitment of marriage, which is a gift.
Also, where does this relationship lead you? Towards Christ or away? Towards your spouse or away? Does it motivate you to more passionately invest in loving other people, or to isolate and focus on this one person?
Finally, and this is hard, but what would other committed Christians in your life say? How would they react if they knew the full extent of this relationship in your life?
Friend, if any of these thoughts resonate with you, please pause. You could be in a very dangerous situation that is not going to give you what your heart is longing for. God does want us to have rich and meaningful relationships, whether single or married, but he never blesses when we try to soothe our hearts and meet our needs by stepping outside wise relational boundaries. There’s a way out through Christ, and I’m going to explain that in Part 2.
