First time emotional and sexual affairs are almost always accidental. They rarely start as an inappropriate relationship. The individuals involved are not “fishing” or looking to find an affair partner. In fact, they are usually committed to their spouse initially. So, if that’s true, how do these experiences happen? Is it irrational behavior? Does the individual become psychotic? Is this a developmental, mid-life issue? The answer is “no” to all of the above. Rather, most first time affairs occur as the individuals involved are innocently and ignorantly prepared for adultery.
Immediately folks ask, “How does that happen?” The answer is simple, your affair will almost always be with someone you know and with whom you have built some rapport. We often call these relationships, platonic friendships and that is what most of them stay until unusual and sustained stress enters the life of one of the friends. The need to share, the need for personal support and understanding while going through that trauma, causes one to talk on a very personal level to the platonic friend. The platonic friend now becomes a personal confidant who understands you better than even your own spouse might. Platonic friendships are not inherently wrong but they become inherently dangerous to a marriage when one shares very personal struggles with the friend. Some of the ways (19 are listed in Close Calls: What Adulterers Want You to Know About Protecting Your Marriage) these friendships are innocently and ignorantly developed are listed below.
- Do you save topics of conversation for your friend because you feel they understand you better?
- Do you find yourself looking forward to seeing your friends more than you look forward to seeing your spouse?
- Are you spending money on your friendship for lunches, gifts, coffee, that your spouse is unaware of?
- Are you and your spouse in conflict over this friendship?
- Do you find yourself lying and or manipulating the truth in order to spend more time with this friend?
- Are you hiding receipts, cell phone bills, mail, gifts, and time spent with your friend from your spouse?
- Has your friend shared feelings for you or touched you in a way that created a shiver of infatuation in you?
- Do you do any of the following with this friend: travel, go to entertainment venues, drink alcohol, eat expensive meals, and return to the same hotel together, all in the name of doing business and entertaining clients?
So, if you find yourself in one of these friendships, how do you know it is dangerous? If your mood changes when you hear from this person, see them in the office, receive a text from them, smell their cologne, minister with them, etc., you are in danger! You will not be able to keep your conversations from becoming more personal. Your interest in talking with each other will grow. You will become confused about staying in your marriage. You will think that you have found a soul mate and you will begin to starve your marriage and feed the friendship. You are now under the influence of a mood altering substance-infatuation.
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DAVE CARDER currently serves as Pastor responsible for Counseling Ministries at the First Evangelical Free Church of Fullerton. He holds graduate degrees in Biblical Literature and in Counseling Psychology as well as the Michigan Limited License in Psychology and the Marriage and Family Therapy license in California. Dave has published five books, one of which won The Gold Medallion Award in Personal Evangelism in 1993. Dave and his wife, Ronnie, have four adult children and five grandchildren. In their spare time they enjoy jogging.
