SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

This'll be long, apologies in advance.

Background is I am the BW, DD 11 months back, H hade a 2,5 month EA + PA with C. We are in MC and IC and trying to R. He has been NC since DD (different parts of the company).

Immediately after DD hit WH started bringing up that I had basically done the same thing. Which I had not. (his A was 90% chatting/sexting, 5 short 5-10 minute meet-ups in the office to make out, one BJ, never left the workspace and never intercourse, I know this from having read their chats).He accused me of having had my own A with a C a few years back. I was completely shocked as I had no idea he had ever believed this, he has never mentioned it nor showed during the time he had thought it had been going on any sort of signs of it disturbing him.

I had had what I would have thought of as a slight crush on a colleague, but since 'nothing ever happened between us' I had never considered it being anything more than perhaps a slightly inappropriate friendship, a passing crush I decided to ignore, it would pass, but far from anything even resembling an A. A chance I never took. I basically just blew WH attempts to bring this up off as a way to deflect from his PA and try to make me almost as bad as him. I wasn't having any of that. We discussed his believes about what had transpired and I explained that nothing HAD in fact ever happened between us not a single kiss, no hand holding, nothing. Not even when drunk at parties or when travelling for work over seas to a conferences. Nothing ever did happen.

Throughout the year however he has continued to bring this up and I have been so focused on the fact that I would not let him try to deflect or explain away his A by attempting to make me a co-cheater of any sorts that I've not really been willing to put any deeper thoughts into my own actions a few years back.

However, in my IC I have lately started to discuss these things and now I'm starting to wonder. Could I, in fact, have had an EA without understanding that that's what it was? EAs weren't really in my vocabulary before becoming a BW myself, I guess I just figured if you were married many decades, at one point or the other both would likely find other people attractive perhaps have a short crush, but the main thing was not to act on it and it would pass. And that's what I figured this had been, for me. Now I'm starting to see that in many ways, it did fill the 'criteria' if you will, for an EA. Where does one draw the line? And who gets to decide, me or the H who feels betrayed?

What was, was a friendship that I truly enjoyed, there was mutual attraction and some sexual tension but none of that was EVER acted upon, it was never discussed nor acknowledged, it was just like a silent mutual understanding that it's there but nothing can ever happen. And nothing ever did. Complete respect for my marriage (C was single at the time but had been betrayed in his previous marriage, I believe this kept him from ever trying anything). There was the occasional friendly hug or pat on the back, some touchy feely stuff perhaps (non sexual) but always in other people's proximity, never any suggestive sexual touching of any sort. We never ever discussed any feelings we might have had for one another, it was more just friendly banter, almost sibling-like bickering in some ways but definitely with a sexual undertone always present but never acknowledged. We spent lots of time together as we worked on projects together and we did during that year we were working closely spend hours chatting and on the phone during evenings and weekends. We did get extremely close and discussed life deeper issues always. Supported each other in life. Was I interested? yes. Did I contemplate leaving my H for him, yes, I fought with thoughts of that for a long time but I decided against it as I always felt I loved my H and was not willing to leave him for my C and so I never acted on any feelings, and obviously never discussed them with my C either. This is why I have thought it was NOT an EA because there was no secrecy, I spoke to my C on the phone always in front of H, he knew I was chatting with him, I never deleted anything, hid anything because it wasn't affair-like in my opinion. Also no feelings or desires were ever discussed, acknowledged or acted on. It was just this 'knowing' that it was there I guess. But he did become my first go-to in many things in life, even before or completely parallell to my H. And when we traveled for work together, even though nothing ever happened between us, it almost felt like going on a trip as a couple. We shared many interests and values my H and I do not and I loved having someone to share. these things with. I felt seen, valued and like someone was attracted to me. There were lot's of compliments and jokes about how I was too good looking for my H.

My H feels it was an EA because he says it was obvious to anyone in the same room as the two of us (me and my C) that we had crushes on each other, that it was just so clear to him that any time he saw us together or heard me talk over the phone that we had feelings for each other. He's not wrong I guess, but now I'm struggling with the question, did I in fact have an EA without understanding that that's what It was, and so are we MH's really? Obviously this has been eating at my H for three years prior to his own A and he has said in MC that he partly justified it to himself with thinking he wasn't doing anything I hadn't already done. But here's the thing. I'm willing to take a long hard look at myself and my actions and how they may have had e negative effect on our M and what later transpired. But I don't want to fall into the trap of letting him deflect or blame.shift by making me feel I've done something I haven't done. Does that make sense? How do I know I'm starting to have insight and not just being manipulated I guess?

[This message edited by Miserylikescompany at 1:10 PM, Sunday, November 5th]

You're being manipulated. He's trying to normalise and justify his behaviour and blaming you for the same thing.

It is perfectly normal to find people other than your spouse attractive. I think it's also normal for many people for their thoughts to wander, perhaps moreso based on circumstances they are dealing with, but it's not healthy when it crosses romantic lines. Being married doesn't change that. What changes is that you put up boundaries and don't act like a fucking animal based on those instincts and attractions as you have some level of self control and integrity and put your energy into your marriage/family.

You didn't fuck some coworker. He did. Not the same.

[This message edited by SerJR at 1:57 PM, Sunday, November 5th]

What you describe is an emotional affair, in my book. It sounds like you had boundaries that you didn’t cross, which is good, but you drew them far enough out that the relationship was encroaching on space that should’ve been reserved for your marriage. You weren’t just having a passing attraction or crush, you were absorbed in a relationship where you were actively, for an extended period, considering leaving your husband for this man. I think most people in a committed relationship would feel emotionally cheated on in that situation—like they had lost their primary place in their partner’s emotional life and were being shut out and in limbo, auditioning for a part they had already committed to.

They said, my husband’s infidelity has given me better clarity about boundaries and emotional affairs than I had before (the book Not Just Friends is GREAT for clarifying boundaries), and I can see how people get into an EA without realizing it and feel like it’s ok because they’re not physically/sexually cheating. How did your husband feel about your relationship with the other man at the time? Was it something the two of you ever talked about? Did he express discomfort, and if so, how did you respond?

I don’t think your husband gets to use your behavior to deflect from his own, and his actions are egregious, but it sounds like you have a lot to work through all the way around. It IS kind of a MH situation, in my opinion.

How did your husband feel about your relationship with the other man at the time? Was it something the two of you ever talked about? Did he express discomfort, and if so, how did you respond?

At the time he never said anything, showed any sign of knowing I felt anything at all for my C, in fact, I think that's part of what made me think it couldn't have been an EA since it didn't bother my H that we were so much in contact. I know that may sound weird, but it's like I never even questioned it, since he didn't either.
First I ever heard him mention it was DD and the months after, and like I said, at first I pretty much blew it off as just an attempt to deflect (which in truth was probably a large part of it). But as I've read many books, forums and watched videos, I've started to see that it might have been an EA even if I at the time, and after didn't understand that it was. I always would've thought that would have included sexting, or expressing feelings and attractions for each other in some way etc. Something along the lines of 'if you weren't married then...'. But like you say, I was involved, he did in several ways take a place in my day to day life as a confidante that should have been saved for my H only. I did feel I got things in that relationship I was missing in my M, validation, compliments etc that I had missed getting for decades at home. But I was super clear with my boundaries and never went over them so I guess I figured I was in the clear. Now I'm starting to see I might not have been so squeaky clean.

My H did feel it was a form of betrayal, in fact, he still claims he doesn't completely believe me nothing physical ever happened (I guess since he had no self control in that department he thinks we are all that way ) and he has expressed relief that I am no longer working at that workplace so I am NC with this person these days. He understands it is not the same as his A and does no attempt to compare or minimise his A, however he does feel that my moral superiority attitude (guilty as charged to that ) is unwarranted considering this. And he feels it is something we still need to look as as one of the many things that were really messed up with our M prior to his A (we were messed up and in MC for an entire year befor his A - not even there did he mention he had struggled with bitterness over this for years). I am starting to wonder, if he has been struggling with thoughts, hurt and bitterness around this issue, unable to even bring it up in MC for 4 years prior to his own A, what has that done to our M, the dynamics between us? nothing good at least. Jeez we really are a hot mess

There are two issues here...

1. Yours

2. His

Let's talk about 'his' first.

He is obviously trying to justify his affair by using your 'crush' affair. That is wrong. Because he is blaming you for his affair. His affair has nothing to do with you. Even if you had full blown affair, that doesn't give him any reason to cheat on you. It gives him reason to divorce you and get out of your life but not to cheat on you because it serves nothing and nobody. Infidelity not only scars betrayeds but also waywards. Cheating never solves anything. No issues of marriage has ever been solved by adultery, even past adultery of a partner. So, don't let him blame you for his bad choice. This only shows he is not remorseful of his actions and thus, he is not a reconciliation material yet i.e a safe partner.

Did he ever raised concerns about your relation with your C during the time you were close to that guy?? If not, then why didn't he raise any concerns?? Two explanations:

1.I believe the reason he didn't raise concerns was because you didn't cross any line and were fully transparent with him as you claim. So, he had no reason to consider that as an 'affair' and hence, didn't complain about your friendship to avoid angering you and being seen has jealous and insecure husband.

2. It's also possible that like you, even he didn't know what EA was until recently and hence failed to recognize what was going on between you and C. So, he failed to raise any concerns.

Whatever the reason may be behind his choice of not raising his concerns, one point is clear that they have nothing to do with his affair. As long as he persist on his attempts to interlink these two separate incidents, it makes it very clear that he is non-remorseful.

The right thing for him to do was to communicate his legitimate feelings and concerns with you. This would have solved many problems. But, no. It bottled all his feelings and let them turn into resentment and finally used them to justify his affair. This is a behavior of destructive character. He must come out of this for this R to work.

Your issue: there are two important steps to avoid failing into affair trap.

A. Not to act on tempting affair feelings/attraction.

B. Avoid/Prevent the opportunities of affair from raising.

You followed first step very well but utterly failed on second. You knew you had feelings for him. C knew he had feelings for you. You both knew you had feelings for each other and so, your husband. You claim there was sexual tension between you two and all three of you knew about it. I can definitely imagine how insecure and painful your husband might have felt knowing through his guts that you were walking on slippery slope and you weren't avoiding that. You only focused on not falling but not on avoiding walking on that slippery slope altogether.

You had plenty opportunities to avoid being in close proximity with him and had many opportunities to turn this dangerous relation into 'just professional' one. You could have avoided getting drunk with him when your husband wasn't around. You could have avoided traveling alone with him on business if it was an option. You could have avoided sharing personal things with me because they obviously and inevitably build a bond. You could have kept your phone contact with him only to work related. All of these acts would have shown you as a person actively avoiding situations that would create opportunities to push/cross boundaries. Unfortunately, you didn't avoid these situations even when you could. And even more unfortunate that your husband was a witness whenever you made these choices of not avoiding such situations. He SAW you actively making choices that would put you in a situation where you could easily cross the line. He might have believed that this is what you wanted because repeated actions demonstrates inclinations. And, unfortunate for you that he was never there to witness you not taking upon those opportunities to cross the line. He rarely witnessed you following STEP 1.

In short, he was there to witness you making choices that would put you on a slippery slope but he wasn't there very often to see you making choices to avoid falling. His current opinion and assumptions of what happened between you and C are based of what he witnessed and not what he didn't witness and also partly to get away with his affair (dont let him get away). Perhaps, a polygraph test could absolve you from his suspicions.

Coming to your question - whether it was EA or not??

Was I interested? yes. Did I contemplate leaving my H for him, yes, I fought with thoughts of that for a long time

I believe in your case, this is the moment you should have realised that your slippery friendship has become an EA because you partly desired 'Yes' to leaving your husband for C. Which means he had conquered enough space in your life for you to contemplate leaving her husband but that space wasn't big enough for you to actually commit leaving your husband.

You claim you fought those thoughts for long time?? Care to explain how you fought those thoughts? And why it took long time?In your post, I don't see anything hinting at you doing something to fight those thoughts. You let this relation to grow without any resistance from you till he became a desirable option in your life. This was EA, no doubt. You didn't follow STEP 2 because C wasn't just a crush. He was more than that. And, your husband knew it.

[This message edited by Lurkingsoul12 at 5:27 PM, Monday, November 20th]

Short comment, you didn't act out in an explicit way, but you allowed yourself to explore with your heart and mind, feeling the feelings, etc. To take away from your WH. To put the marrige it in danger. It must have been VERY obvious if your WH could see that so well. For me personally it would be untolerable, is your WH an avoidant type?

That said, you held the boundaries, as you understood them, up. There is no equivalence with what your H did.

[This message edited by Potentialforevil at 2:18 PM, Sunday, November 5th]

You know, if you and your WH were in MC for a year before he physically cheated with another, and yet all during that time, he never once brought up your friendship with a coworker, then....I dunno...smells like manipulation going on, awfully after-the-fact justifying effort.

You mentioned that he never gave you any compliments, for decades? Is he perhaps emotionally stunted and cannot or will not learn how to be a better friend to you? (This hits close to home for me as my WH is has some kind of emotional/communicating impairment which leaves a huge void in our daily existence; it's hard work believing he cares, when I need to repeat the same requests every freakin' day, since he seems unable to remember he is in a M when he does anything. In my mind, his history of cheating with sex workers was just an outgrowth of all the other ways he still cannot seem to think of me, day after day.)

So in short, I agree withSerJR, 100%.

He is obviously trying to justify his affair by using your 'crush' affair. That is wrong. Because he is blaming you for his affair.

We've discussed this part a lot, and like I said, I have shut it down immediately every time, and I've been very clear, I think he HAS gotten the message as far as this goes, I do think he 'gets it'. He doesn't blame this for his affair, its more one of a hundred million things he told himself while he was in the A.

He just thinks we ALSO need to discuss this issue and what other issues our marriage has and had, the A he had being the worst of them. So how does one balance the fine line between him having the right to bring it up and for me to acknowledge that I apparently, had an EA without understanding that that's what it was (never even knew that was a thing before), without it going over the line to blame shifting? If he brings it up, is that automatically using it to deflect? how can we even discuss things I have done to harm our relationship, things that led to our relationship being in big trouble for years, and susceptible to an affair, without being the reason FOR the affair in itself? All the books say this needs to be done, not taking any blame for the affair, but looking at what part I had in making the relationship susceptible to trouble in the first place. I find this difficult to balance. I KNOW we were in trouble, I KNOW we are both severely unhappy for years, we need to deal with that as well, but every time we go that route it feels like deflecting from the A and him trying to blame our situation for the A.

You claim you fought those thoughts for long time?? Care to explain how you fought those thoughts? And why it took long time?In your post, I don't see anything hinting at you doing something to fight those thoughts. You let this relation to grow without any resistance from you till he became a desirable option in your life.

Struggled with would probably have been a better wording I guess. I felt uncomfortable about having the feelings I did for my C, hoped they would go away, tried to arrange romantic weekends with my H to focus more on my M and get that going instead, and while I in a way enjoyed the attention he was giving me I hoped he would fins a new GF so his positive focus on me would diminish as I was finding it hard to resist. This is also what happened, he eventually found a new GF, got married etc and due to changes in the workplace we no longer worked as closely together as before and so things simmered down by themselves and became non existent until I changed workplaces all together a few years later. I did also draw boundaries with my C a couple of times where there might have become a situation that could have led to inappropriate things, where I just declined. Invitations to go for a glass of wine to discuss work things that I said no to etc. It took a long time due to the fact that we worked together so closely for along time. Once we got placed on different projects I could cut down contact significantly and did.

I was in the same position. It wasn't until marriage counseling that my relationship with a co-worker was labeled an emotional affair. To be honest, it took me a long time to accept this. Like you, I held the line and thought I hadn't done anything really wrong. Also like you, I felt like it was a deflection / manipulation on his part.

It is a tricky line between discussing the 'why' of the affair and blame. It seems initial "whys" are surface level and need to be drilled down even further.

Eventually (it took a good long while) my WS was able to say that he while he thought I had had a full blown PA it didn't excuse what he had done. He had other choices like coming to me, confronting me or simply ending the marriage. What my EA revealed was how very poor our communication was. How avoidant we both were. And that is the chasm the led to his affair. He would now say, taking full responsibility, that he thought his marriage was in crisis then and he did nothing to address it and that even if I hadn't had an EA, an affair was likely in his future.

(Same goes for me. I developed feelings for someone else and did nothing to take a long hard look at my relationship).

It's messy getting there as you ping pong back and forth between he did this and I did that. But the aim, I think, is for both partners to take responsibility for what they have done and get to a place where both acknowledge their actions are theirs alone.

Our MC navigated us through that. For a long while, the focus was on his affair. I needed priority triaging. Once I stabilized, we took a look at his feelings about my EA. Again, it gets messy / blurry, but by allowing me to heal some, feel heard and recognized, we were able to have talks about the past more productively.

I think someone wrote here once: The time to bring up what I did to you was back when I was doing it to you. Right now, we are discussing what you did to me. That's kind of the approach we took with our MC.

How did your crush end, assuming it did? What's your relationship with the guy now? Do YOU think you conducted an EA?

IMO, based on what you've written so far, you were on the slippery slope, not in an EA. It's a close call for me, though, and I can see framing it as an EA.

Did you ever do or say anything with/to this guy that you wouldn't have wanted your H to see and/or hear? That's key, IMO.

It must have been VERY obvious if your WH could see that so well. For me personally it would be untolerable, is your WH an avoidant type?

I never knew it was obvious, I didn't think it was, so I was absolutely shocked when H blurted this out after his own A came out. He met my C on a few occasions, knew him a bit from before, and he claims that he immediately upon being with us in the same space realised we were attracted to each other just from the way we are around each other. I find this utterly humiliating (for us both) and feel horrible that I was blind to this at the time. I had no clue it was showing. And I guess him not saying anything, reinforced my belief that it wasn't showing. I thought I had managed to hide it from my H until the feelings passed. And since I never acted on my feelings, I thought things had been handled well....

He is EXTREMELY avoidant. I have asked him what he felt at the time about the situation and why he never broached the subject. He says he swung between feeling jealous and pissed off to just feeling like 'who cares, if it's him you want just go be with him then'. We were in a really bad way in our M at that time, so he says he figured I'd let him know if I decided to leave him. Once my C and I started having less contact when our projects changed, he figured the A had ended and just never brought it up, until the DD nuclear hit.

How did your crush end, assuming it did? What's your relationship with the guy now? Do YOU think you conducted an EA?

IMO, based on what you've written so far, you were on the slippery slope, not in an EA. It's a close call for me, though, and I can see framing it as an EA.

I guess it just simmered down to an almost 0 level until we were no longer at the same working place. A few things happened for that to happen, I marked boundaries a few times that I believe sent the message that nothing would ever happen between us in a subtle but still clear way. This made him back off with his attentions and invitations. He started dating and so many of the 'functions' I had had in his life as his main female confidante were transfered to her, which I had hoped for and was grateful for. This changed the dynamic between us and his attention on me shifted. Also our work relationship changed due to him being promoted, he never became my boss but he became part of the company's upper lever which also meant there became a power-shift between us that he luckily handled by becoming more professional towards me.

I did NOT think I had an EA, I still, to this day don't really think I did. I feel I was on the slippery slope like you say but not in an A, I managed to balance not falling. I'm just open to the possibility that I might have anyways? It didn't feel like an A. It felt like a slightly too flirtatious and inappropriate friendship, an attraction that wasn't ideal, but since nothing was ever discussed or acknowledged between us, I might have imagined it all as well you know? I can't be SURE the attraction was mutual, he never said som much, it was just a feeling. But I guess if my H picked up on it as well and claims it was obvious to him my C was in love with me, and that I was attracted to him as well, it must have been that way.

Did you ever do or say anything with/to this guy that you wouldn't have wanted your H to see and/or hear? That's key, IMO.

Not really. My H once asked to read through all of our chats all the years back and I said he could. He later chose not to even though I said he was welcome to, I have not deleted anything. There isn't anything in there I couldn't let him read, it's flirtatious yes at times but never sexual. Never inappropriate, it's just 'a bit too friendly' I guess? It might feel a bit embarrassing but there's nothing 'damaging' in there. Would I have been as friendly around him as I usually was with my H in the room? probably not? but then again, he claims I WAS too friendly with him in the room so what do I know? It's a blurry line I guess.

From "Not Just Friends" by Shirley Glass.

My wife's ea took place right in front of my face because I trusted her and didn't want to seem jealous and possessive. After IC, I understand that these can be normal and healthy emotions.

Quiz: Has Your Friendship Become an Emotional Affair?*

Directions: Check Yes or No to the left of each statement.

Yes No

1. Do you confide more to your friend than to your partner about how your day went?

Yes No

2. Do you discuss negative feelings or intimate details about your marriage with your friend but not with your partner?

Yes No

3. Are you open with your partner about the extent of your involvement with your friend?

Yes No

4. Would you feel comfortable if your partner heard your conversation with your friend?

Yes No

5. Would you feel comfortable if your partner saw a videotape of your meetings?

Yes No

6. Are you aware of sexual tensions in this friendship?

Yes No

7. Do you and your friend touch differently when you're alone than in front of others?

Yes No

8. Are you in love with your friend?

Scoring Key:

You get one point each for yes to questions 1, 2, 6, 7, 8, and one point each for no to 3, 4, 5.

If you scored near 0, this is just a friendship.

If you scored 3 or more, you may not be "just friends."

If you scored 7-8, you are definitely involved in an emotional affair.

I reread my post and I think I made some wrong assessment of your situation. I was wrong to claim that yours was definitely an EA. It was a CLOSE CALL. I should have seen the clear distinction between a close call and an EA. You did play with the fire long enough to make your partner feel anxious and betrayed but fortunately none of you got burnt. What you did was HIGHLY INAPPROPRIATE AND RECKLESS but it wasn't EA because you didn't fall on the slippery slope. Whereas your husband failed to communicate his concerns to you, failed to set boundaries with his coworker and also failed to prevent himself from crossing the line. He cannot drag you to his level. You and him are not the same here.

His concerns are valid. But the timing and intent behind his allegations on you are suspicious. You also said in another post that it was becoming harder for you to resist C. If those external changes that helped your friendship with C to fizzle out had not happened and you both were still working together,then who knows what would have happened by now. So, you have to find a way to address this concern of your husband without letting him use this as a weapon against you to validate his affair. MC can help you on this.

Another key issue here is communication between you and your husband. I don't what kind of communication you both have but I can say whatever kind it is, it is not enough and healthy...

[This message edited by Lurkingsoul12 at 5:27 PM, Monday, November 20th]

This is precisely the same behavior my H has exhibited multiple times in our M with multiple other women. I did as your H decided to do and had an exit EA/PA with a COW.

*ETA*: Your affair reads just like my H's EA with a close family friend. I feel like I was firmly in your H's shoes- only I had a front row seat to their carrying on. It wasn't "sexual" - just touchy feely. It wasn't "anything to be ashamed of" - except he was giving her glowing attention that was denied to me. It wasn't "inappropriate" - but everyone (in our friend group- just like your coworkers) could see the attraction.

I think it would be best for you to work on both your MINIMIZATIONS and the affect of your H's betrayal on you in IC. It's taken my H years to even admit that what he was doing with our mutual friend was inappropriate and borderline EA. He's still having a "slippery slope" EA/pining with another younger piece of work because HE CHOSES NOT TO DO THE WORK. It seems like you have a vulnerability in this area- unless you patch it up, the next time could be a full PA.
*** ETA OVER ***

It was an EA. Close call on the PA- you had multiple chances and it was likely only the character of your COW that kept you out of a full blown PA.

You contemplated leaving your H for him. You shared deep personal feelings. You were touchy-feeling (but non-sexual!- can you hear the minimization there??). You were comparing your H negatively to your COW. You were playing footsie on the physical aspect too. If you were to be more honest with yourself, did you have sexual fantasies about COW? It wouldn't make you a horrible person, just human. If you were contemplating what leaving your H for him would look like, there's a big probability that you envisioned sex with your COW.

You were in an EA. FULL STOP.

None of that justifies what he did to you. If he's using that as a "get out of jail free card" for his A, that is manipulation. HOWEVER, the manipulation doesn't make what he experienced watching you fall in love with your COW any less valid.

MC will help you both learn to communicate healthily about the affects of your affairs on each other. Both need to be handled in separate conversations. First person to bring up their feelings about the other person's A gets that conversation to themselves- no other A's getting thrown in their face. Then... take a break... If you need to address feelings from your betrayal, schedule a convo in a separate time to discuss.

None of that means that you're a horrible person- you did have boundaries (around the physical) and did enforce them... to a point.

It's good you're examining this in IC. Keep digging into it. This by no means caused or justified your H's affair- he had other options for handling his response to yours. HOWEVER, if you guys are going to heal, you need to take ownership of the devastation your own EA wreaked on your M and how it contributed to a deeply unhealthy environment for you both.

[This message edited by MIgander at 1:19 PM, Monday, November 6th]

EAs and PAs are spectrums:

EAs can be brief secret crushes that are nurtured up to years-long openly-acknowledged romantic affairs where "I loves you"s are exchanged and maybe even plans are laid to leave spouses.

PAs differ from EAs in the physical component from just touching, to kissing, to one night stands, up to years-long fully sexual relationships where things are done with the AP that have never been done with the spouse.

And everything in between.

In my opinion, you did have an EA.

Was it on the far end of the EA spectrum? No. But it was an EA.

...since 'nothing ever happened between us' I had never considered it being anything more than perhaps a slightly inappropriate friendship, a passing crush I decided to ignore

As soon as you acknowledge the "slightly inappropriate friendship," that was an EA.

Did the crush pass? Yes, but you nurtured it to the point where it was even obvious to others before it was over.

You nurtured it to the point where you considered leaving your husband.

there was mutual attraction and some sexual tension...like a silent mutual understanding...
There was the occasional friendly hug or pat on the back, some touchy feely stuff....friendly banter...definitely with a sexual undertone....We spent lots of time together as we worked on projects together and we did during that year we were working closely spend hours chatting and on the phone during evenings and weekends. We did get extremely close and discussed life deeper issues always. Supported each other in life. Was I interested? yes. Did I contemplate leaving my H for him, yes, I fought with thoughts of that for a long time....

These are your words. I just removed the minimizations like "never acted upon" or "never acknowledged."

"Never acted upon" just means that your EA didn't become a full-blown PA (but you edged up to it with that touchy feely stuff (albeit non-sexual touching--you were still sparking the fire).

"Never acknowledged" means zero, zip. Just because a fire is unacknowledged doesn't mean it won't be destructive.

Arguably, a massage with a happy ending could be unacknowledged by both parties, yet it happened.

My H had EAs and sexted other women but didn't acknowledge that these women were girlfriends until pushed several times in MC. His lack of acknowledgement didn't make them less affair partners--except in his own mind.

APs don't have to have a conversation acknowledging the affair for the affair to be going on.

I agree with BreakingBad and MIgander's assessment that it was an EA. I like the continuum description and also believe that you didn't progress as far as some do with an EA. But hey, when you are communicating all the time, work and at home, with another man and the thought has crossed your mind to leave your husband for him you know you've crossed the line.

The fact your husband recognized it means it existed significantly enough to be evident to observant third parties. The feelings and thoughts that were in your head were strong enough to be seen by others in your eyes, body language and things you said. I congratulate you for putting up some barriers though! And the guy too for having some appropriate boundaries because if he openly pursued you at just the right moment it might have become a full blown EA/PA. Maybe not, because you proved you did have boundaries but most people who end up in affairs don't go looking for them.

I think this is the real value of this site, the diversity of opinion and the thoughtful discussion. I started reading and was of the opinion that is wasn't a full EA, but upon closer reflection and especially BB's last comment, I think it may have been. I think you should really sit on this and explore it.

[This message edited by Justsomeguy at 3:15 PM, Monday, November 6th]

As a madhatter myself, where my wife had an EA/PA and I had EAs after we were married and I slept with someone before we were married, I can see both points you bring to this. The bottom line is that you had an EA, because I had a very similar EA that in the moment it wasn't filed away under the "EA" category until 4-5 years later. I read the book "Not Just Friends" and as I read it, began to think to myself, this sounds just like the relationship I had with this woman and not like a friendship. In the after math of the DDays, when I went NC with my AP at the time in 2019, my wife also demanded I go NC with my at that point former co-worker. I mean, I hadn't worked with this woman since late 2015 and by that point we had moved far out of state, so I wasn't in contact with her regularly at work and I certainly was thousands of miles away, so there was no physical interaction. All the same, going NC with her was one of the conditions my MH wife had for R, so I didn't hesitate.

About this time last year (I remember it being around Thanksgiving), a former colleague and friend reached out to me, saying that this gal had contacted him to see how I was doing. I had to tell him the whole ugly story about what had happened between my wife and I and how, I couldn't have any contact with her. Having dealt with his wife leaving him and his young sons for another woman, he understood the betrayal aspects and quickly apologized, as he had no idea. I had blocked this EA AP on everything, but genuinely forgot about LinkedIn, because A) I didn't use it much at all and B) forgot I was connected with her on there. Sure enough, within a day or two of my buddy calling to check on me, she reached out to me on LinkedIn and we had one more place to block her. I remember thinking, geesh, for someone who never once slept with me and we didn't have any relationship outside of work, she sure was clinging on to something, because we hadn't spoken at that point for over 3 years and she was far out of my mind.