OPRAH.COMtuszqcexswfqrvtaub Trending Stories Could You Be Having an Emotional Affair? By Gail Saltz Illustration: Jeffery Smith Flirtatious e-mails. Cell phone heart-to-hearts. Perfectly harmless working lunches. It's a new kind of adultery. There's no sex, but psychiatrist Gail Saltz knows trouble when she sees it. A client I'll call Sharon knew that something was missing in her marriage. She and Robert used to be passionate about each other, she said, but after 12 years and two children, she felt removed. Robert never asked her about work or what she was worried about or felt like doing. She was no longer attracted to him, and they rarely spent time alone together. Instead, she threw her energy into raising the children and her job as a paralegal. Life had become bland. Then there was Todd. He'd been at the law firm longer than Sharon and showed her the ropes. They would discuss complicated cases, and Sharon found his enthusiasm engaging. They'd grab coffee together, and soon coffee became lunch, and lunch led to phone calls and e-mails as their conversations went from professional to deeply personal. Sharon thought about Todd all the time, and told me she hadn't felt this alive since she and Robert had started dating. While she recognized a crush—her excitement about seeing him, her pleasure in his jokes, her relief in confiding in someone who got her—she told herself there was nothing wrong with what she was doing because they weren't having sex. Robert, however, started to notice his wife's coming home later. She was on her cell phone a lot on the weekends, and when he asked who she was talking to, she became evasive. At one point, he complained that they never had sex anymore, that he felt lonely in the marriage, and that he wondered if there was someone else. Sharon assured Robert—and herself—that she wasn't having an affair. While she felt a little guilty, the thought of giving up Todd, the way he made her feel beautiful and funny and fantastic, was unbearable.Emotional cheating (with an "office husband," a chat room lover, or a newly appealing ex) steers clear of physical intimacy, but it does involve secrecy, deception, and therefore betrayal. People enmeshed in nonsexual affairs preserve their "deniability," convincing themselves they don't have to change anything. That's where they're wrong. If you think about it, it's the breach of trust, more than the sex, that's the most painful aspect of an affair and, I can tell you from my work as a psychiatrist, the most difficult to recover from. Few people go looking for an extramarital entanglement. But like Sharon, they might hit a patch where their relationship isn't fun anymore, and they feel isolated and frustrated. Rather than making a collaborative effort with their partner—and perhaps a couples therapist—to improve it, women in particular often accept that "this is just the way the marriage is." So while they aren't consciously in the market, they are ripe for an affair of the heart: hungry for attention, craving excitement, and eager for someone to fill the emptiness they feel inside. Sharon came to depend on Todd for emotional highs. The flirting, the accolades, the sympathetic ear all made her feel special. She escaped into this new involvement in a scenario that's increasingly common. Though emotional affairs have always been around, I'm seeing more of them among my clients than ever before. We've all grown so used to watching, reading, and hearing sexually suggestive material that there's no longer an obvious verbal or physical line we think we're crossing. And the exponential growth of e-mail, instant messaging, and cell phones gives us a wealth of private ways to connect. It's a snap to Google an old flame: What would have been idle fantasy a decade ago can, with the click of a mouse, grow into emotional (or sexual) infidelity. From the May 2006 issue of O, The Oprah Magazine NEXT STORY More O Magazine Common Love Traps to Avoid 5 Fights Every Couple Has to Have Once Be More Giving in Your Marriage—Without Feeling Like a Maid The 5 Best New Pieces of Relationship Advice We've Heard Why Are These Men Leaving Their Wives? 6 Totally Normal Freak-Outs That Can Shape Your Relationship 6 New Ideas for Getting Better at Love The Relationship Lessons We Learn Too Late 5 Great Relationship Mistakes 10 Unexpected Ways That Only You Can Save Your Marriage 6 Ways to Avoid a Fight While on Vacation When It's Time to Leave a Relationship What It Really Takes to Stay Happily Married Why Fighting Can Actually Be Good for Your Relationship 8 Things You Only Learn About Your Partner by Traveling Together 10 Questions Your Partner Still Needs to Answer 6 Signs Your Partner Is Secretly Unhappy The Not-Perfect Marriage That Makes Us Believe in Love He Cheated, She Stayed: One Woman's True Story of Getting Over Infidelity What Happens When You Find the One...And He's Nothing—Nothing—Like You Expected? 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