How much is enough?

My 15-year-old son has a girlfriend (I know, I know. He's far too young. A baby!). He's smitten. They recently celebrated their one-month anniversary. A week later he visited the cottage of another friend. A girl. A visit that was planned months ago with this good friend.
Cue the drama: His girlfriend became convinced that "something" would happen between my son and his friend. And so she flirted with some guy over text, something my son only knows because a friend of his girlfriend sent him screen shots of the offending texts. My son plans to ask his girlfriend for the "truth" and if she lies to his face then he'll "have to decide what to do next."
It's not easy for me to back off and let my people in my life figure things out on their own though I try mightily. And so I asked my son some questions: What, to him, constitutes "cheating"? How important is honesty in any relationship? Where does he draw the line in what he will and will not tolerate in a relationship? How much is enough?
It's a question we all need to examine for ourselves. For some of us, putting up with someone's shit is a far easier life to imagine than being left or walking away. Far more tempting to tolerate an unhealthy relationship than none at all.
But we don't usually see it in those stark terms. We don't usually realize the fear beneath these choices that don't really feel like choices. We don't see that, by refusing to take a stand about what we will and won't tolerate, we're betraying ourselves. We think we're avoiding pain. But really, we're absorbing it.
How much is enough? 
"Enough" for me is the refusal of a partner to take responsibility for his choices and a refusal to do the work necessary to help us heal.
"Enough" for you might be his choice to cheat in the first place. "Enough" might be his choice to gamble away the mortgage. It might be his dedication to porn. "Enough" might be the first time he hits you. "Enough" might be the 87th time.
"Enough" is that place we come to where we realize that our own integrity is worth the price of heartbreak. It's where we take responsibility for our own choices and insist that others take responsibility for theirs. Enough is where we realize that standing firm in our own convictions won't be the easy thing but it will always be the right thing. Enough is freedom.

As for my son: I hope that he won't betray himself by moving the line between what he will and won't tolerate in order to avoid heartbreak. In any case, if this goes on much longer, I promise you I will have had more than enough.  ;)

Who defines cheating? And should we care?

There was much debate, the wake of Anthony Weiner's resignation, regarding whether what he did was, technically, cheating.
And it's a point that has, occasionally, raged here and in our own lives.
Many of us pre-D-Day, would have said that we were comfortable with our husbands having female friends but that any sex outside of our marriage, even a one-night-stand, was "a deal-breaker." Post D-Day, we've often reversed that view, discovering that it's not the sex that's so troublesome but the lying and the intimacy shared with another. Many of us discover that our husband's emotional affair – sharing dreams, hopes and, often, dissatisfaction with his marriage – is excruciating and hard to handle. Making it harder is sometimes the notion of others that "he didn't have sex", therefore he didn't technically break his marriage vows.
But there's nothing technical about healing from an affair. It's complicated and painful and doesn't follow prescribed rules. Most of us muddle through, hair unwashed and heart broken, until the day we feel a sliver of light shine through the dark and we realize that we just might survive this marital apocalypse.
And then comes the process of sifting through the rubble and trying to make sense of what happened...in the hope that if we understand it, we can protect ourselves from it happening to us again.
But I'm not sure, unless we've been tempted ourselves or are capable to truly putting ourselves in our spouse's shoes, we'll ever really understand it. So often I hear the familiar Nancy Reaganesque refrain of the betrayed – "He could have just said 'No'."
Sure he could have. But whether he didn't say "no" to actual sex or didn't say "no" to cyber sex or didn't say "no" to sharing intimate details of his life, all the analysis in the world isn't going to change that. And, oddly, it stops really mattering at some point whether he had actual sex, cyber sex or emotional intimacy. The point is he shared something private – that was supposed to be between you and him – with someone else. And that hurts like hell.
The only people who get caught up in the semantic gymnastics of what cheating really is are those looking for a loophole out of their own guilt...or those who've never had it done to them.

Emotional Affairs are Still Affairs...and I Don't Care What Anyone Else Says!

There's been quite a discussion taking place in the comments section over at Project Happily Ever After, following a post by a therapist on how to cope with an affair. Even I, who rarely has opinions on this sort of thing (cough, cough) weighed in.
But I'm astounded at the number of commenters, clearly in pain, who apologize for entering the debate because their husbands "only" had an emotional affair.
Only? Seriously??
My father "only" had an emotional affair, but it unmoored by formerly invincible mother enough to launch her into a decade-long alcoholic-and-prescription-drug stupor. He never could quite get why she was so affected by it. My mom and I talked a lot about it as adults because that one event, quite literally, altered the trajectory of our lives.
My mother, after a childhood of abandonment (father died at five, mother left her with various relatives, she started a new school every year of her childhood...) finally felt safe. My father adored her. And she him. So when he began lying (overtly and by omission) to spend time with a "friend" at work who was going through a tough time, it devastated her and destroyed her sense of safety.
And that, my friends, is what affairs do – whether they involve torrid sex, tepid sex or no sex at all. They are a trust violation, which is the worst form of betrayal.
My own husband had sex all over the place with all sorts of people. Yet it's the fact that he could lie to my face and that he was willing, on some level, to lose me that's been the hardest thing to overcome. Once I managed to get the mind movies out of my head (in which the sex was always anatomically impossible but wildly exciting, I was sure), I was left with the feeling of total fear. I no longer felt safe.
So to all those of you who are beating yourselves up for being completely unhinged by "only" an emotional affair, I say you need to look at the situation as a trust violation and recognize that such a betrayal is devastating, no matter the details.
And stop apologizing for your feelings. You can't control those. Actions, yes. You can definitely control those (though it may not feel like it in the early days following D-Day, when you find yourself shredding wedding photos, rifling through old receipts and doing other crazy things apparently without any control at all!) But your feelings simply are. And anyone with blood coursing in their veins is going to feel like hell when they discover an affair.

You Don't Have to Hide Anything if You Have Nothing to Hide

There was recently a comment on a BWC blog post on emotional infidelity.
The writer describes an all-too-common scenario, wherein a wife questions a husband's relationship with another woman. The husband, almost always, accuses the wife of being jealous. Or insecure. Or crazy. Or all the above. Some wives start to wonder that themselves. What the husband has successfully done is change the subject. Suddenly you're no longer discussing his relationship, you're defending yourself. Well played, gentlemen,...but entirely dishonest.
If there's anything that one spouse is doing that is being kept secret from the other (I'm not talking 40th surprise birthday parties here!), motives need to be questioned.
My friend Jane's husband is still in touch with an ex-fiancée, and he will swear on his mother's grave that there's nothing inappropriate going on. When then, asks Jane, can't she participate in the friendship?
Jane herself offers up this advice: If your husband insists that all e-mail correspondence is utterly casual and friendly, then ask to be copied on it. If his phone conversations are innocent, then you should be privy to them. And so on.
You don't have to hide anything if there's nothing to hide.

Emotional Affairs: Innocent Until Proven Guilty?

It remains one of my life's little ironies that my husband and I sought marriage counselling because of my emotional affair, though I'd never heard that term before...and certainly didn't think it applied to me. I also had no idea of my husband's unemotional but highly physical affair(s) at that point. I simply knew that I'd met someone who had me swooning like a lovestruck teen...something that signalled danger to my marriage and my family. So off to counselling we went. Of course, my schoolgirl crush paled in comparison to news of my husband's double life: years of sex addiction.
Still, emotional affairs are dangerous – and controversial. I had always subscribed to the "doesn't matter where you get your appetite as long as you eat at home" school of thought. (And yes, I know that's a rather crude way of putting it. I have the sense of humor of a 17-year-old boy.)
 I often had small crushes on men in my life. They lasted a week or two then faded away when I noticed something unappealing, like hair growing out of his ears, a predilection for mass-market paperbacks, a lack of appreciation for my sophomoric wit... These mind-flings were harmless, I thought. It was my husband to whom I made love. My husband whose ear hair didn't bother me in the least. My husband whom I fell asleep beside and woke up huddled next to.
So...harmless, right? Not so fast.
Anyone whose spouse has been involved in an emotional affair -- defined as "meaningful attachments with people other than your partner in ways that prevent your partner from having that deep emotional intimacy with you."
And that last bit (emphasis mine) is, of course, the problem.
It seems harmless, so we carry on. And, if we were honest with ourselves (though we rarely are), we'd admit that we love the attention, the new-ness, the excitement of another person finding us interesting, attractive, worthy of time and attention...especially (but not always) if our own marriage was becoming a bit musty.
I now see how easily these fun little flirtations cross the line into threat. When we're thinking about someone who's not our spouse, when we're dedicating a lot of time and energy to someone who's not our spouse, even the best marriages can suffer.
I can look back and see that an aspect of the crushes I developed were a response to the emotional absence of my husband...who was, ahem, busy with his own issues. 
But the fact that I never acted on them has given me one less regret. One less mess to clean up. 
Emotional affair: Innocent...or guilty?
I know how I feel now,with the bitter taste of experience. What about you?

Emotional affair: cheating? Or not quite...

Betrayal is in the eye of the beholder. For some, cheating is full-on, clothes-off sexual intercourse. For others, a flirtatious e-mail.

Before I experienced betrayal (yes, it the was the full-on type...), I considered flirting to be harmless and fun. A way of getting an ego boost without actually doing anything wrong.

Now, however, that I've been walked through the hell of betrayal and come out the other side, it's easy for me to see that flirtations aren't quite so harmless. Why? It's kinda like opening the cookie jar to get a whiff...while promising yourself that you won't actually take a bite. (It's almost lunch time and I'm hungry – hence the cookie analogy.) We all know that, once that jar is opened, a bite – while perhaps not inevitable – is highly likely.

And that's much of the danger which what are frequently termed "emotional affairs". We dismiss them as harmless, which allows them to go on – and those engaging in them to rationalize what they're doing – for long enough that the line becomes blurrier and blurrier until it's gone altogether.

I've known of women who've been completely torn apart by a spouse's emotional affair – something I would have considered harmless. For some women, a strictly physical affair (ie. no-strings-attached sex) is easier to overcome than anything that involves emotional attachment.

The truth is ANY betrayal – indeed any allegiance – that takes a spouse's emotional and/or physical presence away from the marriage is dangerous.

In a healthy marriage, there shouldn't be secrets. If a spouse can't discuss a "friendship" with their partner, share the conversations/e-mails/etc, then chances are that relationship violates fidelity. My advice? Stop...now.