Affairs of the Heart

*The following article on emotional affairs was first printed in the Feb. 12, 2006, issue of Today's Pentecostal Evangel.

Affairs of the Heart: Christians Need to Be Wary of Emotional Entanglements
by Jocelyn Green

This Valentine’s Day, who will be occupying your thoughts? For more and more people—Christians included—the answer is someone other than their spouse. And though many extra-marital relationships do not include physical intimacy, experts agree that the emotional betrayal is at least as devastating to a marriage, if not more so.

“Emotional affair” describes a relationship with someone other than one’s spouse which involves considerable emotional intimacy. Assemblies of God National Coordinator for Ministerial Enrichment Gary Allen defines it as “emotional and mental involvement with another person other than one’s spouse which does not include physical contact, but often leads to it.”

These affairs are spawned in the workplace, through the Internet and increasingly, at church. “It’s one of the most prevalent forms of affairs in the Church today,” says Richard Blankenship, director of the North Atlanta Center for Christian Counseling and the American Association of Certified Christian Sexual Addiction Specialists. “We’ve seen dozens and dozens of these emotional affairs. They start in the church coffee hour. Christians tend to think they are not very vulnerable—and that’s when they are vulnerable the most. It’s not a far leap from baring your soul to baring yourself physically.”

Warning signs of an emotional affair include:

• Obsessing over another person who is not your spouse


• Going out of your way to attract his/her attention


• Concealing the amount of time you spend with him/her


• Turning to him/her to meet your emotional needs


• Neglecting your own family to spend time with him/her

Many people rationalize emotional intimacy outside of marriage with the idea that if a relationship isn’t physical, it isn’t harmful. Shannon Ethridge, author of the Every Woman’s Battle books on sexual integrity, disagrees.

“The idea that it’s totally innocent is deceiving,” she says. “Wherever a woman’s heart goes, her body will long to follow. Eventually she is going to want to be physical with him; that’s how we humans are made. The more attached she becomes emotionally, the more overwhelming the urge to express that attachment sexually.”

Allen points out that most physical affairs begin as emotional affairs. In his estimation, emotional affairs become physical at least half the time.

Even if a relationship never progresses to a physical level, however, the damage to a marriage is still real. “The Bible tells us, ‘above all else, guard your heart,’ even above your body,” says Ethridge. “I can’t help but believe this refers to emotional affairs. Our hearts are so entangled it can be more destructive than a physical affair. One woman told me her husband had sex outside of their marriage, but at least there was no emotion. If he had fallen in love, it would have been more painful still.”

Marnie Ferree, licensed marriage and family therapist, directs Bethesda Workshops, a clinical faith-based treatment program for sexual addiction. Even the strictly emotional affairs are very devastating, she says. “That kind of emotional and spiritual betrayal is ultimately more painful than physical betrayal, because it’s a heart connection.” Feree is the author of No Stones: Women Redeemed from Sexual Shame and L.I.F.E. Guide for Women.

Ferree says that the intense, dependent connection one develops in an emotional affair divides the heart, directly impacting one’s marriage. “It’s easy to set up a comparison between the mate and ‘the other man.’ The reality is that mates always come up short in comparison because of the dailyness of married life and whatever painful moments are in the married couple’s history together. Not only does this sort of comparing divide the heart, but it increases the very loneliness within a marriage that the affair was meant to relieve.”

“No man you’ve lived with for some time can measure up to the sweaty palm, butterfly feeling,” says Ethridge. “That new feeling isn’t intimacy, it’s intensity. Only when that wears off does intimacy develop.”

Emotional affairs happen for a variety of reasons. Blankenship contends that Christians may use emotional affairs as a way to toe the line of a physical affair, which is clearly forbidden. “If they just have a need to rebel, they may flirt with the sin of a sexual affair and rationalize it because it’s not crossing the flesh line,” he says. Others will do it if they feel their spouse is not meeting his or her needs.

Ethridge believes most women get involved in an emotional affair because they are attracted to the feeling it gives them. “Women can fall into emotional affairs with a wide variety of people,” she says. “Being attractive to and desired by another man feels empowering. So much of this is based on ego, vanity, insecurity. We don’t believe we are beautiful, we don’t believe who we are in Christ, so we start looking for love in all the wrong places.”

Ethridge is quick to point out that women are not justified in blaming an emotional affair on a husband’s failure to meet all emotional needs. “Women have to take responsibility for their own actions,” she adds.

Part of the problem, says Allen, is the lack of guidance on this issue from the Church. “In the Church, we have not done well with establishing healthy boundaries emotionally and physically. I teach there’s a difference between sexual awareness, temptation and lust. The Church has almost said that if you have any sense of another human being other than your spouse, that’s sin. More realistically, however, you must acknowledge it and deal with healthy boundaries.”

The solution to ending emotional affairs is not to prohibit all friendships between non-married men and women, says Ferree. “That’s the easy way out. The harder road is to really work on your marriage relationship and honesty and vulnerability. While healthy boundaries are in order, cutting off all contact with the person you’ve had the affair with doesn’t work on the issues within your marriage.” If one doesn’t address the root problems in the marriage, says Ferree, another emotional affair is bound to happen with someone else eventually.