John and Mary struck up a natural friendship when they met at their local book club. They immediately acted on their mutual attraction to each other. They talk on the phone regularly, have coffee and sometimes even lunch and very often confide in each other.   

Here’s the rub: Both John and Mary are married. But not to each other, which begs the question: Are they having an emotional affair or is it just a friendship? “When the friendship interferes with your relationship at home, that’s an emotional affair,” said Danine Manette, 40, an Oakland, Calif.,  career criminal investigator and author of "Ultimate Betrayal: Recognizing, Uncovering and Dealing with Infidelity."
 
“In an emotional affair, you check out mentally from the marriage. You are mentally gone because you are so busy wrapped in what this other person is doing, thinking and feeling. You are making decisions based on how the other person will feel about them. Emotional affairs are very dangerous. They really are because often, you don’t know  you are in one until it is too late.”    

While many people have never even heard of emotional affairs, psychologists and those who work in the field of marriage counseling, say they are common. Many times, emotional affairs crop up when a spouse is feeling neglected at home or not emotionally fulfilled. Meeting someone who can fill those feelings can enhance the attraction between two people who may not realize on a cognitive level that there is something missing in the their marriages and are seeking that emotionally elsewhere.    

“There is some blockage already in the marriage. You take each other for granted and that is  where the whole thing begins,” said Tina B. Tessina, 64, a Palm Beach, Calif.-based psychotherapist and author of "Money, Sex and Kids: Stop Fighting about the Three Things that Can Ruin Your Marriage (Adams Media 2008)." “You find a connection with this other person. There is a thing that happens in your head where you start to believe that this other person is so much better than your spouse in various ways. When that comparison thing happens, that is the moment of betrayal. After a while, part of you is actively withheld from your spouse and reserved only for this other person.”    

And when that happens, something else takes place, too, she said. You start to distance yourself from your spouse and the relationship between you and your new friend reaches a level of secrecy, while the one between you and your spouse continues to erode. “Emotional affairs are often first steps out of the existing relationship. They can rob the current relationship of richness and chances for happiness,” said LeslieBeth Wish, 60, a psychologist and social worker based in Sarasota, Fla. who has been counseling couples in relationships for more than 30 years.    

Oddly, they can have a positive effect, too, she added. “Emotional affairs can also can stabilize a difficult relationship at home that might just be staying together for the sake of the children, for example. It can allow the person to feel the care, concern and connection that are missing at home,” she said, adding that she doesn’t endorse this to keep a marriage healthy, but there are relationships she has counseled where a platonic, emotional affair with an outsider has kept the marriage together.