I think the presence of deception is the indicator, rather than some particular relative amount of emotional intimacy.
As for sexual chemistry, my experience is that it happens (or not) whether you want it to or not. But, if it exists, you always have the choice on whether to follow up on it. This is where professional detachment in the workplace, and self-discipline in the pursuit of the primary relationship you chose, are needed.
But we have all sorts of emotional relationships at the same time. One can be just as emotionally intimate with one’s family, one’s counselor, or one’s best friend, as with one’s spouse.
That’s a good yardstick.
Disclaimer: I haven’t been in many intense emotional relationships. I could be completely wrong about this.
part of the problem isn’t even necessarily gender. it seems to be how the genders interact with each other.
for example, some seem to believe that there is a huge, fundamental difference between men and women. i am (for the most part) not one of those. people are people in my eyes. i also know that not everyone feels this way. case in point: there’s this girl in one of my classes that sits in front of me. a pretty blond girl. i saw her at the gym, and she brought up that we should get a study session together. she already asked one of the guys in class to do the same. it just so happened that another guy in class was there too, so we asked him if he wanted into the group too. everything seemed cool, but the last guy we invited (or she invited) took this invitation as her…for lack of a better word…desire of him. he saw it as a sign that he should pursue and ask her out. so he chased her for that weekend.
long story short, it’s the perception, and sometimes what we want to make a thing into that ends up screwing us over. she said that she gets this sometimes, that guys take her personality and niceness as the “heavily hit on me” sign.
from the other side, i can see where the other guy can get this, but wouldn’t the fact that she asked other guys into it dissolve that theory of this? so many people are willing to “look into” things, usually to see what they want to see. look at the stereotypical guy that gets rebuffed, yet still says “oh, she wants me”. the only thing that guy has going for him is that some girls dig persistence, even at the expense of annoyance.
can guys and girls be friends? of course. but in the “relationship”, whether it be personal or work-related, ground rules must be established and adhered to. that seems to be the key. people are unwillingly willing to put themselves into places that they might not want to be in. as is the case with everything breaking down between two indivudals/two things run by individuals, the problem seems to be communication. for how social we are as creatures, we’ve got a hard time expressing those things. that may be a problem inherent within communication itself. does language do us justice? is there a better way to communicate? are there better ways to communicate? it almost sounds like a great debate thread opening up here. is there something greater at work here? (not god, by any means, but are we, as people, putting out wrong/pooly communicated signals on purpose?)
freud would eat this shit up with a spoon. or at least so i’d think.
clarification: the first line, when you read “how the genders interact with each other”, don’t look at is a male/female dichotomy, rather as an interpersonal thing. i was merely trying to facilitate the intergender topic.
Not all of us do that. I’d never say anything about my husband that I wouldn’t say to him (nor would I say anything about him to others that I wouldn’t mind him overhearing.) I’m with Bricker and LOAP in this one.
(Where’d PunditLisa’s post that Linty mentioned go to?)
Precisely, although I believe that the ‘sexual element’ is often part and parcel of Internet infidelity.
Most marriages experience peaks and valleys.
The allure of an Internet relationship is largely the fact that you don’t have to struggle through the mundane problems that occur IRL.
Your internet partner never sees you when you’re tired, never has to struggle with finances with you or tackle the routine but draining problems of every day life.
Instead, you can be highly selective about what you share and it’s easy to slip into a sexually charged flirtation.
Exchange a few slightly naughty emails, forward revealing pictures, and reveal a fantasy or two.
The next step can be mutual cyber masturbation or phone sex.
Even when you limit it to the occasionally lascivious email-you are still engaging in sexual behavior with someone other than your partner which can corrode the intimacy of your exisiting relationship.
An internet relationship can also encourage you to share your emotional dissatisfaction with your existing marriage, which presents two major problems.
The most significant is the fact that you are not trying to deal with said problems with the person that you really should be-your partner.
The second issue, as I see it, is that marital problems are seldom really one sided but your internet partner is not privy to the other side of the story and offers unconditional empathy and support which does nothing to really help solve the existing problem but may instead exacerbate it.
The element of secrecy surrounding an internet relationship can also further the rift between you and your partner.
Discovering that your SO has been sharing the intimate details of your personal life together can and usually does lead to a deep sense of betrayal.
It can make you question whether you really know your partner at all.
After all, if they have being hiding this from you, what else have they been concealing?