No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Are you a woman who shares secrets with a male friend? Are you the kind of man who reviews his weekend plans with a female co-worker? Or do you go out for drinks with a colleague of the opposite sex?

If you are married and answer yes to any of these questions, then therapist M. Gary Neuman has one word to describe your behavior: Unfaithful.

“We can’t fool ourselves into believing that we can have intimate relationships at work and still have a great relationship at home,” says Neuman. “My message is that if you want to infuse passion and have a buddy for the rest of your life, you have to keep that emotional content in your marriage. Otherwise, it’s not going to happen.”

Neuman, a Miami Beach psychologist, has raised hackles in the marriage counseling field with his book, Emotional Infidelity, that decries male-female friendships outside marriage as a form of adultery.

The funny thing is that while Neuman’s views may seem extreme, even his critics say his central premise – that friendships between members of the opposite sex can harm marriages – is probably valid. Having an emotional affair is usually how it begins.

“It’s a concern,” says Shirley Glass, an Owings Mills psychologist and longtime researcher into marital infidelity. “Many love affairs begin just that way, with an emotional affair.”

When is friendship an infidelity? Where does the emotional affair begin?

How many married men and women might admit to an emotional infidelity? Probably 55 to 65 percent, she says, and she thinks the numbers are growing.

Her own definition of emotional infidelity is somewhat more cautious than Newman’s, however. Glass thinks a friendship between members of the opposite sex must have 3 traits to be an infidelity: emotional intimacy that is greater than in the marriage, sexual tension, and secrecy.

“Friendship becomes a problem when it becomes a replacement for a marriage or takes place outside a marriage,” says Glass.

Hamit Aizen, 38, of Reisterstown says she used to think that other-gender friends were fine for married couples – but after nine years of marriage she no longer feels that way. Instead, she puts a greater priority on preserving
intimacy with her husband.

“I don’t think I would ever cross the line, but I’m really cautious,” says Aizen, a part-time teacher. “The longer you’re married, you sometimes start looking for other things.”

A Baltimore native and married father of five, Neuman, 37, believes society has generally underestimated how harmful an emotional affair can be. He has counseled too many couples not to have noticed that marriages
suffer when men and women seek intimate relationships outside the home.

Even if the relationship doesn’t escalate to sex, it can be debilitating to the marriage. “If you put the majority of your emotions in the hands of someone other than your spouse, you’re still shortchanging your spouse,” he says.

Consider, he says, the husband who gripes about work with a female co-worker and then comes home and doesn’t really want to repeat his complaints all over again with his wife. The result? She is isolated from a significant part of his life.

Or what about the wife who flirts with other men? Will she feel better or worse about her marriage when she compares their reactions to her husband’s behavior? He may seem much less fun and exciting.

Divided loyalties

In his book, Neuman points to the workplace as Ground Zero for the problem of emotional infidelity. Research shows it’s where the majority of extramarital affairs get started – perhaps as high as 73 percent, according to one study.

He sees opportunities for inappropriate behavior behind every lunch, every trip for drinks after work, and every business trip where men and women are thrust into prolonged social contact without their spouses. Modern “team building” retreats where male and female co-workers climb walls or rappel down cliffs? Neuman would like to see them come to an immediate end.

“We have hard and fast decisions to make,” he says. “What’s the most meaningful thing in your life? We can’t fool ourselves into thinking we can have these intimate relationships at work and still have a great relationship at home.”

Neuman admits his views are unconventional. But in the three months since his book hit the stores, the volume of hate mail he’s received has surprised him. Many of those letters are from women who angrily accuse him of condemning the presence of educated women in the work force and rekindling a kind of Victorian attitude toward them.

Even Glass thinks he overstates the harmfulness of a friendship. “It’s fine as long as it’s not a replacement for marriage. You just have to ask: If you say or do things you wouldn’t want your spouse to see or hear then you need to take a few steps back,” she says.

Nevertheless, Neuman insists he has not overstated the destructiveness – if only because marriages can be such fragile things that get neglected and too easily reduced to “kids and bills.” “I’m not the crazy one here,” says Neuman, who stirred far less controversy with his past writings (mostly about how to protect children from the harmfulness of divorce). “We need new standards.”

He points to the Internet as an example of how men and women can engage in an emotional affair without physical contact. He has heard stories of people who have spent hours on the Web sharing secrets with people they’ll probably never meet – and in the process denying their spouse the same intimacies.

Marlene Maheu, author of Infidelity on the Internet (Source Books, 2001), agrees that such relationships can be a “serious disruption” to a marriage. In an increasingly wired world, e-mail can be a 24/7 presence, its content witty and provocative, placing no demands on the reader other than to be read. What spouse can compete with that?

“If you’re telling someone your secrets and confiding in them and telling them what’s going on in your real relationship, the other person is in a position to tell you whatever you want to hear,” says Maheu, a San Diego
psychologist.

Susan Townsend, a Towson psychologist, says it is usually the emotional intimacy that develops in affairs that devastates marriages, not the fact that one partner has had sex with another. Whether that develops over the
Internet or from direct contact doesn’t seem to matter.

“People can end up feeling isolated and lonely in their marriage,” says Townsend, who teaches a course called PAIRS (Practical Application of Intimate Relationship Skills) to couples who want to improve their relationship.

Neuman’s solution is to curb friendships with the opposite sex. He admits that not all such relationships are doomed to turn into affairs or even weaken marriages, but he believes all marriages would be stronger without them.

“Some people can handle it, yes. For those people who have a good friend and a good marriage, I can’t disagree,” he says. “I just say, why not take the challenge, stop the outside relationship and see if your marriage gets better?”

That would be fine for Barry Glazer, a 57-year-old lawyer living in Federal Hill, a student in Townsend’s class, who says he’s never believed married men and women should have close friendships outside marriage. Mother Nature, he says, just doesn’t work that way.

“It’s way too complicated. I worry it would be open to something more,” says Glazer, who is in a long-term relationship. “Maybe that’s not fair, but when you try to make nature fair, you’re banging your head against the wall.”

Still, Townsend and other therapists say such friendships are possible when both parties understand their boundaries. One of the first steps toward “affair-proofing” your marriage is simply to make sure a couple spends some time on a weekly basis having a meaningful conversation.

“The more a couple knows each other, the better off they are,” she says. “If you strengthen the bond between the couple, there is not so much temptation to look elsewhere.”

Glass suggests that friendships become a problem when there’s some attraction involved. If you sense that chemistry, she says, that’s when it’s time to put the walls up – maybe avoid some social situations that “create more of a male-female situation.”

“A reasonable safeguard is not to put women in burqas and have no contact,” she says. “Maybe it’s to take that person home to dinner with your spouse or take a few steps back.”

Even safer, says Kim Michel, a 39-year-old Timonium resident, is to avoid friendships with people of the opposite sex. Last fall she enrolled in the PAIRS course after the breakup of her marriage. The experience has reinforced her view that marriages can be fragile things and deserve respect.

“Eventually, there comes a point where the line will be crossed in my opinion,” she says. “I just don’t see how there can be a great friendship. You need to make your husband or your wife your best friend.”

10 Rules for Avoiding Emotional Infidelity

1. Keep it all business in the office.

2. Avoid meetings with members of the opposite sex outside the workplace.

3. Meet in groups.

4. Find polite ways of ending personal conversations.

5. Take particular care not to have regular (perhaps daily or even weekly)
conversations about your life outside work.

6. Don’t share your personal feelings.

7. Be unflinchingly honest with yourself.

8. Avoid cordial kisses and hugs, or dancing with members of the opposite sex.

9. Don’t drink around the opposite sex.

10. Show your commitment to your spouse daily.

• Related Blogs on emotional infidelity
• Emotional Infidelity – Adultery In Your Heart | Healthy Lifestyle

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Interview With Noel Biderman, CEO Of Ashley Madison

Ashley Madison is for those already in relationships to find a ‘bit on the side’ as we say in England.  Its the site I most love to hate, but, bless ‘em, they fulfill a need and make great money doing so.  We asked the CEO of Ashley Madison if he’d be OK with his wife using Ashley Madison.  See his answer below… – Mark Brooks    <—bless em? You all are going to rot in hell, you realize that right?

Comments in red are additions added by the owner of this website.

What is Ashley Madison, who are your members, and how did the name come about?

Ashley Madison is the largest dating ( cheating spouse ) service of its kind catering to like minded adults who are already in a committed relationship. Our members are people ( cheating spouses ) who find themselves attached at this stage in their lives, and in many instances, in otherwise very happy marriages or with great family situations, but they’re physically or emotionally unfulfilled. What they seek at Ashley Madison is someone who understands those needs. The name is fictitious and based onthe two most popular girl’s names in 2001 when the founder of the service, Darren Morgenstern, came up with the concept.

What makes your site stand out from the competition?

I’d say it’s the fact that they present it in a way that tries to make it so palatable….. What is our society coming to?

I think we’re unique, one of the only sites in this niche, and we’re definitely the originator. The genesis of the business itself was a report that stated that upwards of 30 to 35 percent of people on singles dating services were actually attached ( cheating spouses ), and so we thought ‘what if you could create a site where you didn’t have to lie about your personal circumstances?’ You could put your hand up and say ‘this is who I am ( a cheating spouse ); this is my situation in life. I’m still looking to meet someone else to fill a void and not create any additional risks for myself.’ That’s the uniqueness of the Ashley Madison model.

How does your service help people improve the quality of their lives?

Ironically, we’ve actually preserved a number of relationships and marriages in the sense that many people suffer from a lack of physical or emotional intimacy. Other aspects of their lives are going well, great career, incredible children, extended family, but there is just a certain critical element to their life that they’re not happy with. With Ashley Madison, they have a chance to explain that and not be judged for it, because everybody knows the nature of the service when they join. Here’s a chance to meet someone (who is also a cheating spouse ) like-minded. All of a sudden, when that void is filled, they can be an even better parent, a better spouse or partner to whomever they’re with in their life.

Is this guy on drugs? You can be a better parent or spouse when you are carrying around the weight of guilt. You were intimately involved with another person that is not your spouse. You gave your body to them……wow.

But why would anyone who wasn’t looking for a marital split want to openly broadcast their cheating?

Statistics show that approximately 60% of people are somehow involved in cheating in their relationship. It’s almost a DNA pull, a fact of life, and we battle against it all the time.

People wrestle with the whole notion. When they’ve finally made the determination that this is what they need to do for themselves, the next move can be challenging. The work place is fraught with problems. Someone could lose his or her job; you could misread a cue. If you visit a prostitute, you could end up with an STD. You could have a stigma attached to you for breaking the law. There are so many problems.

If you come to a service like ours, you can at least mitigate the risks. You still take a risk; I want to be clear. Anytime you do this you take a risk, but if you’ve been thinking about it, then you tend to approach it in a different way.

So, people on Ashley Madison are STD free, obviously, because they must be good moral people.

How do you check for fraudulence?

We review every single profile and photo prior to releasing it to our membership base. We remove anyone that we find to be fraudulent, solicitous, or problematic. Soliciting is veiled prostitution. We just won’t allow that kind of behavior to take place. We have a fraud check system that we’ve built up over years and a huge customer care staff who monitor 24/7. We know what our members need and we need to protect them.

How do you protect members (who post photos) from their snoopy spouses?

Many singles will post a public photo but very few attached people do so. Most photos are posted to a private showcase section. The release of those require a key in exchange with another member only after you’ve built a relationship and have a sense of who they are and what they’re about. I’ve never, in all of our existence, come across one story of a spouse catching another spouse on Ashley Madison. Gee, you should be proud. When they do get caught, it’s for other reasons. It could be that they didn’t clear their cookie on their computer, or the like.

Have you used your own service?

I’m married with two kids, and I hope that I’m not one of those people who find a need for a service like mine – but clearly it’s out there. So, you kind of avoided a direct answer to this question…didn’t you?

Would you be okay with your wife using your service?

No. If my wife were using my service, or any dating service, or if I even found her on Facebook chatting with former boyfriends and not telling me about it, I would be emotionally hurt beyond belief, and would feel that our relationship had severe problems. To me, a healthy relationship is one where there is communication and honesty and emotional and physical connectivity. I would hope that that is what is going on in my current relationship, and if not, I’d have to look at myself, and my responsibilities. But if my wife were engaging in such a service, then clearly our relationship would be in trouble. Oh of course, of course.

Is there anything that you want a perspective client to know?

We do our research. We try to understand what you need, and refine our products and services for that. This isn’t about judging, it’s an open platform, and what you’ll find is that no matter who you are, the housewife who just hasn’t been complimented or paid attention to in ages, the woman who just really likes being with married men because that’s what she wants, or you’re with someone you don’t want to marry, maybe you want to trade up; if you relate, then you’re going to find someone compatible. It’s a wide slice of life with real people, and I think that’s the great part of our service. Wow, so now the cheater is clearly the victim who has such a terrible life that they just have to spread their legs for someone else……I’m all choked up.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Infidelity in marital relationships has been a problem since the beginning of time. Throughout recorded history there are numerous stories of cheating spouses. But today, the Internet and our constantly updated technology has added an entirely new twist that may have made the urge to cheat stronger than ever. Suddenly everything is at our fingertips. Cheating spouses can now look to technology, such as instant messaging, cell phone texts, sending pictures by phone and more. If that isn’t enough, what about online services that blatently advertise the fact that they will help you find a cheating partner. Websites such as Ashley Madison and Meet-To-Cheat are businesses with the sole purpose of facilitating extramarital affairs. Unfortunately, technology today makes it extremely easy for cheating spouses to arrange an affair. Cheating online–it’s the latest craze. In most instances, the potential for cheating is simply a click away. And when caught in a bind, cheating spouses can even rely upon businesses such as the Alibi Network to service get them out of trouble. For a nominal fee, the Alibi Network will actually assist a cheating spouse form an alibi that can include the creation of fake receipts, phone calls, and other false documentation. But, of course, technology works both ways and suspicious spouses are using state-of-the-art tactics to try and fight back. Suspicious spouses are equipped with their own set of weapons to catch the lying partner in the act. Tools like computer monitoring software, key loggers, hidden gps devices, and most recently, cell phone tracking services and listening devices are being used in an attempt to discover what is going on behind their back. It is somewhat shocking to realize that a tiny gps device can be installed not only in an automobile, but can be used to track a spouse’s every movement, through their cell phone.

It is truly amazing, the amount of survelience that is available online. Is this a good thing? The answer is both yes and no. If you are convinced that your spouse is cheating but are just wanting some hard evidence to slap you into reality, then a keylogger or listening device may be just what you need. But if you are a person prone to instability and irrational fears, you could spend hours and weeks listening to and tracking your spouse’s every move, when they in fact are doing nothing wrong. You may need to search your own heart and thought processes before putting yourself and your relationship through today’s hi-tech survelience. Technology can be a benefit or a curse, it’s your choice.

Related Blogs

• Related Blogs on Catching a cheater
• Catching Up with . . . Bones! « The Children of St. Clare

• Related Blogs on Internet cheating
• Learn How To Track A Cheating Spouse With A Real Time GPS Tracker …
• Discover Downloads With “Movie Downloads Netflix” | Internet …

• Related Blogs on Technology
• Scobleizer: Technology, innovation, and geek enthusiasm » Blog …

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.