emotional affair

emotional affair

An affair in which two people who are attracted to each other (and at least one of whom is in a committed romantic relationship with someone else) engage in a relationship that is emotionally intimate but not sexually or physically intimate. My husband spends so much time with his best friend from work that I'm worried he's having an emotional affair with her.
See also: affair, emotional
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms.
See also:
  • have intimate relations with
  • have intimate relations with (one)
  • hold (one) at a respectful distance
  • intimate to
  • intimate to (someone)
  • pillow talk
  • tell all
  • close as the bark to the tree
  • get (one) where (one) lives
  • hit where you live
References in periodicals archive
Dipstick: I saw a bomb go off at a party once that involved another woman and an emotional affair. Shrapnel sprayed everywhere and not one person at the BBQ left without collateral damage.
In a press conference earlier in the day, Knightley said the movie doesn't take a view on whether one is worse - physical infidelity or an unconsummated but highly emotional affair - and that she could not say.
He said that his wife and Van Holt were involved in an "emotional affair" but was not aware if it had yet become physical.
Naeem Chattha said that it was an emotional affair and the government should make serious efforts for curtailing Hajj expenditures.
The ICC World Twenty20 final will be an emotional affair for it will be played between two teams who had a traumatic time in Lahore just over three months back.
In what was an emotional affair, after remembering the Hillsborough tragedy when 96 fans died 20 years ago, the reds never looked in danger from the moment Torres opened the scoring with a spectacular volley.
Susan was devastated to learn of Richard's emotional affair with his co-worker.
Having that emotional closeness to another person could result in you feeling emotionally closer to your friend than your spouse, letting down your guard, and allowing an emotional affair, that even worse, might lead to a physical affair.
It was an emotional affair for Landreth, and the audience, as he dragged Larkin up to take a bow.
For this study, infidelity was defined as including both sexual and emotional affairs. A relationship was considered an emotional affair if it involved secrecy or romantic or sexual feelings and interfered with the primary relationship.
1 healing circle was a highly-charged, emotional affair as family members discussed how the wrongful conviction had taken its toll on them.
The groundbreaking was an emotional affair, with both O'Reilly and local politicos waxing lyrical about the power of the arts to foster economic growth.
Yet, somehow the latter isn't "funny," per se: sci-fi art is always an oddly emotional affair. Further motifs are starships in the shape of dinosaurs or Brob-dingnagian yachts - some replete with sails, billowing against infinity's blackness - explanations always refreshingly unnecessary because it's a given that these contrarian painters are exhilarated by the inventiveness of their anachronisms, the plain, breakout, nonlinear hot-dogger joy of the super-real juxtaposition.
The concert at the Liverpool ECHO arena, on December 23, will be an emotional affair for lead singer and guitarist Francis Rossi because of his Merseyside mum.
While the game was an emotional affair as former team-mates Steve Harper and Steve Howey carried out the shirt Srnicek wore in the Premier League for Kevin Keegan's Entertainers, the Czech legend would have appreciated the 90 minutes which unfolded at Dunston UTS Stadium.