Reader’s Question

For over a year, my husband kept calling another close female friend of ours, sometimes even in my presence. After a year, I finally decided that he needs to stop that and that he needs to leave my friend alone. However, he continually asks if he can call her just to see how she is doing. After my decision of him not calling her anymore three weeks ago, he had asked twice. Once last week and again today. My friend’s husband and her, and my husband and I used to spend time together. So, I don’t know what this means. My husband had asked for my forgiveness because he said that he had “entertained the idea of having a soul tie with her,” but he is not interested in her. Can you tell me what I should do? Should I continually let them speak on the phone? Is that healthy for both of their marriages?

Our Clinical Psychologist’s Reply

When adults work, play, and socialize together it is not uncommon for emotional bonds to develop. These emotional bonds may be very strong. If we think about how we form an emotional bond, it’s by sharing personal feelings, attitudes, concerns and dreams with another adult. This situation, which I often call an “emotional affair” typically develops between adults who spend a lot of time with each other — on the job, couples who socialize frequently, sharing activities together (clubs, community projects, etc.), or neighbors. Only a small percentage of these actually become romantic or sexual relationships. As your husband describes, it’s more of the “soul mates” type of relationship. These emotional bonds form more quickly in situations of mutual stress such as working in law enforcement, medical, and corrections. The more mutually stressful the environment, the quicker the bond forms, creating the foundation for a host of movies where total strangers form emotional bonds when involved in a terrorist attack, trapped on a tropical island, or being hunted by killers, monsters, or evil people.

For the most part, these emotional bonds are healthy, actually providing another opportunity for emotional and social support for those involved. As you can see by his contacting her in your presence, he has no sense that he is involved in anything romantic, sexual or threatening to your marriage. You mentioned that you spent time with this couple in the past, suggesting that you may no longer socialize with them. He may actually be missing her in a sense. It’s similar to missing a good neighbor who moves away.

I’m not hearing that she is making calls and for that reason, the emotional bond may be somewhat one-sided. While he may want to call due to an emotional bond, she may just consider his calls a “status report’ from a couple they socialized with in the past.

What does it mean? Probably nothing threatening to your marriage. However, his comment and behavior have a hint of loneliness in them. My psychological theory (here it goes): Your husband might be experiencing some increased stress or levels of responsibility in his life. When this happens, we often miss the “old days” and old friends. We want to call them and remember those experiences when life was more carefree…or just different. We tend to call those who are good listeners, people we have been able to talk to in the past. With those conversations come “emotional memories” — thoughts and feelings of the days when the four of you socialized together.

What to do? First assess his current stress level. Any changes or additional stressors lately? He sounds somewhat whiney and preoccupied with the past — could he be depressed? Ask if he would be comfortable approaching the situation as a couple — maybe asking them to dinner every six months to keep up on things. The theme might be accepting his need to contact her but making the contact a couple activity — not a man-to-woman private contact. I suspect her husband might have similar concerns, especially if he is making the phone calls obvious. Your husband sounds somewhat “needy” for some reason and I’d explore his reasons for needing the contact rather than focusing on the nature of the contact.