Emotional Infidelity

Being in relationship dilemmas. One says they are in love with two people. Another says they love a man but he is married. Another one says he and his best friend’s girlfriend are in love. Some have crossed sexual boundaries and live with the repercussions up to date. They seem to all have the same questions:

• “She is someone’s wife but I just fell in love and I don’t know how it happened. How do I get out of this mess?”
• “We are not dating but things got awkward between us.”
• “One day we found ourselves admitting that we like each other. His girlfriend and my boyfriend don’t know.”
• “He is married but I am always thinking about him.”
• “I feel we were meant to be, but she knows I have a girlfriend.”
• “I’m married but I like this other guy.”

I am certain there are a variety of diagnoses we can refer to many of the scenarios above. What was the foundation of the relationship? Do they know the meaning of a committed relationship? Do they understand what love truly is? And these are very valid and important questions to answer. However, today I want to focus on one particular diagnosis that we often don’t address; that is emotional infidelity. One of the reasons many scenarios like these are rife in our generation is because people calculate relationships with their IQ while instead they ought to be calculating it with their EQ (emotional intelligence quotient). To put is so crudely, we have a generation of Einsteins in the workplace and in the Universities but who are pale when it comes to relationships. They score bonuses in the corporate world but are toddlers while handling their wives or girlfriends. They score valedictorian GPAs in their alma maters but are babes when it comes to relating with their husbands or boyfriends.

• When a man goes to hang out with one of his “platonic” girl friends in her house all alone, the blind see a catching up session, the wise see a lack of emotional intelligence.
• When a lady opens up to her male colleague at work about the troubles in her marriage, the blind see a good friendship, but the wise see a lack of emotional intelligence.
• When a man is dating a girl but has a different girl as his BFF, the blind see a platonic relationship but the wise see a lack of emotional intelligence.
• When a girl is dating a guy but spends late nights chatting on Whatsapp with a different guy, the blind see an innocent conversation, the wise see a lack of emotional intelligence.

The dullness of our emotional intelligence is even more shocking when the above scenarios brew discord in our relationships and we lamely defend our tomfoolery with statements like:

• “We just had a drink!”
• “It’s not like we slept together!”
• “I told him I have a boyfriend but he wouldn’t listen.”
• “It’s not my fault that people flirt with me.”
• “She’s going through a rough patch; I was only being there for her.”
• “Are you jealous?”
• “There’s nothing going on!”
• “Can’t I have friends of the opposite sex?”

And when things get out of hand and boundaries are crossed and we hurt our partner, our mouths only show more dullness and little emotional intelligence.

• “He makes me feel alive.”
• “She listens to me; you don’t.”
• “He treats me better that my boyfriend does.”
• “She is the one meant for me.”

Anyone who falls in love with someone else while in a relationship is not a victim, but a perpetrator. Almost without exception, sexual affairs always start as emotional affairs. Emotional unfaithfulness is very hurtful and it can cause as much damage as a sexual affair if your partner finds out. If you are guilty, here are a few tips to help you better yourself for the future.

1. You need to take responsibility for the emotional affair

The most common excuse that shouts irresponsibility is this one: “I just don’t know how it happened!” If you are still self-deceived about this, allow me unmask you. Let rid of the myth that falling in love is an accident. Unfortunately that is tripe from Disney and Nollywood. And more unfortunate is that people believe it. You must understand that people don’t fall in love by accident. Falling in love is a result of expended time, conversations and emotions with someone. The chemistry between two people is never accidental. People fall in love by design not by default. The day you accepted to having lunch exclusively you designed it. The day you decided to walk her home every evening, you designed it. You must take responsibility. Someone may argue and say: Apama, I never intended for this to happen! Very true, But you must realize this: an unintentional commitment to things that do not matter is an intentional lack of commitment to things that matter. You have two options. You can make excuses or you can make progress but you cannot make both. The man and woman without emotional intelligence see these two scenarios and may say, “Okay, I admit responsibility; things got awkward and they shouldn’t have gone this far. But what is wrong with having lunch? What is wrong with walking home together?” In order to understand the deeper problem, you must grasp the anatomy of an emotional affair.

2. You need to understand the anatomy of an emotional affair

We have already stated that falling in love is a result of expended time, conversations and emotions with someone of the opposite sex. I am not saying to never talk or spend time with someone of the opposite sex. I know you are wiser than to think that. However, the key words are exclusive and consistent! This is the general anatomy. Exclusive and consistent energy spent with someone of the opposite sex will create a connection between the two of you. If this person is not someone you are prepared to spend the rest of your life with, you will break a heart- maybe even yours. Someone may ask: how do I do this yet I work with this person? I see them every day. I can’t avoid them! The answer, Beloved, is to create boundaries. You can’t stop birds from flying over you but you can stop them from creating a nest on your head. One boundary you should have is with regard to depth of conversations. 

Level one conversations start with bio-data- what your name is, where you live, where you went to school etc. This is basic information to which a stranger in the bus can be privy to. Anybody who knows this isn’t really special to you- they have simply interacted with you on base-level. They are simply on level one.

Level two conversations involve your personal testimonies. These are basic or general experiences you have been through that are not emotionally weighty. And even if they are emotionally weighty, they are shared in such a general way that does not lead to strong attachment to someone. You would not mind anyone hearing these stories. This could be your testimony of salvation, your experience in a new country, being bullied in high school etc

Level three conversations involve talking about your passions, preferences and convictions. These are the conversations that platonic friends hold. They demarcate who you are and what you stand for. They may clash with someone else’s and that is okay. You can have these kinds of conversations with people safely. And Beloved, this is where you draw the line.

Level four conversations are when you talk about your fears. This is the kind of conversation that occurs in hushed tones and you let a select few in on it. It could be the fear of getting married because you saw your parents fight a lot. It could be the fear of dying because your faith is shaky. It could be the fear of disappointing yourself after so many mistakes in life. Do not get to this level with someone of the opposite sex who isn’t your significant other. One reason emotional affairs ravage men and women is because people have exclusive and consistent conversation about their deep personal fears. When the other person empathises, you connect emotionally. When they reciprocate their fears too, you become more than friends. People who call themselves best-friends have these conversations freely. If you must have these conversations with a best friend. If not careful enough, an emotional entanglement will imminent. 

The fifth level of conversation (which is also the most intimate) is when you talk about your deepest hurts. If you get to this level comfortably with someone, you fall in love. This is emotional treasure, and it should be shared only with your significant other or trusted friend. An exclusive and consistent time talking about your deep personal hurts makes you extremely vulnerable to the other person. What often happens with a confession of deepest hurts is a craving for comfort. This comfort is often manifested in touch- a hug, a back rub, a side-hug, a hand clasp etc. It seems natural but it sets a precedence for more such conversations and eventually for unwanted inappropriateness. Deep hurts such as rape, defilement as a child, a cheating ex, death of a loved one, violence and torture, abuse that left you wounded etc are golden emotional deposits. You make them with the wrong person and you set yourself up for failure.

A second boundary you should have is that of spending exclusive and consistent time together. Exclusive and consistent time together creates familiarity. Our emotional dullness got stuck in class 5 and we have forgotten that our bodies, minds and souls have matured.

Exclusive and consistent time alone with someone that you will not spend the rest of your life with bespeaks a lack of emotional intelligence and sets a stage for emotional infidelity. Well, what if I have gone too far, have crossed boundaries and I want to stop, Apama? What do I do?

3. You need to cut the fuel of the emotional affair

You must look where you slipped, not where you fell. If you fell in love because of exclusive and consistent time and conversations, you need to establish it and out of character and respect for your relationship stop it. Stop the chatting. Stop the lunches. Stop the late hours together. These things seem harmless at the onset, but if you are in a relationship with someone already, you begin to disdain your partner and value the one you are having an emotional thrill with. The person you are wrongly emotionally connecting with may ask why you cut links. Don’t lie about it. Don’t say you got busy or you have to run home early. Let them know that you crossed boundaries with them that you ought to have observed. If you have a spouse or a significant other, let this person know that you do, and that whatever is going on is wrong for your relationship. You must be clear about the boundary. A boundary that is not verbally stated does not exist. State it clearly and respectfully. Now, when you cut the fuel of the emotional affair, you may be surprised that your feelings still linger. It’s normal. You have a heart not a computer chip for programming. In order to deal with this, to need to reconnect emotionally with your partner.

4. You need to reconnect emotionally with your spouse/significant other

In this period of emotional distance, your spouse/significant other has almost become a stranger. You must reconnect it even though your feelings do not say so. A relationship must be fought for, even when the enemy is yourself. One real test of maturity in a relationship is having the capacity to commit to the relationship when the feelings are absent. One real show of immaturity in a relationship is when people call it quits after the feelings die. Often, people don’t fall out of love, Beloved; they simply lacked emotional ethic and intelligence to know that love is a commitment and not a feeling. Commit to your husband. Stay with your boyfriend. Reconnect with your wife. If you are unmarried, you will need this ethic to keep your marriage. Your heart wants to leave your wife and follow the temporal thrill of this new flame. It is a false and fleeting high. Reconnect. To be practical, more dates, more sexual intimacy. Soon, you will lose the passion for the wrong one and gain a new flame for the right one. 

Let us be extra careful!

After A while

After a while you learn the subtle difference
between holding a hand and chaining a soul.
And you learn that love doesn’t mean leaning
and company doesn’t mean security.

And you begin to learn that kisses aren’t contracts
and presents aren’t promises

And you begin to accept your defeats with your head up
and your eyes ahead,
with the grace of an adult, not the grief of a child.

And you learn to build all your roads on today,
because tomorrow’s ground is too uncertain for plans,
and futures have a way of falling down in mid-flight.

After a while you learn that even sunshine burns
if you get too much.
So you plant your own garden
and decorate your own soul,
instead of waiting for someone to leave you flowers.

And you learn that you really can endure;
You really are strong,
you really have worth.
And you learn,
and you learn,
With every goodbye, you learn.

The Generation That Doesn’t Want Relationships

We want the façade of a relationship, but we don’t want the work of a relationship. We want the hand holding without the eye contact, the teasing without the serious conversations. We want the pretty promise without the actual commitment, the anniversaries to celebrate without the 365 days of work that leads up to them. We want the happily ever after, but we don’t want to put the effort in the here and now. We want the deep connection, while keeping things shallow.

We want to be swept off our feet, yet at the same time remaining safely, independently, standing on our own. We want to keep chasing the idea of love, but we don’t want to actually fall into it. 

We don’t want relationships – we want friends with benefits, Netflix and chill, nudes on Tinder. We want anything that will give us the illusion of a relationship, without being in an actual relationship. We want all the rewards and none of the risk, all of the payout and none of the cost. We want to connect – enough, but not too much. We want to commit – a little, but not a lot. We take it slow: we see where it goes, we don’t label things, we just hang out. We keep one foot out the door, we keep one eye open, and we keep people at arm’s length - toying with their emotions but most of all toying with our own.

We hope to swipe right into happiness. We want to download the perfect fit like a new app - that can be updated every time there’s a hitch, easily compartmentalized into a folder, deleted when we have no more use for it. We don’t want to unpack our baggage – or, worse, help someone unpack theirs. We want to keep the ugly behind the cover-up, hide the imperfections with an Instagram filter, and choose another episode on Netflix over a real conversation. We like the idea of loving someone despite their flaws; yet we keep our skeletons locked in the closet, happy to never let them see the light of day.

We want a placeholder, not a person. We want a warm body, not a partner. We want someone to sit on the couch next to us, as we aimlessly scroll through another newsfeed, open another app to distract us from our lives. We want to walk this middle line: pretending we don’t have emotions while wearing our heart on our sleeve, wanting to be needed by someone yet not wanting to need someone. We play hard to get just to test if someone will play hard enough – we don’t even fully understand it ourselves. We sit around with friends discussing the rules, but no one even knows the game we’re trying to play. Because the problem with our generation not wanting relationships is that, at the end of the day, we actually do.

Wanting Everything. Getting Nothing.

She wasn’t afraid of difficulties. What frightened her was being forced to choose one particular path. Choosing a path meant having to miss out on others. She had a whole life to live and she was always thinking that, in future, she might regret the choices she made now. ‘I’m afraid of committing myself,’ she thought to herself. She wanted to follow all possible paths and so ended up following none.

Misogynist Predators

"Violence against women was never a women’s issue. We took it on because nobody else was taking it on. We don’t rape ourselves, it turns out. This has always been a men’s issue. Now men need to make it their issue.

They need to say we care as much about this as we care about sports, as we care about any of the things that occupy us because our sisters, our mothers, our daughters, our grandmothers, our wives, our girlfriends are suffering in a very major way in this world. One out of three of us are being beaten and raped every day. Every day!

We lived with this forever. It’s killed our will. It’s killed our sex drive. It’s killed off our intelligence. It’s killed off our agency. It’s killed off our ability to be employed. It’s a sickness in this society and men need to take this moment and say, ‘We care. We’re gonna change. We’re gonna look into our hearts and souls and figure out what went wrong and what patriarchy has done to us or we’re not gonna be here anymore.’

We will perish as human beings because the people who run things now are the most misogynist predators who are not only destroying women, but they’re destroying the planet, they’re destroying poor people, they’re destroying African Americans, they’re destroying Mexicans, they’re destroying Muslims. They’re destroying anymore who isn’t a white man. and this is our hour. We’re here. Either we change now or we perish." 

—  Eve Ensler on WTF with Marc Maron

The Woman

I Love her… 
The woman who’s hands
Are calloused, 
whose back breaks 
From all the placements of babies 
Upon it. 
Years after years.

That woman who puts on
Various masks through life’s stages. 
First of a delicate carer,
Then of a strict teacher,
Then that of an enemy,
Before residing as a friend.
The woman with one thing constant,
Despite the mask-
Her soul:
The soul of a carer,
The heart of a lover.

The woman whose palms 
Have grazed various parts of 
My body. That woman whose arms 
Will always be open to me: 
Calling in silence,
No matter where I go, what I do
You are always welcome home.

That woman,
With her luscious frocks
And stout frame….
I love that woman.

Father’s Day When You Have a "Toxic" Dad

This is not a greeting Card Father’s Day type message. There is no shortage of the warm and fuzzy Father’s Day cards, quotes and sentiments for you to read, bouncing around the Internet.

No, this Father’s Day message is for all of us who have, or had, strained, troubled, broken or abusive relationships with dear old dad. So, if your dad is Ward Cleaver, count your lucky stars. You don’t need to read on. Go enjoy him. Love him and celebrate him. Just don’t judge those of us who struggle with Father’s Day because we had something far less than “Father Knows Best,” for a dad.

To begin with, it’s important to remember that the Bible says, “honor your father. “
It doesn’t say “obey your father.”
It doesn’t say “respect your father.”
It doesn’t say “like your father.”
It doesn’t even say “love your father.”

Of course, it would be wonderful to feel love for one’s father, however, love is a feeling and feelings can’t be commanded.

Some fathers are lovable. However, some fathers are not. For a myriad of reasons, they are outside the realm of our love: abuse, neglect, absence, abandonment, betrayal — many fathers have simply made it impossible for their children to feel the emotion of love or demonstrate it back. And if you are such a child, of any age, or even if your father is dead, particularly on Father’s Day when you are bombarded with messages of “love you dad,” you need to hear this at least once today:
- NOT LOVING YOUR DAD DOES NOT MAKE YOU A MONSTER.
-NOT LOVING YOUR DAD IS NOT YOUR FAULT.
-IS IT SAD? YES, OF COURSE, BUT IT DOES NOT MAKE YOU BAD!

Look, we are not judged by our feelings, rather, we are judged by our actions. It would be nice to love dad, however, for many of us, at least at this moment, it may not be there and maybe it never will.

What is a choice, what is always a choice, however, are our actions. How do we choose to treat our dads? That is always our choice to make.

To “honor” our father, at the very least, is to treat him with common decency and dignity. In my opinion this is the bare minimum of making sure that he is clothed, fed, and sleeps with a roof over his head. It is a minimum, it certainly isn’t a maximum, but it is a start.

Beyond that there are degrees of honor — if at all possible, picking up the phone and calling dad, speaking to dad in a dignified way and taking the kids to visit their grandfather are all rungs as we climb up the ladder of honor.

Honor, however, may also mean NOT picking up the phone, NOT visiting, or NOT placing the grandchildren into his life. Yes, that is harsh. Of course it isn’t ideal. It’s horrible. It’s hell. However, so is physical abuse, sexual abuse or emotional abuse. Hell is having a father who is a drug addict, a compulsive liar, thief, bully or all-around bad guy.

Indeed, there is a commandment to honor one’s father, however, there is no commandment to subject oneself, or own’s children, to abuse, forsaking their honor, or our own, to honor an abusive dad. As much as it is a commandment to honor one’s father, equally it is a commandment for a father to make it possible for his children to honor him and some dad’s seem to do all they can to make this commandment nearly impossible to fulfill.

Respect must be earned.
Love must be inspired.
Honor, however, is a set of actions that we have some control over.

As sons and daughters we must do everything we can to bestow honor, at least the lowest rung on the ladder of honor, upon our dad.

Maybe this Father’s Day you’ll forgive your dad (alive or dead).
Possibly this Father’s Day you’ll love your dad.
Perhaps this Father’s Day you’ll find something, one thing, to respect about your dad.
However, at the very least, do whatever you can to somehow, in some way, show him some honor.

Even if he doesn’t deserve it — do it for yourself, do it for your kids, do it for God.
May we all be blessed with father’s we not only honor but we love. At the very least, may we all be blessed to be sons and daughters that do our very best to show our dad, whether in life or death, deserving or not, a sense of honor on this Father’s Day.

Have an Honorable Father’s Day