SAVAGE LOVE

BY DAN SAVAGE

DEAR DAN: Can something count as an affair if you never do anything physical with the other person? I reconnected with an old friend, who is married. We had hooked up a long time ago, but it was kissing only. Years passed and we reconnected during the pandemic and began texting. Then the floodgates opened. He confessed he loves me. And he started describing all the things he wanted to do to me. Then we started describing them together. This has all been via text, but it’s not like sexting. No genital pics. Nothing crude. It’s poetic, it’s erotic, it’s passionate. It’s like the perfect blend of love and sex, and there’s a huge amount of trust, support, friendship, everything you’d ever want in a partner.

But there are obstacles. He’s married, even though he and his wife according to him — married so she could get a green card. Things are tense with her. She doesn’t know about “us,” and they had issues before there was an “us.” She has anger issues, he says, and is emotionally abusive, but he has no plans to divorce her. He is thinking about buying her a separate place so they can live apart. I know it’s a cliché: the married man complaining about his marriage to get some on the side. But he’s never made a move to have sex with me in person, which makes him seem more credible. I also have a partner, although we haven’t had a sexual relationship in ages.

My “affair,” if that’s what it is, has been going on for months, but I put the sexting on pause as I felt guilty. But the love part didn’t stop. I want to resume the sexting, even if it’s only talk, but I want to understand what we’re doing and how we might be able to be together without hurting other people.

— Sexless In Nearby Seattle

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DEAR SINS: There’s no “being together,” assuming that’s even something he wants, without leaving your current partners, and there’s no leaving your current partners without hurting them.

What you describe sounds like a pretty unambiguous example of an emotional affair. Here’s the thing about emotional affairs: They take up a lot of space. They eat up a lot of emotional and erotic energy that might otherwise get channeled into an existing marriage or relationship. If you weren’t taking up so much of his time and meeting some of his important needs, he might be motivated to work on his marriage — and vice versa for you and your relationship. But if two people can honestly say that nothing they do or say will make their existing commitments any better and you don’t have it in you to join hands and jump together… well, then, no one who isn’t married to you would blame you for doing what you need to do to feel alive.

But if his marriage is as awful as he says it is — and your relationship is as sexually unsatisfying as you make it sound — the two people you’re cheating most are yourselves. By staying, you’re cheating yourself out of the chance that you could have everything you want with one person. Passionate sex, loving words, someone living with and for you, for as long as it lasts.

It’s a difficult choice and there is no easy or obvious answer.