One thing I think about though, is that it almost seems as if we have to cut out any and all contact with the opposite sex if we get into a relationship or, of course, especially if we get married. This would admittedly be a tough transition for me because I've always had guy friends. And my thought was, if it hasn't turned into something romantic after X years of knowing them, it never will. Some of my married friends have told me they feel very isolated because they as singles, they had guy friends and have a tough time coping with never being able to make friends with a guy again.
It seems that if I ever do get into a relationship, I'll have to pretty much cut off all communication with my guy friends except a generic Christmas letter or something that gets sent out to everyone... And as it is now, most of my friends and I, whether male or female, only keep in touch a couple times a year due to busy schedules.
As for when emotional cheating takes place... My then-husband and I worked at the same place and had a group of friends we all hung out with from work. He was really into gaming with friends and while sometimes I'd go along, I didn't always want to and we were always in agreement that sometimes we had separate interests. One of the girls we worked with liked gaming too and started going with him to these events instead (which I had no problem with at the time). To tell you the truth, I didn't even think much about it.
After all, we were all friends and hung out both in a collective group and in pairs. Second, I was married to him. Third, she had a long-term serious boyfriend and they were talking about getting married. But...
How does one know if it's turning into emotional cheating? I personally believe that if you find yourself preferring the company of that person to the one you're with, or if something significant happens and you find yourself wanting to call THEM instead of the person you're with, or if you're having to hide things from the person you're with in order to talk to or spend time with the other person, or someone insists that their "friend" be included in EVERYTHING... I think there is definitely a problem.
As for the solution... I'm not sure. One of the challenges I'm finding is that, as a single, people tell you to "Go out, meet people, make friends!" And some of those friends might be of the opposite gender. I'm not quite sure of how cutting all of my opposite-gender friends off is going to go. I'm not quite sure how to tell someone, "You're a great friend in helping me with my transition, but we both have to understand that if either one of us gets hitched, the only way can ever talk again is with supervision."
One thing I've found that's helped me get better is having a wide variety of friends. Maybe I need to talk about something and my friend Michael can't talk that night, but my other friend Kristen can. Maybe I just need to grab a cup of coffee and my friend Carrie can't go, but my other friend Alex is already at the coffee shop. Well, what if you're married and your spouse is unavailable, which happens often, due to work schedules, and you really need to talk or someone to rely on? Does this mean we all need to hope for a very reliable, almost always available same-gender friend as a back-up?
One of my own personal struggles is in how I'm going to transfer relying on a wide group of friends to almost exclusively just one person. I personally don't even think this is possible, because I'd be burdening him with the things I've relied on a group to help me with.
In the dating world, I've met several guys as well who will say, "I've always had a lot of female friends (and I don't plan on giving them up.) How do you expect to handle that?" Seeing as I'm not dating anyone, I haven't had to really think about an answer to that yet.
But if the time came, I guess we'd have to talk about it and work out some sort of compromise because, after all, I have guy friends, too.
