Queen’s 1980 hit “Another One Bites the Dust” has come to mind recently whenever a ministry friend or peer has been brought down by an “emotional affair.”
It’s something that’s happened far too often in my own little circle of ministry friends in recent years, so much in fact that I decided to spend some time learning more about this trend.
For those of us in youth ministry, a perfect storm of cultural forces and vocational nuances makes us especially susceptible to waking up one morning to realize we’ve somehow made a fine mess of our marriages, families, friendships, ministries and much of the kingdom work we eagerly set out to accomplish when we first said yes to the call to minister to kids.
Ministry Makes Us Vulnerable
We’re susceptible to emotional affairs for many reasons. First, there’s the fact that our position puts us in the place of serving as a hero and positive influence in the lives of broken people. They are looking for someone to connect with them, validate them, make them feel that they’re worth something and that someone cares for and loves them.
We fulfill all those needs, and then they look up to us. I’ve had youth ministry friends get tangled in the mess of emotional affairs with needy kids, parents, co-workers and the volunteers they lead. There also are the personal hurt and emotionally difficult back-stories we all carry with us.
Sometimes the weight of our own emotional baggage is just enough to push us over the edge as we seek intimacy and validation by entering into inappropriate emotional relationships with people other than our spouses. We justify it all and are easily sucked in, especially if our marriages are marked by emotional distance.
Rather than seeking the help we need, we escape to someone else we think we need. Finally, our digital worlds flood our lives with social media technology that allows us to stay connected with anyone, anywhere, anytime…and to do so without the people who should be closest to us even knowing it.
In recent years, Facebook, Twitter, texting, email and mobile phones have made it very easy for more than a few of my ministry friends to pursue and nurture inappropriate relationships. We must recognize we live in cultural soil that feeds and even encourages improper emotional attachments with people who should only be friends.
Affairs Defined
Defining an emotional affair seems easy. Identifying it in our own lives is more difficult—so difficult in fact, that we often don’t see an emotional affair for what it is until it’s too late. We lie to ourselves when we call an emotional affair a friendship and justify it as such because after all, isn’t an affair something sexual?
Not true. Affairs aren’t always sexual in nature. If we seek out or rely on someone who is not our spouse for any kind of intimacy that should only be shared with one’s spouse, what you’ve got is an emotional affair. You are cheating; and usually, those who are cheating know they are doing so.
Still, I’ve heard many friends justify what they are doing as innocent or right—even to the point of believing they are helping or ministering to the other person—and it’s all OK because nobody involved has ever taken off his or her clothes. Emotional affairs are correctly defined as “sexually chaste infidelity.” Sadly, experts report that 50 to 80 percent of emotional affairs eventually lead to a physical/sexual affair—all of that happening with someone who at first was just a friend.
Proactive Prevention
What proactive steps can we take to prevent this scourge from visiting our lives and ministries?
First, recognize that you can fall for an emotional affair. To think or say, “It can’t/won’t happen to me,” is just plain stupid. We are sinful and fallen human beings who have a bent toward evil. Entering into a relationship with God through Jesus Christ and answering a call to youth ministry doesn’t serve as some kind of foolproof vaccination against this stuff. Instead, it opens us up to a whole new world of temptation, opposition and spiritual oppression that should cause us to put up our guards even more.
Second, recognize the signs of an emotional affair, exercising diligence in regular, prayerful preventive self-examination. Not only that, but we should be developing the kind of friendships with our ministry peers that allow us and them to call each other out if any of these warning signs rear their ugly heads.
You’re wandering into a minefield if you start to notice any of these signs of an inappropriate emotional attachment:
• Developing a relationship with someone who is not your spouse that results in seeking out and eagerly looking forward to opportunities to connect personally.
• Longing to be with someone—in a group or alone—who is not your spouse, and finding ways to make that happen.
• Secretly using email, Facebook or text messaging to communicate with the person and hiding the relationship from your spouse and/or being concerned that your spouse will find out.
• Your “friend” feels closer to you than your spouse.
• There is a shroud of secrecy as you exclude your spouse from the relationship.
• You fear what might happen if your spouse were to discover the relationship or witness your interaction with this person.
• You are turning to this person rather than your spouse for encouragement and support.
• You are sharing things with this person that you should be sharing only with your spouse, sometimes following up with statements such as, “Don’t tell my spouse I told you this,” or, “I can talk to you about things I never can talk about with my spouse.”
• Saying things to that person that you never would say if your spouse were privy to the conversation.
• Comparing the other person to your spouse.
• Your spouse gets upset or expresses concern about the relationship—even going so far as to ask you to cut it off.
• Lying to your spouse about the relationship.
• Fantasizing about what it would be like to be married to the person instead of your spouse.
Third, regularly ask God to protect you from entering an emotional affair. Ask God to raise warning signals if you are wandering too close to the minefield. Pray that you’ll find out—or even be found out!—if you decide to walk where you shouldn’t.
If you go there, pray that your sin would be exposed and brought into the light. Submit to counseling and a process of accountability that walks you from confession, to repentance, to restoration and to redemption.
Finally, exercise a heavy dose of prevention. Know yourself and your sinful tendencies. Fill the well of your life with God’s life-giving Word, and draw from that well as you live your life in relationships with others. Seek joy in God alone.
If you are single, cultivate the gift of your singleness and set up the boundaries that are necessary to keep you from wandering into an emotional affair.
If you are married, cultivate your marriage. Build parameters and hedges together so that your intimacy with your spouse will be fostered and protected. Make sure there are no secret places you keep from your spouse.
Whether married or single, don’t use social media to converse deeply or secretly with people as the end result could be an emotional affair. View social networking as your virtual car or virtual office—places where you never would be alone with someone of the opposite sex. If you are married, share accounts and passwords with your spouse.
I’ve been hearing Queen’s “Another One Bites the Dust” play in my mind more than I would like. May God guide and protect us, and may that ’80s hit be silenced as we live in accountable community to the glory of God.
