Men and women slowly develop friendships with co-workers because they spend so much time together. E-mails, chatting and texting lead to drinks after work and obsessive thoughts about the other. Communicating so much means they are soon telling each other stories and intimate details about their thoughts and emotions. Superficially, these emotional affairs are based on all the romance and none of the drudgery of everyday life, but that is what makes them so dangerous.

A person does not share the dishes, kids and laundry with the object of their emotional affair, but instead spends only quality time from 9 to 5, energetic, in a stimulating work environment, and dressed up in good work clothes like skirts and high heels, suits and ties. When a person has all of the fun and none of the problems, the emotional affair becomes exciting, alluring and mysterious. It becomes very easy to take an emotional affair to the next level.

You begin to want this friendship more than you want anything else. You feel you have little control over what is happening and what might happen. The emotional affair feels like a runaway train that you cannot stop. Ending an emotional affair in its early stages is, of course, much easier than stopping it when it has gone too far. If you find yourself having an emotional affair or being drawn into one, step back.

You owe it to him to be honest about what is happening in your life, whether you want to tell him or not. Most women who stop emotional affairs look back on them with relief that they stopped it before it went further. Letting an emotional affair progress to a physical affair steps over a line that you cannot change, so pay attention to the warning signs before it is too late. Recognize your early bonds and attachment to that friend or co-worker who you fantasize about.