My best friend, Jen, and I are very close. We tell each other everything. Although I consider my boyfriend one of my best friends, Jen has been there for me since high school. We know everything about each other. We're so similar that we almost always know what the other is thinking. There's so many times when I have something happen to me during the day and I'll think, "I must call Jen. She'll understand." There's some things I can tell her that I could never tell anyone else...not even my boyfriend. When my boyfriend and I are arguing, she is the first person I'll call to get advice.
Of course, there's nothing sexual to our relationship (sorry to all the guys
). We're just best friends.
Maybe this woman has the same relationship with Jon that I have with Jen. The only difference being that Jen and me have a female-to-female relationship which is more common and more accepted.
If it weren't for the fact that this woman said she has never had a close female friend, I'd want to say that her relationship with Jon is perfectly healthy in my opinion. I think people become way too oversensitive with opposite sex friendships; people honestly can't believe that they can be purely platonic. Three of my best friends happen to be male. The thought of being with any of them sexually makes me sick to my stomach. Bleh!
If this woman had said that she's been spending all this time talking to someone named Lauren or Heather, I think the columnist would say that this woman had a healthy relationship with her best friend. The columnist would go on to say that maybe the woman she try to develop that same communication with her husband. Never would the words "emotional affair" be used. Does that mean that all women are having an emotional affair with their best friends? Because, technically, we all do the same thing as this woman except the only difference is that most of us are spending our time with our female best friend.