Dear Dr. Ellen: I am a 40 year-old happily married male for 8 yrs with two daughters. My problem is that I am truly in love with another woman, aged 35, who is very happily married for 9 yrs with two children. We have been friends for over 14 yrs. We became closer as friends for the last 5 yrs and we also work for the same company. During the course of our working relationship we became very flirtatious with each other. It has now been 8 months that we have been telling each other how much we love each other. It's a love we both cannot explain. We also met for an afternoon in a hotel room although we did not make love to each other, we just wanted our bodies to be close together. It is difficult to explain how we feel but you must know that we have been trying everything possible to end what we have. Because we see each other so much we lose control. I have suggested that I would go as far as resigning my position at work to be apart. Please understand that we both love our families but we cannot seem to find the solution to this. We both have never cheated but we feel guilty with what we are doing. We know that if there were not children involved we would probably divorce our partners to be together. We know what the solution is. Why is it that we cannot act on it? WE LOVE EACH OTHER SO MUCH. We truly found each other's soul mate. - Don

Dear Don: If you are working with the same person day in and day out, you can develop a very close and special bond with each other. Many people today are spending much more time with their working partner than they are with their loving partner. We are always sending messages to each other, either verbal or nonverbal. It is okay to send the message that "You are so much fun to work with" or "We get so much accomplished here or "We are on the same wavelength and we really understand each other." But it is not okay to send the message - "I am interested in you outside of work or as a woman or man, or in a romantic way." It is a decision that you make to not carry it any further than friendship. It is also a conscious decision to cross over the line. It doesn't just happen by chance. It is a decision to cheat or not cheat, live a life filled with lies or not.

It is also important to understand the reason you are able to form such a close bond. You are in a very controlled environment. There are no children to deal with, relatives, friends and money problems - just two adults with shared professional goals, spending quality time with each other. Stick in a couple of kids, living with each other every day, dealing with the relatives and money issues and let us see how much fun it still is!

You are cheating your wife out of having a husband who loves her with all his heart and is 100% there in mind, body and soul. The more time you spend thinking of this other woman, the less time you spend thinking of your wife. I know that you know deep in your heart that what you are doing is wrong. You say that both of you are happily married. I wonder how happy you would be if you thought that your wife was doing the same thing that you are doing? Although you may think that you are not harming your wife by living this double life, you are destroying the intimacy that a husband and wife should share. What you both have consciously decided to do is to selfishly think about yourselves and pretend that you have not done this intentionally. Well you have. Make no mistake, in the end, you will cause many people a great deal of pain. Your wife and children will suffer. Your friend's husband and children will suffer and both of you will suffer by seeing the chaos you created. If you are not going to ask for a divorce and marry this woman then I vote for both of you to end this now and for one of you to change jobs as soon as possible. Your wife and her husband do not deserve this! - Dr. Ellen