So, you are married but have a crush on someone else. It happens. Married people, even happily married person, are also human and as such, are vulnerable to experience crushes on attractive others. “Romantic Infatuation” can occurs with anyone who you spend time with, and which have the quality of attracting or, being attractive, producing anxiety.
Result of a polling by YouGov, 23% of Americans who are in relationships said, they currently have romantic feelings for someone else than their partners. That includes 15% of married person who are having those feelings as well.
Those amounts get even higher than you take into account person who may not be in a relationship now, but have been previously. Of the 1,000 people surveyed, 36% confess that they had feelings for someone else they weren’t dating while in a relationship.
Crushes are entirely normal, and very general among people in relationships. “You’re married, not dead,” jokes marriage counselor Rachel Wright, LMFT. One research out of the University of Vermont revealed that 98% of male, and 80% of female have fantasized about someone else than their current partner in the past 2 months.
Crushes are particularly a dime a dozen in the workplace. In a recent research conducted by SimplyHired, 74% of full-time employees in committed relationships revealed, they were attracted to an office partner, so having a work crush even if you’re married is nothing out of the normal.
As for why your crush might feel so stupefy, there’s a solid scientific reason. Intense chemicals are at play when you first experience attraction: adrenaline, serotonin, and dopamine. This cascade of hormones can result in feeling a degree of idealization and obsession of a new partner.
If you feel yourself falling for someone else, take a step back, it’ll assist you protect your marriedlife and evaluate the crush in a logical way.
A crush can feel very innocent, and it’s easy to justify its innocence until it isn’t. The difference between a crush that’s healthy, and one that’s unhealthy is, that it’s perfectly safe and appropriate to discover other people attractive, but when you act on it, it becomes inappropriate.
Even though it serves as a general rule, it’s not quite as simple as thoughts are okay, and actions are not, Traube notes. For one thing, individual have very different ideas about what kind of thoughts and behaviors are okay. To some, fantasizing about a crush while masturbating doesn’t veer into emotional infidelity, but to others, it does. So whether your behavior crosses a line, and cheating the trust of your partner rely on where the line is according to people in the main relationship.
It’s easy to tell yourself that thinking, even obsessing , about a crush won’t intrude upon your marriedlife, because you never plan to do anything physical with the “the other”. But a preoccupation with a crush, no matter how tempting it might be to deny it, attract the attention of your main partner.
If you stay up after your partner goes to bed, so you can browse the six Facebook photo pages of your crush in peace, for example, it isn’t exactly cheating, but it’s not strengthening your relationship, either.
So how do you figure it out? Taking stock of what you’re doing, to feed your crush is a good first step to figure out, if it’s edging into the danger zone, Are you just daydreaming about someone while driving home from work? Or are you constantly texting this “friend,” even telling him intimate things you haven’t shared with your main partner?
Having the feeling is one thing, but how are you handling it? Are you responsible about it? Are you seeking out other people, intentionally meeting for lunch dates, or purposely trying to run into someone?
The little things you do, timing your coffee refill when he tends to be in the office break room, or staying up late when you know he’s there working on a project, may feel innocent and fun, but you have to be honest about it. do they erode the bond you have with your partner. And not only do they rob you of time and attention from your relationship , they increase your exposure to the person you like, which increases the risk that the relationship could develop into a physical relationship.
