Sometimes all it takes is eye contact with my husband’s best friend, and I’m suddenly far too aware of him. His voice, his shirt, where he’s standing. Details that should pass straight through my day become impossible to ignore. Meanwhile, I’m trying to act like a woman who can be in a room with a man without getting distracted by her own thoughts.
I’m 30, married, and deeply in love with my husband. That isn’t the reassuring introduction before I explain everything missing from our marriage. He’s affectionate, thoughtful, handsome and romantic. He works hard, makes me feel loved in small everyday ways, and our sex life is good. I don’t feel neglected. I don’t lie awake imagining a better partner. I want the man I married.
His friend isn’t even someone I particularly enjoy. I find him rude, cold and distant. He looks nothing like my husband and isn’t the sort of man I would normally be drawn to. If our lives weren’t connected through their friendship, I wouldn’t choose his company. That makes the attraction harder to explain to myself: I can dislike being around him and still feel this intense physical pull when he’s there.
There’s no imagined romance behind it. I don’t want to discover a tender side to him or build another life with him. My thoughts are sexual, and I’m embarrassed by how readily they show up. Even brief, ordinary interactions can leave me distracted. I’ve had recurring erotic dreams about him, too, including when I hadn’t consciously been thinking about him beforehand. The dreams leave me with more unwanted thoughts about someone I don’t even like.
He hasn’t encouraged any of this. He has never flirted with me or suggested that he’s interested. I have no evidence that he feels anything similar, and I have no intention of checking. Whatever charge I feel in his presence belongs to my experience; it tells me nothing about his. There isn’t a mutual secret happening between us.
I’ve tried looking away, keeping myself occupied and focusing on something else when he’s around. I’ve also tried reasoning my way out of the attraction, as if listing everything I love about my husband might settle it. I already know those things. I don’t need persuading that my marriage matters, which leaves me frustrated when the thoughts return anyway.
I wouldn’t sleep with his friend. Even imagining him approaching me, or my husband somehow giving permission, doesn’t change my answer. Those are hypotheticals, not offers anyone has made. I want my husband to be the only man I share a bed with for the rest of my life. The fantasies don’t feel like plans; they feel like something unwanted that keeps interrupting a life I actually chose.
I understand that having a thought and acting on it are different. Knowing that hasn’t stopped the guilt. Being loved so well makes me feel worse about having anything like this to hide, even though I haven’t pursued him. I’m not asking anyone to tell me I’m a good person. Keeping it entirely to myself has become exhausting. I needed somewhere to say what I can’t seem to make disappear.
