My husband and I work together in a large business. He clearly fancies a woman there – I can tell by how he watches her. He brings her up in conversation and says he feels sorry for her, as her husband doesn’t treat her the way he treats me. She isn’t in a bad marriage at all, it’s just his opinion.
I broached the subject with him as it was upsetting and humiliating me at work. He laughed at the idea and says I’m the only one for him, but I know by how he reacted that he isn’t being honest.
I love him, I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t cheat on me and I understand you can find someone attractive (that’s normal) and not act on it. So how do I reconcile knowing that he likes her, is probably not being honest with me about it because he knows it would upset me, and get over myself?
Eleanor says: The fact this is normal doesn’t mean you have to like it. Nobody likes an occasion to ask, “What does she have that I don’t?” Often the irritating, insurmountable answer is that she has something you just can’t have, not with all the effort in the world: novelty.
Crushes often aren’t about who the other person is or what they look like or do. It’s not much to do with what they are at all. It’s to do with what they aren’t: they aren’t known, aren’t familiar. Attraction is so much to do with possibility, with what we don’t know, that someone comparatively unknown can be a real magnet for the imagination.
You can drive yourself crazy trying to have that allure.
But just as this might not be much to do with her, it’s also not much to do with you. It’s not an appraisal of what you’re actually like. It’s just that as you spend more time with your partner, you become more known to them. Trying to pass through the years together without that happening is a bit like trying to pass through the years without ageing. We are going to become comfortable to each other, more reliable, more familiar.
To a certain degree, you can find some reassurance in that. Like Nina Simone sang, you have his love to keep. You have a shared history, a home, a union. Though these things quicken the pulse a little less, they’re also the sturdy beams of life, and they’re things only you provide. In moments of doubt and feeling threatened, you can mentally knock on those.
But there might be a limit to how much reassurance you can get from that. It can be a bore to have the wife mantle creep on to you. “Comfortable”, “reliable”, “familiar”: these are words for a sedan, not a grown woman. To have to see yourself in comparison to an alluring other – such that what stands out about you is that you’re the familiar one – well, it can make you feel like that’s all you are.
One of the things that freaks us out about crushes is the fear we’ve slipped into a universe where we’re just “spouse” and all the particular individual exciting stuff about us is muffled by that fact.
So when you need to reassure yourself, it might be a mixed recipe: one part reminding yourself of your marriage and stability, and one part reminding yourself that you’re not just “the known option”. You’re also you, with all the exciting details you’ve ever had. Can you find fun ways to get in touch with that? Is there someone you can privately fancy, a song you can put on that’s your power-up anthem, a friend you can text in the moments you catch him looking?
Part of battling these feelings is getting a reassuring answer to the question, “Does he love me?” Another part is finding ways to remind yourself that’s not the only question.
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