It’s Wednesday, the day when we talk marriage! I introduce a topic, and then you follow up either by commenting or by writing your own post and then linking up!
On Monday I wrote a post about why affairs happen–we let seasons of distance become seasons of carelessness, and we find ourselves emotionally bonding with someone else, which can lead to more. I really should have saved the post for a Wifey Wednesday, but it came to me and so I just wrote it!
Since then I’ve received a number of emails from women who didn’t want to leave a comment saying basically, I’m in that very situation. There’s a guy I’m attracted to. What do I do?
I want to address this today in two steps. First, we’ll look at how to keep distance in your marriage to a minimum; and second, we’ll look at how to handle this guy that you’re attracted to.
1. Keeping Distance to a Minimum
You cannot eliminate distance in a marriage, so don’t feel guilty when it happens. There are months, for instance, which are rather dry for us in the bedroom because I travel a lot, and instead of cooperating and doing-that-thing-that-prevents-sex-once-a-month while I’m gone, which would be very convenient, it seems to hit right when I get home. And then by the time I leave again for the weekend, it’s over.
Or perhaps we’re just busy with the kids, going away a lot on weekends for tournaments. This doesn’t happen all year; the way our household is set up, life is absolutely nuts every October/November and March/April, but the rest of the year is doable. So it’s kind of seasonal, and we know it.
You can’t prevent it. You can also have distance because your parents are sick, and you have to spend weekends traveling to help them. Or your husband has extra work.
As much as possible, make sure these are only seasons in your life, and not the whole life. When those seasons are over, celebrate together! Go away for a weekend. Have a few date nights in a row, even if it means you don’t see the kids.
And when you are going through it, try to keep communicating. Call as much as you can. Text. Pray. Keep up to date with your spouse’s schedule so you at least know what they’re doing, and tell him what you’re doing, so you can pray throughout the day or think of him. Let him know that you want him home, and you want to be home.
Sometimes in these seasons of distance we start getting annoyed at each other, because we’re busy, and we want him to pick up the slack. Or we’re mad at him for leaving us with the kids. As much as possible, try to stop that. Realize that this is just a season of distance, and it is more important to get through that season with your relationship close than it is to change the way you manage the household or the way he works. The time to address the discrepancies in your life–if you honestly work harder than he does, for instance, or if he leaves you more often than is necessary–is not during the seasons of distance. It’s when you’re reunited again and you’re comfortable together. If you start a big confrontation when you’re already not close to each other, it can drive you both apart right when you need to cling to each other.
If you have real issues, by all means deal with them. But hold them until you’re at a place in your marriage when you really can.
2. Dealing with a Guy You Feel Attracted To
Let’s say you’ve been going through a season of distance and you’ve met a man that you feel quite close to. You’ve been sharing some stuff about your marriage, and he’s been sharing some stuff about his. You feel quite bonded to him. You like being around him. You feel like a young girl again, all giggly and desired and in love.
What in the world do you do? You don’t want to wreck your marriage, but you don’t want the feeling to go away, either.
I know that you feel a lot more connected to the other guy. That’s only natural if he’s the one that you’re really talking to. But you can’t grow your marriage if you continue to confide in him and not your husband. You’ll be expecting your husband to act like this other guy, and that’s not fair. You also probably have an idealized picture of the other guy. He makes you feel great, but what makes you feel great is the intimacy from talking to him, not the day to day interactions. If you were to actually end your marriage and get together with this guy, you’d have the same problems you do in your current marriage. What makes you feel so close to this guy right now is that you don’t have to deal with the reality of life. You just have to deal with sharing emotions, and that’s a very intense, intimate feeling, but it can’t be sustained.
You’ve got to figure out how to get back with your husband, and give up the dreams of these feelings. It’s not realistic to have those same feelings for your husband again, because those tend to occur when a relationship is starting. But they’re not sustainable.
Cut off, as much as possible, your communication with this guy. Or if you do keep talking to him, don’t talk to him about your husband. Stay on neutral ground. Don’t share stuff that will allow an intimate attachment to grow.
And then talk to your husband about how you can feel close again. Don’t expect to feel totally close to him again right away. Just say that you want to do stuff together like you used to. Try to figure out a schedule where every now and then you each can become your priority. Go watch sports events together, or take hikes, or go biking, or take a cooking class, or anything that interests you. Take an investment course, or set yourselves a goal that you work at together, like figuring out how to spend only $600 a month on groceries and still eat great, or how to save money for Christmas presents, or anything that’s a shared goal.
Just talk to him and figure out what you can do together and what projects you can start together. Stop trying to make him act towards you the same way this other guy does, because it won’t work. What the other guy is offering you is actually something false, because it’s an intimacy without any responsibility, and that’s always more intoxicating than real life relationship. I find that what women often want is to keep that feeling alive, they don’t actually want to live with the guy on a day-to-day basis, and so you’ve got to find a way to build a great relationship with your husband again.
Now, what advice do you have for us today? Have you ever had to confront your fantasies and throw them aside? How did you do it? Or do you have something else to tell us? Write your own Wifey Wednesday post that links back to here, and then leave the link of THAT POST in the Mcklinky below. Thanks!
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as someone who has experienced this what i do know is that if you value your marriage, you have to sever all ties with the other guy…nothing else works. and you must be honest with your husband about what caused this in the first place; the gravity of the situation and him seeing his shortcomings and if both of you are willing usually puts you back on the right track.
Thanks for that insight! I would agree that severing ties is best, but it can also be difficult if it’s a work situation or something. You may still have to interact. I have known people who have left jobs over it, though, and if that’s possible, it’s likely a good idea.
I think that a lot of people forget how their relationship with their spouse started. Of course, some people meet and it is fireworks from the start- but for many people it is a gradual process. Friendship, attraction, love. When we have friendships with those of the opposite sex, we are on a slippery slope.
My husband and I have a few “rules” in place for our home. #1 We don’t have friends of the opposite sex. Sure we have couple friends, but I don’t go out to lunch with Mr. X and hubby doesn’t talk on the phone to Mrs. X. We hang out with them as couples, but not independently with the opposite sex. #2 If Hubby is home alone and wifes’ friend stops by, she does not enter the home (and the reverse). Why put yourself in a position that something could be misconstrued? #3 All email/facebook/etc.. passwords are shared.
I know that some people think we are extreme in our “house rules” but it works for us. One last think that I do personally is pray that I would have no attraction to another man. I think often we can feel that little twinge of possible attraction when we first meet someone and we just brush it aside. I specifically pray that God would take any feelings of attraction away at that moment to never reoccur. So far, so good!
That’s great that you and your husband have been open about this and talk about it and make guidelines. I totally agree with the personal guidelines–it just often gets tricky in a work situation. But all the more reason to call your spouse at work sometimes!
You said this:
Cut off, as much as possible, your communication with this guy. Or if you do keep talking to him, don’t talk to him about your husband. Stay on neutral ground. Don’t share stuff that will allow an intimate attachment to grow.
I think when the situation has gotten to the point where you feel the kind of connection to another man that you should be feeling with your husband, cutting off communication “as much as possible” isn’t gonna cut it. It has to be severed completely. Because once the connection has been made, seeing and/or trying to roll back the interaction to a place before you started feeling inappropriate feelings for this person is all but impossible. It’s awfully hard to un-ring a bell.
And yes, I know this may mean asking to be reassigned at work or changing jobs altogether. But the marriage is worth it.
In principle I agree with you, Terry, but I also know leaving a job instantaneously isn’t always possible. Or what if it’s a person in your husband’s family? or a neighbor? While eventually it may be possible to move, or switch jobs, in the interim it may be difficult. And I just don’t want to give women the idea that “well, I can’t cut off contact, so there’s no point in trying to change things.” No, you can still make your relationship formal and distant if you need to keep seeing the guy for a time. Maybe that’s a cop out, but I’m afraid of setting up a situation where, because you can’t do the best, you feel like you have an excuse to not do anything at all, if that makes sense.
leaving a job instantaneously isn’t always possible. Or what if it’s a person in your husband’s family? or a neighbor? While eventually it may be possible to move, or switch jobs, in the interim it may be difficult.
I see your point. Sometimes it may be more complicated than I made it sound.
I initially thought your admonition to cut off communication “as much as possible” seemed to offer a little too much latitude. Of course this sis a blog and you only have so much time and space. When I said sever completely I was thinking things like in the case of a neighbor, stating clearly that you can no longer communicate with him unless its an extreme emergency. All communication must go through your husband.
If it’s a husband’s relative, same thing applies. No communication when husband isn’t present. Period. While I appreciate that sometimes a complete severing may be difficult, I’ve learned that sometimes we need to be crystal clear. Especially since we’re dealing with a situation where an emotional investment has been made and our sinful minds are prone to look for any loophole it can find when our emotions are ramped up.
I do think it also depends on how far the relationship progressed. If it was simply that you were starting to have feelings for someone, then stopping communicating anything remotely intimate is appropriate, but saying “I can never talk to you again”–if you haven’t ever actually said out loud that you are attracted to him, or gone down that road–may be extreme. If, on the other hand, you were texting each other constantly, then you should cut off contact. So it kind of depends.
But I do think that we women need to be as careful as we can, and draw firm boundaries around us (and our husbands should do the same). Our big weakness will always be opening up too much emotionally to another guy, and if we feel ourselves going down that road, we have to put a stop to it.
But I think you’re right. I could have been more vehement about it.
For 15+ years of our marriage I’d worked with only women. When we moved to a new school where my colleagues are mostly men, I found myself struggling with attraction and “crushes” that I hadn’t experienced since high school. I did not discuss this with my husband, as he would have taken it very personally. Instead, I sought out older women to talk with and hold me accountable. I needed support adjusting to the newness of the situation and the sudden increase in male attention.
Thanks Cheri
One step I’ve taken, because electronic communication can be so secretive, is to include my husband’s email address in the cc: line (or the bcc: line) when I need to send an email to a man. Whether it’s to my pastor, a family friend, or whoever, if there is anything even remotely personal in the email, it goes to my husband as well. (Confirming to my boss that I will be at this or that meeting, etc. is not even remotely personal, so hubby doesn’t get those emails.)