AIBU to think there is mutual attraction with a married friend?

Having read your updates, it seems clear to me that your dh is a deeply unpleasant man.
Extremely thoughtless at least.

Your children are almost adults/adults.
Can you leave him?

There's one thing that strikes me as interesting: most men are not really happy with their wives having close friendships with other men.
Sorry they're just not.
I wouldn't like it if my dh had a close friendship with another woman.

It seems to me that there is an element of tacit permission here, as in 'do what the f* you want. Just don't leave.'

So a discreet affair may be possible but I wouldn't have one with a married man, just a single one.

Get out there and meet other guys.

I'm just providing a pragmatic solution to your staying in an essentially shit marriage with a boorish, not boring (boring is no excuse as excitement can be reintroduced) man where things aren't bad enough to leave.

Probably best to leave, though, he's thoughtless at least and will become more of a pain in the ass with age.

Do you love your husband?
Do you want a divorce and all that entails?

Ew, he sounds like a total sleaze. Probably banging other people but contented himself with just ogling the female neighbours because they lived too close to home to try and shag them. Gross. 🤢

Ha, this reminds me myself 10 years ago..
A neighbour i never noticed until- sort of gave me the ,,look,, so i started noticing him more.
He flirted with me, anytime i saw him, his eyes were undressing me, he was smiling, saying hi, hello, waving daily in his car..
I became absolutely mad about him, dreaming about him, imagined we are together....
Even i was married with a young kid.
I remember on one occasion when it was minus 15 outside, our garage faced his front door, me hidden in the garage pretending I had an important job in there only to see him. I saw him on school runs, he drove i walked, always waved at me.
BUT We never spoke..
Then one day a friend was picking me up and we went in her car, passing his house, he stared at her ( didn't see me) , gave her that sexy loooong look he gave me on day one.
Then I got it, he just flirted with women, had he was happily married, his wife was Claudia Shiffer look like.
Nope thank you, I lost interest....
Not same as you OP as you already know him and speak to him, but I know the mad feeling..

You sound obsessed by this, you probably do fancy each other but so what? Every thought or ounce of energy you are using yo think about this man doing your long locked eyes thing you are taking away from the marriage. You are in control, stop with this now.

I'm glad you had six such good years, and I'm really sorry that he died of cancer! 😢 That is just horribly bad luck. It must have been the right thing, because there's a saying: No good marriage ever ends in divorce. If you fell for someone else, the marriage obviously fell far short of meeting your needs.
I'm curious about one practical aspect, though. How did you know that leaving your husband was the right thing to do when opportunities to get to know the other person are limited, by necessity? That's what I always wonder about when it comes to people who leave a spouse for the affair partner. Before making your choice, you don't get to know them well enough for long enough in a variety of real-world settings, I'd have thought. Obviously in your case you did, and it all worked out (well, apart from him having passed 🥺) but how did you know him well enough to feel good about making the decision? I'm just curious.
I don’t think you can ever be completely certain and you have to take a leap of faith. But I thought it was worth taking the risk. I was sure of his feelings and my own and at the time that was all that mattered but there were no guarantees!

Leave well alone it'll only end in tears...!

You aren't free to explore any attraction. Do not meet alone.

Maybe loverboy snores even worse than him, have you ever considered that?

@Watermelon44 , your husband sounds like he's in a rut, possibly a little depressed, and it's also possible that his lack of energy could be something physical. He should have a check-up, including getting his testosterone levels checked.

As for the rudeness, can you talk to him about it? Maybe go for counselling? I hear you. My exH was extremely rude in different ways and would just walk out of the room while I was speaking. (In my case there was nothing to be done in the end as he had severe MH issues that he had hidden before marriage and then took out on me, but your case is probably less extreme and more salvageable than that.)

I would focus on working on your marriage, because doing so will give you a clearer idea of what you're working with. i.e. Could this marriage be a great place for you again, or are you looking at this dull, rude existence forever? It does sound a bit depressing. Without the complication of an Other Man, you can start to consider your own life and what the rest of it might look like without your current husband. It may even be that this man looks so good because he's an escape. At this stage, I really would not muddy the waters by bringing someone else into the equation. I would concentrate on sorting your own life/future out. Maybe these feelings could be a catalyst for exploring what's missing in your own life and making it better. You know that launching into a thing with OM is not the way to go.

Work out what you want in terms of your own marriage, life, and future, and go from there.

I'm glad you had six such good years, and I'm really sorry that he died of cancer! 😢 That is just horribly bad luck. It must have been the right thing, because there's a saying: No good marriage ever ends in divorce. If you fell for someone else, the marriage obviously fell far short of meeting your needs.

I'm curious about one practical aspect, though. How did you know that leaving your husband was the right thing to do when opportunities to get to know the other person are limited, by necessity? That's what I always wonder about when it comes to people who leave a spouse for the affair partner. Before making your choice, you don't get to know them well enough for long enough in a variety of real-world settings, I'd have thought. Obviously in your case you did, and it all worked out (well, apart from him having passed 🥺) but how did you know him well enough to feel good about making the decision? I'm just curious.

Sounds like your husband is a boring fart and definitely suffering from sleep apnoea.
I fell madly in love after 30 years of marriage and had the best 6 years of my life with the Other Man until he died from cancer. I never regretted a thing! Sometimes some things are too good to pass up on. All of you will hate me now and I don’t give a damn!!

I wouldn't find that an ok marriage at all! It doesn't sound like he values or respects you. I'd be sooo tempted to follow up with the other man if this was my life! I'm curious: what's good about your marriage or stopping you from acting on the attraction, @Watermelon44?
Edited to add that I was being decidely flip about following up on the attraction but I think I'd rather be single than live with a man who treated me like your husband. I do hope he has some redeeming features that go beyond being a good provider and useful for putting the bins out.

OP be honest, the only reason why you feel you want to bring it up is so he’ll tell you he feels the same. There is no other reason for wanting to know.

I get it, I have fallen for a married man, and in my case I have ended my relationship. Not to be with him, but because falling for someone else has confirmed for me that my existing relationship is clearly not where I want to be. I already knew that deep down but falling for someone else just confirmed it, and so I ended it.

But I have not, and will not ever let on to the other bloke how I feel. He’s married. That’s all there is to it. And ultimately, even if he felt the same about me, do I really want to be responsible for breaking up a marriage? Known as a Ow, a homewrecker? And furthermore, longer term would I want to be with someone who would be prepared to cheat on his wife? The answer to all of those is no.

What I feel for him is irrelevant. My own integrity is more important. My feelings are real enough to end my own relationship, that doesn’t mean I still have the right to pursue them.

There are other people involved here. People, including him, who didn’t ask to end up in the middle of my feelings.

Even if it is mutual, so what ?
There is no great love story where infidelity is concerned. Just a huge mess and innocent parties having to pick up the pieces .
Leave it alone.

Why not have the best of both worlds and start swinging with them as a group? You will get the best of both worlds, will have some fun and it would all be above board! It is also a great way of testing whether you would actually be sexually compatible with this man or if your attraction to him is just a novelty that is derived from being in a stale marriage. It sounds like all of you get along well and are bored in your marriages. Set up a flirty WhatsApp group chat between the 4 of you and see where it goes. I bet your husband will be amenable to the suggestion, most men definitely would be! Tell your hubby that you're interested in opening the marriage up and would prefer to do it with trusted friends.

You’re both married. And just because you feel something doesn’t mean you need to act upon it. Separate your mind and heart from this man for a moment and think - would I still want to leave my husband if this man wasn’t in the picture? Attraction is easy, relationship is hard. If you end your marriage, it has to be for you and for good reason, not because you found yourself in a (currently) inappropriate. connection. Do you and the other married person want to start out in a hotbed of lies, deceit and cruelty? Or would you rather do it the right way? There’s no crime in leaving a dead marriage but there are ways to do it. Think carefully OP 💖

You need to remember that you are both married and that he's a friend of your DH so stop fantasising and concentrate on your marriage unless you want to destroy two families.

I know I'm going to be in the minority here, but if your felt your marriage was happy and secure enough (not sure the ops is though), I would talk to your husband.

I'd say that you'd started to develop a crush years ago and do you stepped back from the friendship because you didn't want to rush any more feelings growing and it was the safest thing for your marriage to nip out in the bud, and also our of respect to him, and to ask for his assistance in keeping him at arms length now.

Telling him takes the secrecy and the heat out of it, and it makes it far less likely that you'll cheat.

I appreciate not every relationship has that level of honesty though and that most people would be horrified by the idea.

I think the language you are using is very revealing OP.

You say it's "unlikely" that anything would happen and that you "probably" wouldn't act on it, etc etc.

I think you're either fooling yourself or us, possibly both. There's every indication that IF he felt the same as you, things would go further - and then what?

Of course, there's always the possibility that he really just likes you as a friend and has missed your company. He'd have to be a special kind of shitbag to be eying up his friend's wife. Imagine the fallout if you confessed all and it wasn't reciprocated!

You have described a marriage that isn't particularly happy or fulfilling, although there is the possibility that some of your grumbles have arisen simply because your DH is your DH and not this exciting new man. The idea of something more attractive can often make us view things that we were perfectly happy with before negatively. Not to say that you don't have some valid complaints, but if your marriage is really this bad, you need to decide what you want to do and address that - without being influenced by someone else waiting in the wings.

It's absolute nonsense that you want to tell him to "share the burden." You're acting as if you're starcrossed lovers. It's for your ego, and you want to draw out the fantasy.

Even this thread is a terrible idea, it's feeding your need to talk about him and you together.

I am sorry to be so blunt but the longer you persist with the idea that this is some big, special connection, the worse this is going to be. We are all compatible with thousands of other people, but when you're married you commit to being monogamous. Fix your marriage - either by sorting it out or by splitting, take a breath, and then decide what to do next. But whatever you do, don't start declaring feelings to a man who's married, because regardless of whether you're single or not, it's a shitty move.

If I found out he felt the same way it is unlikely to be acted on, we are both pretty good at self control

Get real...

Yep agreed, slippery slope OP, slippery slope....

It’s probably mutual and you are enjoying the crush and how his attention makes you feel but it’s awful and you can stop this right away. If you love your family you will make it clear to this man that there is no possibility there.

Get Real.