Can someone explain this to me please?

[CastIronFire]

I'm going to start by saying I'm autistic in case it makes a difference.

I don't very often 'fancy' someone. I never have. I rarely feel sexually attracted to someone unless I've got to know them well first and then they become attractive to me. I've never been attracted to more than one person at a time.

I don't fancy actors or famous people. I never fancy someone on a night out. I can appreciate if someone is good looking but I don't fancy them.

Because of this, I find it very difficult to understand how someone can be in love with someone but 'fancy' someone else. Like an actor or something.

I don't really understand how it is any different to fancying their best mate really. It feels like a betrayal.

It's making it really difficult for me to have a relationship.

I was at work today with two of my male colleagues and they mentioned an actress in passing who they both said they fancied. One is married and the other lives with his girlfriend. I don't understand how they can desire her and also love/fancy their partners.

I wouldn't be in a relationship with someone and have those thoughts/feelings about another man because it would kill any feelings I had for the man I was with

For most of us, having thoughts/feelings about someone else doesn’t kill the feelings we have for the person we’re with.

I would still have emotional feelings towards them but I wouldn't be able to have sex with someone if I fancied someone else.

I'm reading and taking in all the responses. I'm just trying to process how I feel about this in relation to how other people.do.

@CastIronFire , it may help you to chat to other people who feel the same as you in terms of sexual attraction. Mumsnet is brilliant for most things but for exploring this sort of topic and navigating relationships, Id recommend some reddit subs: r/demisexuality , r/asexuality
Also wiki.asexuality.org/Demisexual?title=Demisexual

I'm not saying you are demisexual, but the resource and support linked may help you.

You seem to have a very simplistic/black and white view regarding relationships and what fancying someone else means.

Relationships and sexual attraction are a lot more complex and transient which may be why you are struggling to process it.

There also isn’t a right or a wrong way to feel. Some people may see someone they find attractive on the street/in a film and have a very brief moment of thinking that person is attractive then never think of them again.
Others might fantasise about that person when alone/with their DP.
Lots of people will be somewhere in between.
Its all perfectly normal and healthy and in the vast majority of cases has no impact on their relationship.

If you couldn’t have sex with someone while previously watching a film and thinking ‘that actor is good looking/has a good body’ then that’s absolutely fine too.

I think you need to stop trying to understand how other people feel and just accept that other people will feel differently to you and that’s ok. It doesn’t mean your relationship or other peoples’s relationships are any better/worse because you feel different levels of attraction towards others.

I think your issue is more about trust than ‘fancying’. OK so you don’t relate to the rush of emotion linked with sexuality. That’s yours to do what you want with. We will all describe this differently and it can’t be explained any more than you can describe a colour.

But your trust issues are something you can work on for the sake of your partnership(s). That takes a leap of faith and interpreting the signifiers of a trustworthy individual (which from all you’ve written your boyfriend displays).

Incidentally I generally fancy the pants off my husband but some days he just doesn’t look attractive to me. It’s affected by my mood, his mood, other factors. Same as when I see myself in the mirror or in a photograph I sometimes look worse than I feel (or better).

OP. So many people have offered different explanations around how most people experience attraction.

You are just digging your heels in and insisting that you can't feel any other way than you do. Surely this is one of those things that you have to put some effort in to, to understand how nt people react to other human beings, and try and accept that your way of thinking is not typical.

Otherwise - you are going to destroy the lovely relationship you have now, and any future ones. That sounds like a very very lonely life to me.

Let me try and pose the key question here:

Your boyfriend might and will and probably should find other people attractive while in a relationship. That does not change in any way the way he feels about you.

For you finding someone else attractive would change the way you feel about your partner. This is not true for him, or most people.

Can you accept that? Even if it takes a bit of work and effort on your part? If not, then yes, you're better off on your own permanently.

Surely this is one of those things that you have to put some effort in to, to understand how nt people react to other human beings, and try and accept that your way of thinking is not typical

Howuch effort ae you going to put into to understanding my way of seeing things and changing yourself to try and think more like me?

Thought so.

I can't change the way I think because that's how I process things and the world. I'd rather be single permanently. I'm not so in need of someone to go out with that I'd force myself to he OK with someone/something I'm not.

I asked here because I wanted to understand and I now I do.

Trust in what sense?

I completely trust that he wouldn't physically betray me but it seems that I can't, and shouldn't, trust him not to mentally betray me.

Other people might be ok with that but I'm not.

Other people have said that they can fancy other people without it affecting how they feel about their partner. I couldn't do that and I don't want to be with someone who prefers other women to me. I don't think there's anything wring with that.

Thank you. There is a man at work who I think is attractive. The sort of man that i can see i might have been attracted to if i were single. I saw him this morning and wondered if I could 'fancy' him.

I don't and I couldn't. I felt absolutely nothing at all and, if I did, I know I would stop fancying my boyfriend.

“I don't want to be with someone who prefers other women to me”

But the only person who thinks he prefers other women is you. He didn’t say that, everyone else is saying that’s not what they mean....

Going back to the food analogies, if you’re out for dinner - you’ve ordered your favourite foods, you’re sat eating them and they’re well cooked and you’re enjoying them. A waiter walks past with a dish for the next table and it looks nice, you don’t regret what you ordered, you don’t want to swap it or feel like you missed out because what you have is exactly what you want, but you look at it and think that also looks tasty.

Thats what finding someone random attractive is like.

You’re going straight to assuming it means - damn, wished I’d ordered that... but everyone else is just going, yeah, that looks nice too, but I’m happy with mine and don’t need anything else.

Trust that he is reliable and into you. Trust that your relationship can grow/evolve through respect and communication.

However if you can’t allow him to have thoughts you don’t like then the relationship and frankly all relationships are probably doomed. It’s really unreasonable and controlling. Relationships involve compromise within the bounds of what is acceptable to you both. What you find unacceptable is very limiting IMO

I couldn't do that and I don't want to be with someone who prefers other women to me

fancying someone else doesn’t mean her prefers them to you.

But he doesn’t PREFER other women to you - as I was at pains to describe to you in my post above.

How is it unreasonable and controlling.

It's reasonable to me and I'm not controlling him. I can't control what he thinks or feels about anything and, apparently, neither can he 🤷🏻‍♀️

It's not unreasonable or controlling to end the relationship.

Well that isn't how it feels to me.

I don't understand how someone can claim to love someone and want to spend the rest of their life with them etc and then have their head so easily turned by someone they don't even know.

Okay, I'm out. I've tried really hard to help you, as have many others. I've explained it as clearly as possible, but you're not willing to listen to other viewpoints. I wish you good luck.

Good luck, OP.

You might not be able to understand what others are saying but can you at least accept that what lots of us have said is true for the majority of the population?

Same. People have tried to explain that others see it differently to you, but that’s not good enough. I think sadly your only option here is to end the relationship. It’s a shame, as it sound like he loves you very much.

I can.

But I also don't think it sounds very good.

I was hoping that other people's explanations might make it make more sense and sound ok but actually it doesn't at all. And some of the posts have made it sound and made me feel even worse about it.

I appreciate that people have tried and have gone into some detail to try and explain it but it's so far removed from my experience that I just can't reconcile it with how I feel or think at all.

I wish you luck then .

Well I suppose it’s not controlling if you aren’t trying to change him. But it is inflexible and inflexibility isn’t conducive to a relationship unless control is exerted (or you are perfectly aligned in every single way which I don’t think is usual).

Thank you. There is a man at work who I think is attractive. The sort of man that i can see i might have been attracted to if i were single. I saw him this morning and wondered if I could 'fancy' him.
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I don't and I couldn't. I felt absolutely nothing at all and, if I did, I know I would stop fancying my boyfriend.

Can you understand or at least accept that it’s extremely unusual that fancying someone in passing would mean you stop fancying your partner?

The vast majority of people fancy someone with it having literally no impact whatsoever on how they feel about their partner.

The way you feel is extremely usual. Absolutely nothing wrong with this but it’s so far removed from how the vast majority of people feel and how we are biologically programmed as humans that I think you’d really struggle to find someone who feels that way to be in a relationship with.

For most people it’s not a conscious choice to fancy someone, it’s more of an inate biological reaction, like feeling hot or cold or finding something pleasurable/painful.

Your boyfriend sounds really lovely, I think it would be a shame to end it with him over this.