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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

In love with female teacher...

320 replies

Tumbletee · 30/04/2019 23:32

Aibu to ask for advice/what is wrong with me?!
NC for obvious reasons.... Happily married to dh for eight years, and have two young children. Always considered myself completely heterosexual, never had any feelings to suggest otherwise, or question that, but over the past year, I've developed intense, overwhelming feelings towards my dds FEMALE preschool teacher! I only see her for approximately ten mins twice a week, but everytime it seems to intensify these feelings, and I can't seem to stop thinking about her. She's probably twenty years older than me, an average middle aged woman, but something about her is causing me to question wtf is going on in my brain?! I truly love my dh, we are very happy, and I feel guilty/ashamed/confused by these thoughts. I keep telling myself it doesn't actually matter as nothing is going to happen anyway, but then I have these fantasies where she tells me she knows how I feel and she feels the same, and it makes my heart race. It sounds insane. Even more now I've wrote it down and admitted everything. But what does it mean?! Am I bisexual? The thought of any other woman doesn't appeal to me at all, in the slightest, it's just her. She messaged me last week (occasionally she'll message about dd, school etc), but this was something really unimportant, and it seemed like maybe she was making an excuse to message me, and I convinced myself she felt the same, and got really excited... Then felt the awful guilt about dh, and how on earth I could be feeling like this about another person. Why after 35 years of "being straight" am I now fantasizing about myself being with a woman? I feel like I'm completely infatuated with her... Any advice?

OP posts:
Mynameiskate · 03/05/2019 23:17

I feel for you Tumbletee. I didn’t even know such intense feelings could exist. I was totally addicted, obsessed, behaving irrationally. It was like the rest of my life had been greyed out and this one person represented something sparkly and bright. My mind was on an anxious loop constantly as I tried to talk sense into myself and work out what was wrong with me. For the first time I had a proper understanding of what it feels like to be mentally unbalanced and not be able to get a grip on a situation. You can message me any time you like.

justarandomtricycle · 04/05/2019 00:34

Honestly the intensity you describe is not necessarily even that uncommon. My last crush was like this, emotionally and physically it was like a life changing love affair. It came to nothing ultimately.

I wouldn't worry about the sexuality aspect. Sexuality can be fluid, or you can be bi, or you can be sparked by an individual. In my experience the notion of having to up sticks and go to the other side of the sexuality fence because you had gay feelings is not needed for most people. If you are bi you will have attraction, even very intense attractions to people of the opposite sex to your partner, it is just a thing you deal with and obviously you do not have to do anything permanent based on that.

Linning · 04/05/2019 00:50

OP,

I do think you have been given a tough time and I think unlike a crush on another man that could potentially be normalized and brushed off slightly more easily, a crush on the same-sex when you have never ever showed interest in a woman before can definitely be unsettling and quite intense (I find relationship between women more intense anyway).

I have had this happen to me, though unlike you, I guess I had had pointers that I may have not been straight throughout my childhood/teen years but I was oblivious to them (or purposefully trying to ignore them) so the first time I really developped a crush on another woman I was consummed by it and it really made me reconsider everything I had known about myself and had felt in the past. In my case, I later found out that I really am just gay (or bi with a strong preference with women) BUT that being said I also know plenty of women who have had this just "once in a lifetime" crush on a person on the same-sex and never felt like that before or since that one person, so it might not mean anything.

I have had it happen to me in reverse a few times now in the last few years where I am the queer person and end up meeting a straight (identifying) woman and for some strange reasons, attraction is there and it's always so so intense, way more intense than with a fellow bisexual/gay women, it's kind of inexplicable because the same way I know it's a bad idea a part of me also hope they are actually bi and in the process of figuring it out and while for some it might be the case, for some of them, it really is just a "once for no reason" thing where we don't know why it's happening and they know the second it stops they will go back to man and never think of a woman again but they just cannot explain why they suddenly crave this one woman (in this case me).

I wonder if they just pick up and the queer vibe and I pick up on theirs and that's what happens. I used to find it tempting, OP, and if your DD's teacher is like me she might very well feel it too BUT with years, I have learned to try and avoid getting in this type of situations, most women are not ready to be in a relationship with another woman when they've lived a straight life their entire life and while they are keen to fall into the spell of lust it does hurt when you are gay to have a woman get close to you before freaking out and going back to her "heterosexual life", if she's been there before she probably won't want to get there again. And while it's important you try and figure things out, I do think you need to keep in mind that you do know very little about this woman and that uprooting your life for her (specifically) would be a mistake.

I suggest therapy too, not because you are unhinge or something like that but because you need to be able to talk about your feelings and work through them to try and understand where those feelings are coming from and if whether or not they are defining your sexuality in anyway. A therapist that have experience with LGBTQ+ issues would be great. Reach out to forum about people who are questioning or thinking they might be gay, and see if your story resonate with others and how life turned out for them.

You may also want to talk to her about it, it might be weird (if she doesn't feel) it and potentially dangerous (if she does feel it) but getting to know her for her, might just kill the vibe and attraction you have if you realize she isn't all that you imagined/pictured in your head.

I used to teach, and while I have never developped a crush on my students' parents, I definitely wouldn't have shamed a mom for developping a crush on me and telling me about it. I probably would have been flattered and delt with it appropriately without it impacting the kid or the relationship with the mum.

I think how you should deal with it highly depends on what your ideal ending is. If you want to keep your mariage intact then working on overcoming your crush and regaining confidence in your sexual orientation is paramount, if you want to end up with her, then figuring out how you want to go about it all while causing the least damage possible is necessary and if you don't want her but don't want your husband either, figuring out what would make you happy is important.

I do think therapy would cover a lot of that though and be quite helpful.

Feel free to PM me though, if you feel that might help!

Tumbletee · 04/05/2019 10:01

Thanks again for the replies. That's really helpful and interesting @linning to put it all into perspective from the other side too. I know from what I've said it might seem like she hasn't indicated how she feels particularly, but I feel I can't go into too much detail as it may be quite outing. She has made it quite obvious there is something there though.

OP posts:
noimaginationatall · 04/05/2019 10:18

Are you 100% sure she has indicated feelings for you? This would be quite unprofessional of her and may cause her problems in her career.

Be very careful about acting on this in case you are mistaken.

Try stepping over natural parent teacher/boundaries and see if she responds how you would like.

Only you know the situation you are in but if her attention is so clearly focused on you as you suggest I would warn you that other staff/parents may already be thinking this about you. Think of the long term impact of all of this.

Do not ruin your relationship unless you are happy and willing to be single.

bluebell34567 · 04/05/2019 11:39

great post Linning.

Tumbletee · 04/05/2019 12:38

@Lilac3 that's really great to know you managed to deal with the feelings and carry on as normal. Do you still ever wonder "what if" though? I guess thsts the main issue, if this was a man, I think I'd instantly be able to see how wrong it all is, and be able to talk myself out of doing anything stupid. With it being a woman, I can't help but think this could be a huge part of my life that I've been living in denial and I want to find out for sure. Although like I said, it is still just her that is making me feel like this.

OP posts:
Tumbletee · 04/05/2019 12:45

@mynameiskate. Thanks for the understanding, really helping me to not feel so alone in all this. I feel so guilty about having these feelings when my dh is such a good man and works so hard for our family, and there I am picturing an intimate relationship with someone else. I think I'm going to have try and give it a bit more time and see if I can overcome this for the sake of my family. I cannot avoid the teacher. Plus I don't want to, if anything I don't think that will help as I'll just be wondering about her even more. Just going to try and act as normal and give myself time. Might see if I can find a therapist, although I really don't know how I'd get the time to go. My youngest is with me all the time apart from when I'm working and dh looks after her, so it would be tricky to schedule it in. I'll see what I can't figure out. Thanks for all your help

OP posts:
DotForShort · 04/05/2019 13:31

This thread is a bit worrying. In the course of a few days, you seem to have gone from an awareness that these feelings are probably one-sided to convincing yourself that she obviously feels the same. Honestly, you barely know this woman. You see her a couple of times a week for a few minutes. But you have escalated this fantasy to such an extent that it has seemingly spun out of control.

Of course, it is possible that she is attracted to you. Who knows? But that is really beside the point. You have said that you are happily married. Do you really want to destroy that marriage, split up your family, devastate your children based on a few minutes of chitchat and some random text messages?

I'm no psychologist, but perhaps this intense attraction is just a way of displacing other feelings that you are not prepared to face. I don't mean the issue of sexuality but other issues that for whatever reason feel too dangerous or threatening to you. So you have attached a huge significance to interactions with this woman, rather than addressing the real sources of anxiety or unhappiness. In any case, I do think that some sort of counselling could be beneficial to help you identify what is really going on with this crush.

DarkAtEndOfTunnel · 04/05/2019 13:54

You sound like your going through another adolescence

This from a pp jumped out at me. I agree. Sorry op, I don't mean to belittle your feelings which I am sure are intense, but this sounds like a female mid-life crisis or even menopausal to me. Try to stop flying high on the feelings and go back to trusting your head.

Helmlover1 · 04/05/2019 14:08

How would you feel if you’ve got this all wrong and she’s a straight woman who is just being friendly to the parent of a child she looks after?

Alternatively, what if you ended your perfectly happy marriage to pursue a relationship with this woman and it wasn’t what you expected? Could you live with the regret for the rest of your life?

My point is, you don’t know enough about her to break up your family. Hey, you could be soul mates but on the other hand you could be reading way too much into this and she may not be attracted to you sexually. She may not even be gay!

I think if you’re hell bent on pursuing this and are contemplating breaking up your family unit then you at least need to know she has similar feelings for you, or it could all be for nothing.

onemorecupofcoffeefortheroad · 04/05/2019 16:49

As you know OP this happened to me (head spun by a woman in my forties) and I know a number of women it's happened to. It's nothing like adolescence. If you want to PM me I'd be happy to talk - you are not alone in the least

ScrewyMcScrewup · 04/05/2019 16:53

I know it's wrong, I know my dh would be devastated, I know it would be hard on my children... But does this honestly mean I just have to ignore how I feel?

Depends if you care about your family or just yourself.

teenagetantrums · 04/05/2019 16:57

I have told this story before. But l met a woman who was older and l was instantly attached to. I had never thought of myself as gay. But 4years on we live together and are very happy. However l was single at the time with teenage children. They very accepting. My ex not so much. I think you need to stop focusing on this woman and decide whether you want to be with husband first. Affairs never end. I knew my girlfriend had feeling for me long before we got together

Eastie77 · 04/05/2019 18:05

You see this woman for 10 minutes twice a week. Aside from that and a few text messages you have no interaction with her but are contemplating ending your marriage over your feelings for her. You're not thinking straight. Therapy is a good idea so that you can uncover what is going on underneath these 'intense feelings'.

I don't think dragging your DD out of pre-school is necessary. Change your phone number and stop exchanging messages with this woman. I'm sure the school sends letters home with everything you need to know.

As many have pointed out you have no idea what she is really like. She could be lovely. She could be an arsehole. Her pre-school teacher persona could be very different from her true character.

My brother is a teacher and the parents who worship him and sing his praises (he is a good teacher tbf) would be gobsmacked at some of the things I could tell them about himGrin

Procrastination4 · 04/05/2019 18:16

@flyingspaghettimonster
Thanks to this thread I’ve discovered L.P.-a singer I didn’t know existed (though I won’t be developing a crush on her, just her songs!)
Secondly, though, as a teacher for many years, I’m wondering did I ever give off wrong messages to any happily married mothers! Hopefully notGrin

IKnowYouAndYouCannotSing · 04/05/2019 20:19

Sorry not RTFT so this may have been said .... Have you ever exhibited any symptoms of OCD? Limerance is linked to OCD. I’ve had both and it’s a mental illness/disorder that feels romantic, what it isn’t is love. Don’t break up your family over this.

Imsosorryalan75 · 04/05/2019 23:50

Its tough on you OP. Give yourself time to think things through before acting. Theres no rush after all

greenlynx · 05/05/2019 01:08

She probably noticed your emotions and mistaken them for worrying about your child hence being especially friendly to you. In her eyes you are a nervous mother (without any obvious reason as your child doing well) and she’s trying to calm you down by talking to you about your DD’s day and achievements. Her messaging is probably the way of communication at the nursery.
In your situation I would rather think why don’t you feel emotional about DH any more? What’s lost in your relationship?

cheeseandpineapple · 05/05/2019 18:15

Will you consider some therapy?

slippermaiden · 06/05/2019 22:49

I have only questioned my sexuality once, about one woman. She was adorable and I was besotted with her, but she was engaged. We are good friends and I still feel the same about her but am also happily married to a man! Have never felt that way again and would never jeopardise what I have with my husband. OP you need to take time away from this situation and be realistic. Get a grip of yourself and think of everyone else involved.

irregularegular · 07/05/2019 07:43

Slippermaiden can I ask, you say you still feel the same about her. Do you have any trouble reconciling that with being happily married to your husband? Or are you not so "besotted" with her now, but in more standard good female friends territory (with maybe just a hint of attraction)?

Asking as someone who is also a bit besotted with a friend, but not wanting be unfaithful to my husband either.

GirlsBlouse17 · 07/05/2019 09:49

Maybe you should stop these weekly meetings and see how that affects you. Unless there is a real necessity for the meetings. I don't know many parents who need to meet their child's teacher on a weekly basis but maybe there is a need to in your child's case, I don't know.

GirlsBlouse17 · 07/05/2019 19:53

When you have these intense and overwhelming feelings, are they of you both just being in love and holding hands or are you imagining sexual situations of you doing things to each other? I say this because I remember a film about a woman who gave up her family because of the intense love she had for another woman but when she moved in with the other woman, she found she didn't really like the sex bit. However, I know this is only a film!

slippermaiden · 07/05/2019 21:10

Irregular that's a tricky one, I have managed to put it on the back burner and move on with my feelings. Love spending time with her as a friend and love my husband as he is my rock. Life and love are complicated, that's all I know.