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Relationships

Mumsnet has not checked the qualifications of anyone posting here. If you need help urgently or expert advice, please see our domestic violence webguide and/or relationships webguide. Many Mumsnetters experiencing domestic abuse have found this thread helpful: Listen up, everybody

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Original poster

loving someone else

14 replies

spacegirl777 · 27/02/2011 15:15

Name changer here.. I just need someone to give me a virtual slap really lol!!

I am in a long term relationship (9 years) and have 3 children all under 6. in the last year I have had several doubts that I am 'in love' with my dp. we get on great but i sometimes feel like the relationship has just ran its course. to cut a long story short a friend of both of us admited to me that he was in love with me. Nothing has ever happened, and probably never will, But the truth is, before the friend told me this, Iv always felt a connection between us, we just on the same level iykwim. and I think im in love with him too, its driving me mad!! I dont see this friend very often atall so its not like i see him all the time but i cant stop thinking about him, even before he told me how he feels i uaed to thnk about him more than i should have done. argh someone throw a bucket of cold water over me and tell me to get a grip lol

OP posts:

Sugarkane · 27/02/2011 15:18

I cant offer much help to you, as I have just logged on here to write a post very like this. Godd luck to you

Sugarkane · 27/02/2011 15:19

Good*

nemofucker · 27/02/2011 16:42

I think the question isn't do you get with the Friend, but do you stay with dp.

Have to sort one before the other - if you start an affair you'll just have lots of head-messing sex that will become increasingly unsatistfactory and emotionally frustrating.

I have an ex that frankly I still love, probably always will, but I have no 'desire' for because I love my dh.

dignified · 27/02/2011 16:53

to cut a long story short a friend of both of us admited to me that he was in love with me.

Sigh . This man is not a freind to either of you and hes certainly not a freind of your marriage. Id say the chances of him actually being in love with you is about zero , he sounds like a chancer who fancys a shag.

How do you feel about one of your dps freinds taking the piss out of him like this ?

ZeroMinusZero · 27/02/2011 17:00

With these things I often wonder how much of it is true love and how much of it is just fantasy / craving excitement / wanting something a bit different.

This might sound a bit trite but is there any way of spicing up your relationship with DH? Getting away from the kids more, maybe?

realrabbit · 27/02/2011 17:05

This reply has been deleted

Message deleted by MNHQ. Here's a link to our Talk Guidelines.

WhenwillIfeelnormal · 27/02/2011 19:07

There's just so much that you are not saying in your OP though. If you've really had doubts about being "in love" with your DP for the past year, what have you done about that? Have you told him, for example, or made efforts to get the love back? How accurate are your memories about these feelings? It's astonishing how many people in your situation rewrite history.

What you also aren't telling us is how it got to the point where this man felt safe enough to tell you he was in love with you. I'm sure it didn't come out of the blue and if you've also harboured feelings for him, is it possible that you engineered this so that he felt able to share his feelings?

Think really hard about why this has happened. You've got 3 children under 6 and you were only with your DP for 3 years before the first child came along. I expect you are feeling under a lot of pressure and that your romantic relationship has taken a back seat.

I've found that because the societal discourse (or myth) is that women don't have affairs unless they are unhappy in their relationship, what often happens is that far too much emotion is invested in an OM - and too little in the primary partner. Be really clear-sighted on this. Is it possible that you just fancy having a sexual and romantic adventure with someone else and this has got nothing much to do with your relationship, other than the normal stresses and strains of having so many young DCs?

What I can tell you with some certainty is that affairs happen when a person stops giving to their relationship, so think about your own efforts and investment here and scrutinise what you haven't been giving, especially now. I would also echo that this OM is no friend of yours or your DP's. His actions have the potential to disrupt at least 5 lives, including yours. However, think about your own responsibility here, in letting the situation get to this point. He wouldn't have said what he did if he hadn't thought his feelings were welcome.

SmashingNarcissistsMirrors · 27/02/2011 19:41

i kind of think that people (especially friends) don't go around declaring their love to people they know are in committed relationships that are strong. so i can only imagine you provided the opportunity for such a declaration to be made. as such you have to take responsibility for the situation and the energy you are putting out there.

Original poster

spacegirl777 · 28/02/2011 07:41

Thanks for all the replys guys!!

I have told my dp in the past that i was starting to feel like i wasnt 'in love' with him anymore, he was crushed by this and he told me he loved me. but i just feel like were stuck in a routine, we dont have much us time, and rarely are able to get a babysitter.

I am Certain i have never given the friend and signals. I am very able to keep bounderies, but it was a converstation that kind of just came out and he regreted telling me straightaway, and said he would never act on his feelings, nor would i.

Me and dp get along well, but i sometimes feel its like mates rather than lovers iyswim, I would like to reignight things with my dp but have no idea how.

OP posts:

eden263 · 28/02/2011 08:00

You say one of the problems is being in a routine and not having much 'us' time....so change that! It doesn't have to be expensive, just do things differently. Get a DVD out and watch it together after the kids are in bed with some popcorn, play a board game, just talk to each other about something you share an interest in, or do something fun together as a family that you don't usually do.

It must be hard work with 3 young children, you're probably both just knackered and have lost sight of who you are as individuals.

Give it your best shot and if you feelings still don't change then maybe it'll be time to re-evaluate. But get this OM out of your head. You're not really in love with him, it's more of a 'grass is greener' thing. If you started a relationship with him, I bet the shine would soon fade. If you want to fantasise about someone, pick a celeb rather than a bloke who has real potential to screw up all your lives.

tadpoles · 28/02/2011 09:10

I would also add a few words of caution here. Not sure what the personal circumstances of the other man are? That does make a difference.

If you get on well with your partner then probably what is missing is the romantic love/intense sexual side of things that you (hopefully!!) get at the beginning of a relationship. In general I think this tends to wane as the years go by - although I know there are some posters on here who still claim to feel like this in very long term relationship - all I can say is that I am very envious of them!

But I think quite a few people end up in situations like your own and it is very easy to develop a crush. A similar thing happened to me. I convinced myself that my paramour was madly in love with me (in reality I think he liked the challenge of trying to seduce a married women - nice, eh?)

Nothing physical ever happened and, in time, the feelings passed. I do not regret it as it made both me and my partner make more effort in our relationship. However I realise that the OM was a player who never really cared about me, despite all the talk. It was all about him, his ego and his d*.

With hindsight, he behaved very badly indeed - deliberately played on the emotional side of my nature to seduce me in order to try to have a sexual relationship, knowing that there were big risks (on my side).

Worse than that than that he enlisted the help of 'friends' (his not mine) who egged him on in order to get vicarious kicks out of it. And of course I and my family became the subject of gossip and speculation which was horrible and made me feel very cheap.

Once the feelings had subsided I realised I had been made a complete fool of, subjected my partner and children to malicious gossip and in general been 'played'.

Yes, I take responsibility for allowing the crush to develop and being naive enough to think it would just be an exciting romance that would spice up my life. I have a million times more respect for my partner, who weathered the storm, while the OM, as far as I am concerned, is a little sh** and so are his so-called friends.

Anyway, what I am saying is be careful because there are some very nasty people out there who are higly manipulative and it sounds as though what you have at home is pretty good.

robberbutton · 28/02/2011 10:37

I have 3 children under 6 too, and H and I are struggling to rebuild our marriage. One thing we have done, which might sound silly but has actually made a huge difference, is to turn our front room into a "pub"! When the children are asleep, we put some music on, light some candles and the fire if it's cold, make sure we've got plenty of drinks and ciggies , do silly things like make 'pub snacks' and then sit down with each other for the evening. It's amazing the difference it makes doing something just a little bit different, we talk really well and have got a lot out of it. We ask each other 'shall we go to the pub tonight?'

eden263 · 28/02/2011 10:53

Aww, Robber, that's well sweet! Good for you!

GoMets · 28/02/2011 20:11

Hi, sorry to hear that you are having some doubts with your marriage. I just thought I would put an alternative viewpoint in here, not to put any doubt in your mind or to threadjack, but it may help you to understand why your friend may have said what he said.

I had a very long term friend that told me once that she was attracted to me, we connected like no one else I?ve ever met, there was a lot of flirting, but I was too much of an ass and never told her how I felt about her. She met someone else and is in a long term relationship. As time went on, I realised I had to tell her how I felt. It wasn?t to be a ?player? or to wreck someone else?s relationship. I had to know that as she once felt the same, maybe there was a possibility that she still did and maybe things would work out. I could not live never knowing that. She didn?t remember, or didn?t want to remember the things that she had said in the past and she no longer speaks to me.

The point is that I certainly wouldn?t have told her my feelings, if I would in any way have thought that there wasn?t part of her that felt the same. It?s such a risk to tell someone that you love them and not get it returned, who would want to take a risk like that and its a sadness I will always carry with me.

This is a slightly different situation to yours as you are married. It could be that your friend is just a player or there is some similar feeling for it, you will know what type of person he is But just bear in mind that not all men have ?nasty motives?.

Your friend is a distraction here and you do need to concentrate on your marriage to see whether you actually still love your husband and want to work at it? And try to pursue every avenue with that relationship before deciding whether it is not worth continuing if you are unhappy.

Don?t lynch me please ladies, I?m just giving another viewpoint!

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