Infatuated with someone else when married

[SeriousCallersOnly]

I can imagine this going sour, but I'm being honest, and guess I'm looking to be told I'm being idiotic.

I've been married for 10 years and have two children. I love my wife, but we're in a rut. She works long hours, so do I, but my job is flexible and allows me to work from home, so I do most of the childcare.

My wife works the majority of weekends (out of the house at 6:30am - not back until 9:30pm) so we barely speak, let alone spend time together or as a family.

We occasionally have conversations about this, but nothing really changes - which is both our fault.

The issue I'm having is that I've suddenly developed very intense feelings for my manager.

I've been in my job for years, and have always liked my managers personality, and enjoyed chatting to her. But that's where it stopped.

Recently I've found myself having almost teenage-esque feelings for her, they're actually overpowering. Nervousness, fast heart rate. I know how this sounds, but I can't deny what I'm feeling. It's in no way sexual, more the maudlin, confusing feelings I had as a teenager, centered on her demeanor and personality.

What makes this situation worse is that I only see her once a week at most - it's not like we have any contact outside of work, and regardless of my desire for these feelings to be reciprocal (due to imagined eye contact and smiles) I'm loath to admit they're probably not. Even if they were, I can't imagine anything happening due to our circumstances and the damage it would cause.

This is making me confused. I haven't felt anything like this for a long, long time. Does this suggest bad things for my marriage? i.e. whilst I love her, it's more like a sisterly love than a romantic infatuation. Is it possible to get that back, with our working hours being so fiercely against it?

Would it be suicidal to bring up this crush with my wife, so we can talk it through? Should I just carry on and hope this fades? It's currently affecting my work. Should I evaluation my marriage, and question what such feelings mean for it's long term viability? Should I accept it's a crush, suck it up, and move on?

I'll perhaps be told to grow up - but life is short and we only get one shot at it. Perhaps these feelings are a wake-up call that I'm not content?

More or less been there, just talk to your wife. If she's reasonable enough, she'll take just as it is a crush.

You do nothing, wait it out. Focus on your marriage - It will pass as infatuations do. Bringing it up is self indulgent, and upsetting to your wife. Dont throw everything away over a mid life crisis.

Don't bring it up but think seriously about your marriage. I realised my relationship was dying when my head was turned by a bloke at work. Nothing happened I didn't have an affair and blah but it was a massive reality check about how disconnected I was from exp

Sorry you're not having much of a relationship with your wife - and if, as you say, it's both your faults, then I think now is the time to sit down with her and work out a way of spending some more time together.

I don't think you're silly, but I do think you need to make sure that your 'feelings' for your manager stay just as daydreams really, until they pass. Which they will, eventually, if you can find a way to push your marriage into the next phase.

All marriages have their peaks and troughs, and I think for you, you're in a trough and you've both got to make a big effort to move on up to another peak and that might mean both of you making small changes to your working patterns to improve things.

So keep your 'crush' as just a crush, and stop letting it affect your work. Because it's in danger of not only affecting your work, but also your marriage.

The relationship isn't going to mend without you talking to your wife, but I don't think I'd be mentioning the crush TBH.

Don't do anything as stupid as my husband 11 years ago, same scenario , 20 year old co worker, wrote longing poems and songs and forgot to throw them away, I find accidentally 7 months ago and now am totally peed off, all that FB interaction in last 11 years, all the we must meet ups suddenly have new meaning. I am still here but don't feel 100% in. Either discuss it if you think your marriage is the issue or keep it strictly in your head and let it blow over, anything else could comeback to bite you on the bum

Thanks all. It's actually helped to get it out into the open.

For now, I'll keep it to myself and hope that it blows over.

Regarding my marriage, short of a job change, I'm not too sure what we can do. I earn a lot more than my wife, and we've talked about halving her hours, but so far, nothing has come of it. This is a mutual decision, rather than a demand from me, as her job is exhausting she's sad at how little she sees the children.

I also worry that as the years have gone on, we've become different people. We still love each other, but our interests and personalities are very different. Outside of reading (very different genres) we share no interests - we don't even like the same kind of films, so the cinema is a struggle.

I started a conversation about this earlier, and she admitted whilst shes not happy, she's not unhappy.
When we got together, she was suicidally depressed. Over the years she's overcome this, so she sees her current state as an infinite improvement. I mentioned whilst this might be true, it's not much of a life if you aren't happy.

I think we both need to be more proactive, we simply react to life and then the years drop by.

I'd suggest therapy, but I don't think we're quite at that stage yet.

It sounds awful, but we are happy sometimes, and I don't feel we're nearing the end of our marriage - but I don't want to be stuck in this situation for the next 10 years either.

Theres a quote i read recently, it read something like this;
If you meet someone and your heart races, your palms feel sweaty, and your stomach is in knots- they're not the one.
'The one' will feel like peace, comfortable and relaxed.

Its not word for word but its along those lines.
I think your just experiencing a crush, try to stop reading into the body language thing n deal with your marriage x

@Tiredbutnotyetretired

I like that!

My marriage is definitely peace, comfort and relaxation.

I guess one of the most positive things about our relationship is that we trust each other, and we're happy for the other to go do activities, or things they feel they need to do.

I think since we had children (eldest 5) we put a lot of our activities on hold. I used to climb, go paragliding and be fairly active. As I'm the only one who drives, I pretty much do all the school, nursery, shopping and activity club runs. So I work, drive and sleep.

Perhaps this infatuation is the result of lack of excitement and I'm trying to fill the hole.

I think ideally you should feel both. I feel at home with DH but don't have any "excitement" left. I do know that I want to spend the rest of my life with him but because of the lack of "excitement" sometimes I do wonder what the world has to offer

If it was my dp that was feeling like this. I would like to know. Not so I could fly of the handle or punish him over it. But so we could sort it out.
She could have no idea that your feelings towards her have changed. She might just feel that the distance is a normal part of the relationship and has no idea anything needs fixing. For me it sounds like she's loosening you and has no idea.
I think she should be given the opportunity to fight for you before there's nothing left for her to fight for

I once read that these infatuations thrive in secrecy.

Tell your wife, but not in an overblown way. I'd bet that the next time you see your manager you'll feel less excited and it the feelings will start to dissolve.

@SeriousCallersOnly

I read your first post and it was like my current situation was being explained to me.

My wife and I have been married for 10 years and have one child (7 years old). I care for my wife so dearly and would hate to see her hurt or sad in any way.

However, I have recently developed really strong feelings for a colleague at work, to the point where I constantly check for her response to any message I send. Put it this way, if I was single then I would have definitely asked her out for a date by now. I find myself infatuated with her.

I don’t know how she feels towards me; she knows I am married, but on a recent work trip we ended up in her hotel room. No kissing or anything like that, but we did chat for hours, sat on her bed whilst she was in her skimpy pyjamas. She even gave me a massage.

My head is a mess, I don’t know if my mind is seeing/interpreting what I want it to or whether she has the same feelings for me. She helped me find a gift for my wife on our recent work trip but then we had the situation in her hotel room.

I don’t know what to do ladies and gents

@Anyideaswelcome

In her hotel room? Massage? Skimpy pyjamas? Really?

You know what to do. The problem is you don't want to do it.

I hadn't thought about this thread in years! Things look very different now. I still have contact with the woman in question at work, but we are peers now and she's no longer my manager.

We can go months without contact and in all honesty, the feelings I had are gone. It's crazy, remembering how powerful they were and how obsessive my thoughts were about her, and now, I have feelings of friendship, if even that.

There was a period of no contact when she moved to a new post and I guess life took over. As time went on, the feelings got less, until I no longer felt anything for her.

My advice would be to create space and don't put yourself in any position which might escalate the situation. As powerful as your feelings are now, they will fade with time, if you want them to.

How nice! Thanks for sharing the update. It makes me feel somewhat better about the "crushes" my husband had over the last 40 years. I almost always knew and it was very hurtful but knowing that he likely doesn't feel that way now helps. A little. If your wife didn't notice and you didn't tell, that's a good thing. No need to hurt her unnecessarily.

Also, it's refreshing to hear from someone who didn't use those feelings as an excuse to cheat.

Thank you both for your responses. I am angry for letting myself develop these feelings.

I have no conscious desire to cheat on my wife. I feel like an fighting conflicting emotions in my head.

I’m hoping that this will also fizzle out in to nothing.

@anyideaswelcome, it won’t fizzle out as long as you choose to receive massages from your skimpily clad colleague in her hotel room.

You abused your wife’s trust. How nice of you to buy her a gift before you betrayed her.

Distance yourself from this woman. Stop the messaging and 1:1 meetings. Or end your marriage and then pursue her.

@MsDogLady rtft! (And it's a zombie)

@Whereto1967is totally right

I did read it. I was responding to @Anyideaswelcome, who posted yesterday.

@burnttoastandjam

She's right. We were responding to Anyideaswelcome who posted yestereday.

Also, the OP, @SeriousCallersOnly, was kind enough to give an update yesterday. So many times these are zombie threads, but this one came back to life. 😁

@SeriousCallersOnly I'm so glad you came back to update! Your update has certainly made me feel better as I'm the wife in this situation. My husband has a bit of an obsession with a colleague, he told me about it and to be honest - although I'm glad he felt able to be honest with me - it's killed any shred of self esteem I had left. I've always been 100% trusting, never insecure, and now I'm the opposite. I know nothing has happened between them and we are trying to work through it - to be honest it came from a similar situation to yourselves, our relationship just wasn't great and it needed work. I'm just hoping this crush will fizzle out, like it has with you.

@Anyideaswelcome I think you know that you've already overstepped the mark. Honestly, if I found out my husband had done that, it would be the end for us. If you truly love your wife and want your relationship to work, you need to distance yourself from this other person. Like the OP says, don't put yourself in a position where feelings can escalate - they WILL fade if you want them to.

@SeriousCallersOnly did you work things out to have more time/ shared stuff with your wife?

I'm sorry to hear about the people on the other side of this and the effect it's had on them. I didn't tell my wife and as far as I know, she was never aware of my feelings for the other person. On my side, the feelings were totally unwanted but all consuming. It's easy, with an analytical head, to say such things should be ignored - but when your chest burns with these feelings, even logic can take a second place.

From my perspective, I think these feelings stemmed from things missing in my own life - not necessarily a lack of love or attention, but the object of my limerence perhaps had qualities that I felt I lacked, on some subconscious level, in myself or my life. I started new hobbies and became much more social in various societies I joined. "Fixing myself" rather than trying to find someone to fill the gaps I could feel.

@Aria999 Sadly, my wife and I still don't have much time together, but we are getting on much better. I think as our children get older we should be able to spend more time together as a couple.