Through an unfortunate cross posting of a notification to a shared recovery email address, I discovered OH is crushing on someone really badly. Not a celeb or an unobtainable but a real life local person. An old acquaintance of OH who had been away for quite a while. A creative type. A free spirit. Sadly this real person is someone who turned up out of the blue and into our lives a few years back too. That time it resulted in a whole series of full on explicit texts and messages about how they should meet up for sex while I'm at work and the things they could/would do. We got past that one and I thought and do still think that things are on an even keel. The reinfatuation was mentioned in the recently stumbled upon post. How OH practices speeches and lines they might say when 'Oh, hello fancy seeing you here' happens. How OH goes miles out of their way to places that they would have no reason be on the off chance of 'accidentally' bumping into them.
It may seem like I'm seeing what I want to see and putting two and two together to get five but on the couple of occasions that I have seen the crush around (they don't know me or what I look like) it has also coincided with OH mentioning that they were passing through there. You don't really pass through there. You have to go there for a purpose.
Anyways, OH had left their phone at home once and curiosity and distrust got the better of me and on FB in the search history was a whole long list of searches for the crush. Sometimes as many as 9 or 10 in a day. No interaction, just looking at the profile and posts. Some of the posts by the crush (who by now I am watching their profile on an almost daily basis too) have coincided with things in our house. They post a pic of one of their favourite albums and hey, it turns up on our Amazon play list a couple of days later. I can't bear to hear it now even though it was a particular fave of mine too. They post a pic of themselves at a place in or around town and then OH happens to have been there around that time. I don't think that they have met but the being near when they are around fits in with the 'accidentally bumping into' scenario.
In a roundabout way OH and I have talked about the first obsession, the one with the sexual messages and I totally forgave OH for falling for the crush. I am assured that
nothing happened or would have happened had I not found out. I desperately want to believe that and I think I do believe it. I've even suggested in a roundabout way that if it were to happen again, OH should just go out, fuck the crush and do what they need and want to do to scratch that particular itch but please don't fall in love with them. I have enough love to give and my devotion to OH will stand anything that comes my way but I couldn't bear the thought that I was being used as some kind of mug or the 'joke' shared intimately by the one who I love the most and have ever loved. I can't bear the secretive and sneaky stalking, although now I find myself doing it too. I try to convince myself it's out of self preservation and the desire to manage this fire that could break our marriage. I don't go out. I have very little time away from the house. I work very long hours to give OH the things they want. I spend the bulk of my free time keeping the house right. We've been through hard, penniless times and struggled a lot of the time. I thought that the one thing that kept us strong and together was the desire for each other and a strong love. The desire to do right by the kids and break the cycle of our shitty upbringings and rewrite our book. I would be destroyed if it all fell apart now because of a stupid infatuation and am prepared to let the crush thing develop and then hopefully fade if it saves the long term relationship with the perfect love.
Or am I kidding myself that it won't happen again. And again?