married, but have feelings for married male friend :(

[notagreatsituation]

I've been using mumsnet for nearly a decade at this point, but have had to sign up again as I don't post much and forgot my old account details. I'd appreciate people going easy on me here as I'm feeling bad, but I know what the internet in general can be like, so I'll try and brace myself. Would be grateful for advice either way.

The title sums it up. We're not really longstanding friends, less than 2 years. The attraction was (I strongly suspect) mutual initially, but it seems to have worn off for him - I expected it to dissipate for me as well, but unfortunately it's gone the other way and developed into something that feels more significant. I don't think he's remotely aware of this.

I need to extricate myself, but I can't figure out the best way to do it; if we were both single I'd just be honest, but we're not. We don't even see each other that much - our main contact is texting a few times a week, with occasional calls and much less frequent meets, but he would notice and question it if I suddenly pulled back: for the last year, there hasn't been a single full week that we've been out of contact, and my feeling is that I'd need significantly longer than a week of absolute zero communication to get past this.

Can anyone please help me decide what to do? Obviously I shouldn't have let it get this far in the first place, but here I am. He's been a good friend to me and has done nothing wrong, so I don't want to abruptly fade him out without explanation. Perhaps there are people could could pull it off without being too obvious/offensive, but I'm quite socially clumsy and not good at stuff like this.

Do I need to go with an extremely slow fade and just deal with the emotional stress in the meantime? That's the 'best' solution I can think of, but I really want to have space from this more immediately than that would allow. I've been putting off doing anything about it for months in the vague hope that it'll just resolve itself, but that clearly isn't going to happen, and it is affecting my mental health.

If anyone else has dealt with something similar, I'd find it helpful to know how it panned out, if you'd be willing to share.

I have the same problem but with a female friend. I'm pretty sure it isn't reciprocated. We chat via text every day though! How do I distance myself?

Sorry not helpful!

It's a crap situation isn't it @mosex. I guess it can't be too uncommon. Has any of the advice on this thread resonated with you?

It has actually. I screenshotted one of the first helpful posters thing to say thinking I might say that if I can't somehow shake it off. It's happened to me before too.

Therapist said look at what you find attractive about them and perhaps that is what's missing in your relationship. My friend is very caring. I don't know if that's true.

"After a lot of soul searching, I have come to realise that our friendship isn't healthy for me. Please know this is in no way because of something you have said or done. I wish you nothing but the very best.

This one

I do really feel for you. I also feel joy when their name pops up on my phone, I love chatting with them. I would miss them terribly. It's just not healthy when I'm thinking about them when I'm having sex with my DH!

If he’s a friend I’d tell him and say you need to cease contact for your sanity.

Yeah I hear you :( I wish I could force my brain to view it as an uncomplicated friendship so I wouldn't have to void the whole thing, but as things stand I just can't handle it. It's so rubbish. I really liked that message from @Aquamarine1029 as well and am also tempted to use it.
Re what your therapist said - it sounds reasonable, but the problem is, you look at what you're attracted to and what your current partner perhaps lacks, and then... what?! What do you do with that information?

@larkstar, I think there’s much in what you say, but it’s perfectly possible to develop a sudden sexual attraction to someone who is already a good, true friend — the two aren’t mutually exclusive. In my own case, I’d known him for a few years, and he’d been a very good friend to me and DH — he’s been unfailingly kind, helpful, done us endless favours, been there in all kinds of ways, as well as being excellent company and just a good person to have around. I have absolutely no idea what changed, but one day I woke up and found him attractive. He did nothing, and had and has no idea. What makes it difficult is that he’s the same lovely friend, not some random I see on the school run.

The more you post, the more certain I am that you will use that kind of message to him which is a).faux innocence b) triggers a romantic conversation c).entirely self serving.

The only way to deal.with this, if you want to protect your marriage, is to stop talking to him. Either immediately or faded out. He has absolutely no need to know and your DH would.agree with me. Telling this man is fishing.

Imagine telling your DH in a year's time "Yes, I fancied another man once so I just cut contact and didn't speak to him" vs " Yes, I fancied another man once, so I told him how I felt".

i don’t think you should tell him how you feel and think you should distance yourself gradually. The reason I say this is incase it sparks something for him again (as you say he’s lost interest abit now) and then it could turn into an affair. Both your partners will find out and chances are his will forgive him and yours won’t. It really isn’t worth it no matter how tempting it is.

Stop over dramatising it all op.
If you care about your marriage then just stop texting him.
People come & go in adulthood.
It's not such a big deal.
Let it go.

I'm perplexed as to why you've been contacting one another.
Stop.
Why do people have other partners' numbers and why start the communication? Poor boundaries.
It's weird what goes on in people's heads. I always remember my mate's wife trying to hug and kiss me at a party, we don't even get on. I told her NO. Ex Fiancee's sister did it, 'I love you'.

Confessions of any sort, fancying, love are just hoping for reciprocation.
No further communication is necessary ever.

They’re friends! Why would it be odd to have a friend’s phone number?

I agree with youlightupmyday, any attempt to tell him how you feel is fishing. Your friend (and his wife) would see it as fishing, and your husband would DEFINITELY see it as fishing.

I know you've said you don't want to discuss your marriage here, but if you want to stay in your marriage (and be respectful of this man's wife!!!) then the only option is to cut him off or phase him out. Phasing out will be easiest and least rude because you can just plead a hectic schedule. Lying is very much the lesser of two evils, even alluding to the real reason would be totally inappropriate.

It will really be fine, friendships fizzle out all the time because life gets in the way. It's really no big deal to just gradually lose touch; he won't see it as a big deal anyway. I think you're agonising over this because of your feelings about the friendship ending- it's not going to cause him terrible emotional upset unless you're his only friend. I'm not meaning to sound harsh, I'm sure he will think it's a shame but he will probably just write it off as one of those things that sometimes happens in adult friendships.

Don't tell him and make this bigger than it is, which is a crush. Could be because it can be a bit boring being in a long term relationship- nothing is new, you're dealing with kids and housework and jobs etc. Whereas when you meet with your friend it is fun, going out, doing a hobby you enjoy.

Or there may be issues in your marriage but this needs to be addressed- the answer isn't another person.

I messaged someone a lot because of a shared charity we both volunteered in. He was really helpful but also really funny and I really enjoyed the banter. We would start messaging about something to do with the charity and then spend a few hours messaging about other stuff. Never anything flirty but we just clicked. He lives hours away from me. I don't actually know if he's in a relationship.

I think it could easily have developed into something but he left the charity and we stopped needing to message and now I don't think about him. We will have a catch up every few months but whatever little spark was starting is no longer there.

So stop fanning the fires. Do a slow fade and after a while you should be ok. Because there never was anything real in it. You don't really know him.

They're obviously not friends, are they?😂
This is why?
Boundaries.
People just invite drama into their relationships.
I don't sit on the sofa texting friends wives.😂

The OP says he’s a friend, though — this man isn’t just the spouse of her friend. They met through work, and meet (or met) individually because of a shared hobby. It’s not clear from her posts whether they had an ordinary, unproblematic friendship before she started being attracted to him…?

I’ve always had good, unproblematic friendships with men with no attraction whatsoever over decades — two of my oldest, closest friends are male, we go out for dinner and have gone away for weekends etc — hence I was completely taken aback when I started to feel attracted to another male friend I’d already known for years. It’s never happened to me before. I am obviously not expressing my feelings, It’s definitely not mutual, and it’s actually surprisingly painful — but it’s not a reason not to have male friends.

You seem to be devoid of the physical and emotional mechanisms of why you are where you are. Seems a lot of people are.
I DO NOT sit on my sofa ad hoc texting or bantering or going off on weekends with female friends married or not. Ever. When I was single I spent lots of time with women doing this that and the other. Now I'm not single, I have boundaries.

You’re missing my point (and I’m a bit baffled as to why you think ‘bantering’ from your sofa is such a key element of poor boundaries). I’m 50. I’ve been with DH since our student days, very happily. I’ve had strong, completely platonic male friends for 25 or 30 years. Going out for dinner or for a cheap NY weekend with them feels exactly the same as doing similar with female friends, and they’ve enriched my life for decades.

Conversely, the male friend I’ve recently started being attracted to is someone I met during lockdown — the country I live in now had one of the strictest lockdowns — and I’ve never had dinner or a solo drink with him, and mostly only see him for a minute when dropping off his FS or mine, otherwise it’s in company. Our phone interactions are largely about liftshares or our children’s shared sports arrangements. My other male friendships have not created this situation.

If you keep dipping your toe in the pond you're eventually going to fall in and get wet.
My phone interactions with other women are short cordial and to the point.
People are so naive.

In agreement with @Hrpuffnstuff1 I've had this conversation many times. People often don't 'get' that it's not always advisable to continue these 'friendly' relationships when they themselves have completely innocent reasons for maintaining the relationship. They stop short at considering how the other party might be viewing the relationship.
It's all about maintaining sensible boundaries really.
I wonder how the OP's relationship has developed in the way it has because it is relatively easy to avoid falling into this in the first place.

If you keep dipping your toe in the pond you're eventually going to fall in and get wet Perfect!

You’re continuing to misunderstand me. You clearly regard my platonic male friendships as unwise, but they have never cost me a moment’s concern — I have no attraction to these old friends, and if they have anything other than platonic affection for me, they’re been successfully concealing it for three decades in some cases. The man I’ve developed feelings for is a neighbour and parent of one of my DS’s friends — our relationship consists only of dropping one another’s children off or occasional texts about play dates. We never talk or see one another outside of that context, though we’ve gone to gigs in large groups once or twice (including my DH, who also has a work relationship with him). I’d never phone him for a chat, or message him spontaneously. If you think of that kind of purely pragmatic child-centric interaction as ‘dipping your toe’ purely because the other person is male, are you advocating that men and women lead Saudi-style separate lives?

Thanks for all the posts.

@youlightupmyday The more you post, the more certain I am that you will use that kind of message to him which is a).faux innocence b) triggers a romantic conversation c).entirely self serving.

What is it about my comments that give you this impression?

@shreddednips Can definitely see that. I won't say anything along those lines as I agree it looks like fishing (that was why I thought people would be against it in the first place, and when it seemed like that wouldn't be the automatic assumption it felt like more of an option). And I think you're probably right that it'll be easier to fade out than I've been anticipating. This thread has helped give me some perspective on that.

@Eto In your situation I don't see how you could have avoided any of it, it sounds like it came out of nowhere, and your lives are intertwined enough that it won't be easy to distance yourself. In my situation I think maybe @Hrpuffnstuff1 has a point - I've lacked boundaries. I've had crushes on people before whilst married and it's never been a problem (and I'm 41, so not exactly young, though possibly naive!) so I got a bit complacent. Won't be making this mistake again.