Please help me with this.

[CastIronFire]

I posted about this on chat a couple of weeks ago.

www.mumsnet.com/talk/_chat/4687973-can-someone-explain-this-to-me-please?reply=121907012

I didn't end it because I couldn't quite bring myself to do so.

Is there really no other solution?

It's unbearable now. I can't speak to him and haven't seen him. I don't want to see him. I don't want to interrupt or disturb him in case he's thinking of someone else. I don't want to see him or go out with him in case he sees someone else.

After the thread, I did a lot of reading online. Stuff by psychologists and relationship therapists and all of them say its healthy to fantasise about other people sexually and that it makes sex better if the person you are having sex with is thinking about someone else! I also read that it happens several times a day and people are wrong for considering it to be 'microcheating'.

How have I got this so wrong?

I just don't understand. What is the point in going out with someone if you are constantly lusting after other people? What is the point? I don't need someone to mow my lawns, provide for me financially, help cook the dinner. I can either do those things myself or pay someone to do it.

It just feels like the model is you fancy someone and pursue them until you get them and then you spend the relationship being sexually attracted to other people.

Ir that you go out with someone 'un your keague' and then use them to fantasise about other people you find more desirable.

I thought itight he something that happened occasionally but to read it happens several times a day for most people has just destroyed me. It's all I can think about.

None of the other stuff he does or we have feels like it matters anymore and the only thing that does is that I'm not enough because, according to the internet, he's going to be constantly being briefly sexually aroused by everyone from the woman who serves him coffee to colleagues to actors in films he is watching and just supposed to be ok with that because it'll make our sex life better for him.

I don't even want to have sex with him anymore because of the fear of it.

It's making me ill.

And the thoughts and what the words fantasy and crush mean.

I'm glad if the suggestion might be helpful. I'm happy to discuss it further once you've had time to think about it.

If you asked him a question like "Do you think about other people when we're having sex?" and he said "No", do you think that would help a bit? I know you said that you can't be sure he's telling the truth, but if he seems like an honest person in general then he may well be telling the truth. I think lots of people focus on giving their partner pleasure when they're having sex. They focus on their partner's movements and sounds and reactions and so on.

But attraction is subjective!! My friends husband is so not my type, I would never be attracted to him but she is madly in love with him, fancies him like mad and he is a really wonderful man, partner, father. Objectively my partner is more attractive than hers, but she wouldn't glance sideways at him. He is not her type. He doesn't love and cherish and make her laugh and feel secure. When I first showed her a photo of him her first comment was 'he's the image of Jamie dornan.' She can appreciate how attractive he is, why I am so attracted to him but her 'attraction' to his conventional good looks pales in comparison to the real, deep attraction she has to her husband.

It doesn't need to 'change the way you think', you just need to accept that other people think/feel differently to you and that's ok. You seem totally hung up on the fact that everyone (your bf) doesn't think the way you do about this rather than trying to understand/accept that everyone is entitled to their own views and feelings. You can decide those views are not compatible with your own and end the relationship if you want but you will likely have exactly the same issue in your next relationship because it's unrealistic to expect others to conform to your rigid viewpoint.

What I'm trying to say is shift your focus, stop trying to understand why other people don't think/feel as you do and work on accepting that they don't and that it's perfectly ok that they don't, we are all different. I'm autistic too and have had to teach myself not to get bogged down by trying to understand why my thought processes are different to other peoples, they just are and that's ok. How people treat you is what matters, not that all their views, feelings and thought processes match yours.

OP I think you need to talk to him. Explain that autism makes it hard for you to know what to take literally, but also this key information:
I had a boyfriend when I was 19 who wouldn't have sex with me because his feelings for Marilyn Monroe meant he felt he was betraying her. I dated someone at 26 and, after a week on holiday, he went straight back to his to watch film with an actress he lasted after because he'd missed her.

Honestly, I've never met anyone like that. It's incredibly weird, and I think it's given you the wrong impression of what "fancying" someone in the abstract (i.e. who you haven't met and are unlikely to meet) actually means. For it to interfere with their actual behaviour, your previous partners were not at all normal. How can anyone "have feelings for" Marilyn Monroe? How can anyone "miss" an actress on telly? Even a 6-year-old doesn't think this way, let alone act on it.

Most people notice the attractiveness of another person in the way that you might notice someone's nice garden or pretty windows as you pass houses on the way home. That doesn't mean you're going to jump off the bus/train and try to hammer your way into those houses. Home is home, for a gazillion reasons that it would be difficult to even start listing.

The one who liked Marilyn Monroe, I actually thought he might be gay because of his lack of interest but it wasn't that. He said it felt like a betrayal of his feelings for her.

The holiday one, we went to France and he bought a copy of a film she was in that he already owned 2 copies of so it wast like he hadnt seen it. The dvd was no different, it had just been bought in France and when we got back to mine, I thought we might have a nice evening together but he went home so he could watch it instead.

When I think of men I've fancied/had crushes on, they've been intense, all consuming feelings and I haven't had any interest in anyone else or found anyone else attractive because of it.

I underatand that about attraction but I'm talking about when someone does fancy someone else.

If the person he fancies is objectively more attractive than me, I don't understand he can look at me and not feel disappointed.

I keep saying that I do accept that people think/feel differently to me. But I don't want to be in any relationship if that is what it means.

Those previous partners were nutters, honestly OP 😂

When I think of men I've fancied/had crushes on, they've been intense, all consuming feelings and I haven't had any interest in anyone else or found anyone else attractive because of it.

I think you're mixing up vaguely fancying strangers with having a crush on someone in real life. These are very different things.

I had a crush on someone for about 6 years, and am not sure I will ever think of him without a little flutter. But if I talk about fancying (say) Cameron in Strictly Come Dancing, it's just a way of acknowledging in passing that I find him attractive. I don't think of him when I'm having sex! I don't think of him at all, except when I watch him dance and think "Hot"!

Apart from your nutty ex-BFs, when someone talks vaguely about "fancying" someone in the media it has absolutely no emotional or practical weight whatsoever. They literally don't give it a second thought.

I can relate OP. When I'm into someone I don't see anyone else "like that"
I have never fancied celebs, actors, models etc.. never followed attractive men on social media.
I do fancy people I meet in real life now I'm single, most though is just acknowledging they have an attractive appearance.

If someone I'm into has a wandering eye/likes womens fb photos/adds random women/constantly fancies famous impossibly beautiful women... instant ick.
I'm seen as attractive myself but can no way compete with these women. It makes me feel unsafe, unappreciated.. that who I am with is always saying how lucky they are to have met me, I'm out of their league etc.. yet they perv over thirsty posts made by women 20 years younger and skinny. It's just grim and totally negates anything they've said to me.
But I realise it's a bit fucked up. They say I have their complete attention, love, real attraction, who they talk to for hours etc.. and other women are a fleeting moment of fancy that is meaningless. I don't see it like that though because I don't feel the same. Other men might as well be non existant to me.

Out of curiousity (if it's not too nosy): you talk a lot about how objectively attractive people are, so are you able to assess how objectively attractive he is, to the general population?

It sounds like you are very attracted to him. Is that because he looks like Brad Pitt, or because you really like him as a whole person? Maybe he feels the same about you. It doesn't sound like he is "disappointed" by being with you, judging by the nice things he says about you.

when someone talks vaguely about "fancying" someone in the media it has absolutely no emotional or practical weight whatsoever. They literally don't give it a second thought.

That's what I would have thought but everything I've read suggests it's normal and even healthy to fantasise about other people during sex.

I don't understand. Why would you have sex with someone if you could only enjoy it by thinking of someone else?

MoonbeamsGlittering

He's average looks wise. I don't think he's the sort of man many women would think was very good looking. But it doesn't latter because he knows I'm not interested in anyone else.

I love him as a whole person obviously.

But I don't see how he doesn't wish I looked more like X or feel that he's compromised in some way if he does fancy other people.

If he did any of those things, I wouldn't be with him anyway.

But I don't think your way of thinking is fucked up at all.

I completely disagree with anyone who says it’s ok to be actually having sex with one person whilst fantasizing about another! I have never, ever done this. Sex is about being fully present with your partner, and fully present with what you are doing with each other.

Most of the articles I read said it was normal, healthy and made sex better.

I read quite a few because I wondered if I could find any that said it wasn't. I found one that talked about some people thinking it was microcheating (but they might be wrong) and another that said the impact it had on the relationship was correlated with the quality of the relationship. The stronger the relationship, the more damaging it was deemed to be because having a positive relationship model/experience made the person think they had more chance of making the fantasy a reality. Whereas, if the real relationship were rubbish, the personality not feel confident enough to pursue anything with someone Thrybergh sexually attracted to.

Thinking about having sex with someone else apparently makes sex better because you'll be more aroused by the fantasy person than your partner and can act out some of the stuff with your idiot of a real life partner that you have imagined doing with your crush. Apparently.

All articles written by psychologists and relationship therapists.

So really the opposite to everything anyone here is saying!

It's very likely this is Relationship OCD. Do you have any other kind of OCD? Go on Facebook and look up ROCD groups and you'll probably find a lot of people with similar thinking. Reassurance and analysis doesn't help with this kind of thing, neither does avoidance. ERP is the therapy used, Exposure Response Prevention. You need to sit with these uncomfortable feelings and know that yes, it could be that your partner is attracted to other people at times. Or maybe not. OCD seeks certainty and perfection. These feelings will pass. Therapy/ERP is probably a good idea.

'At times' is very different to several times a day which is also what the articles said.

How can I spend any time with anyone if they are thinking of having sex or whatever with strangers all the time? What is the point.

What therapy are you having op?

I'm also autistic and I've never felt like you. I love and fancy my husband, but I also "fancy" or like looking at other attractive men.

I don't think it's a blanket autistic/non autistic thing.

I'm not. I've had therapy. It doesn't help.

How much therapy have you had?

It took a good year of therapy for me before I started to see the benefits. I've been having therapy now for 7 years and I'm a changed person. I still go (and probably will for much longer), because it helps so much having a professional space to process things.

If it didn't help you then you were seeing the wrong therapist. It's not a quick fix, it takes time.

I did reply on your other thread OP. Just wanted to nip on and say I have never, EVER fantasised about someone else when having sex. Sex for me is 100% about the person you are with! I don't even think about anyone else but my DP when I masterbate.

He's average looks wise. I don't think he's the sort of man many women would think was very good looking. But it doesn't matter because he knows I'm not interested in anyone else.

I thought this comment was really interesting as an example of how differently we all think.

My partner fancying a celebrity couldn't matter less to me, but if I heard him say the above about me (that I was average and not many men would think I was good looking) I would feel absolutely gutted.

I would probably get hung up on it and find it hard to move past because I would find it really hurtful to hear.

If he said that about you and you overheard, would you be able to accept that and feel secure in the relationship? It sounds like you would feel he was simply being honest and be fine with it?

If so, that's how other most people feel about their partners being able to find other people attractive. Sort of meh, just the way it is and I trust them so it doesn't matter.