feel ashamed for inappropriate reaction to man

[1423beautiful]

Too ashamed to talk to any of my friends about this especially as they know my husband.
I feel a complete idiot. married to a lovely man for 15 years. 2 lovely primary school sons . he’s amazing and supportive and an amazing dad. I’m so lucky and i know it. I’ve never felt real desire for him or anyone or been on the receiving end of real desire. he’s the only sexual partner i have had. sex is ok but i never get turned on.

i have spent life being quite unattractive to most men i think as don’t know how to flirt, quite serious and mouthy which a lot of them don’t like , working in building industry and as a successful woman not attractive and not good looking enough to be worth investigating. Never asked out on dates - was set up with my husband by a friend.

As a result of being so inexperienced I really think i have the emotional age of a teenager. I have hit perimenopause in mid 40’s ( on HRT) and like
an idiot have overreacted to a very attractive attached ( i know!) man at work who started gazing meaningfully and flirting with me. This has been building over 7 years in an office together. I have ignored it quite admirably for all this time as i didn’t really believe it was happening as so unlikely. At one point i was literally ignoring him as i didn’t have the self confidence to allow myself to be lighthearted about it’s ridiculousness. Unfortunately something then changed on his side out of nowhere and he really started ramping things up and I have been quite overcome with the force of my attraction to him. Never felt anything like it.
There has been a bit of lowkey flirting and it has really got to me and had an effect. I’m now feeling incredibly shit, not for the good reason that I have given my head a wobble but he’s now stopped and backed off.

I haven’t done anything seriously wrong and i know this is for the best for my marriage etc and have gone back to avoiding him but I feel really, really upset - actually humiliated to be honest. Avoiding him like the plague, not going to work drinks and doing all the right things but pretty devastated - I think because he has done the running and then withdrawn once I have revealed that I do find him attractive and I feel so vulnerable as a result.

I know that having affairs is disgusting but I really wanted to have one moment in my life before I died when I experienced being desirable as a woman and could kiss and be kissed by someone I really find incredibly attractive. It’s as basic as that.

He has made me feel like a fool and so I feel like crying all day every day because I feel so much shame for being so unattractive that he has backed off/ decided against it/ gone off me -and feel stupid to believe this was a real thing - this added to the fact that I am getting older and this was my last chance to experience this. i know I am being an horrible person but i am suffering in the middle of this all. It feels like heartbreak which is so ridiculous. and i feel so empty.

it feels like a physical pain to walk away from where he is and to shut down the chance of him approaching me again but I keep doing it as at least it gives me some kind of control.
how is this going to get better ?

From a slightly different perspective - I'm not married and have been sexually active with various men because at times it can be fun but I've also never really had particularly great sex i.e. I can always take it or leave it. I'm not afraid to experiment by myself but even there I just don't have a particularly strong sex drive/great satisfaction and I think that just may be how I am built. I actually find it quite surprising that so many people would see your otherwise very successful relationship with your DH as fundamentally undermined by not having fantastic sex and would be careful about assuming that this is something that everyone even can have given how different people's biology and hormones are.

this is a really interesting point. and very reassuring for someone like me to consider. thank you so much for sharing.

@Arlanymor happy to be called a silly sausage for the right reasons! and also reassured that maybe the peri thing is a factor that is real when others feel it and this is all not just in my head! many thanks and you are right i need to keep going and keep things in perspective and get my head around the conditioning. many thanks and good luck to you too

To OP,
Don't feel ashamed. I think its perfectly normal to be feeling the way you are. Looking back at all the things you feel you missed out on in life. I think everyone goes through that. You feel like your life has been lacking passion and excitement. Finding someone like your attractive and feeling passion towards them does not always go hand in hand.
You have had some flirting with a work colleague and you wanted more. I think that’s understandable. Being attracted to other people outside your primary relationship is super normal. Its not the desire, but the action is what gets you in trouble -- you can fantasize, but when you act on the fantasy, it turns into something else.

Please stop thinking that you are not attractive. You are right when you say men are fairly straightforward. If he was initially responsive to your flirting then that means he does find you attractive. He would not have been responded to you otherwise.
Given the fact that you are married and what workplace sexual harassment rules are like he was probably just hesitant and then if you suddenly stopped flirting with him and started avoiding him then he would have taken that as a sign too. But that doesn’t mean that you are not attractive so please stop talking yourself down.

The question becomes about consequences. Right now its all just a fantasy and there are no consequences in fantasies. If you were to go further with him though it could become real and become messy very quickly.

Please think about this,
If anything did happen with the colleague would it be just a one-time thing, a one-night stand, will you be okay with that or would you want a full on affair?
Would you have a burning desire to confess to your husband afterwards or will you live happily ever after having gone through this experience and never rock your relationship with it again?
What if your colleague is really bad at sex? Would you be disappointed and then want to confess because you feel icky after that experience?
What if he is really amazing at sex? Will that then make sex with your husband feel like bad sex, forever tainted?

@EmmsyS thank you so much for this kind perspective Good questions.
. The idea of somehow tainting my relationship by having a secret from my husband is
something I have thought about and it scares me.

that feels like it would result in long term misery.

It was just a few things for you to think about.

Don’t get so caught up on if you are attractive or not and blaming him because he didn’t immediately act. The fact that he was responsive to your flirting and even started ramping things up shows he does find you attractive but there was also a lot of risk involved (especially for men in the workplace) so its understandable why he would have been hesitant. Maybe he had doubts just like you have, maybe he just wanted to be 100% certain before making a move and you stopped flirting before he could do that. You wanted him to act on it and he didn’t (at least not in the way you hoped) but there could be many reasons why. I think in one post you questioned if he was a bad person but I think that if he was bad then he wouldn’t have hesitated. In many ways I think the fact that he hesitated only means he was conflicted just like you. Either way, take the fact that he found you attractive a win even if it never goes any further than that.

As far as tainting your relationship goes. Everyone is different. For some people it would be a problem, for others not so. It just depends on you, your relationship and what you feel you would regret more. If you go through with it then you will have to live with the memory of it. If you don’t then you will have to live with the idea of what could have been but never knowing. As I said, in fantasies there are no consequences but in real life there are consequences either way.

Theres nothing wrong with the fantasy. So enjoy it. Especially if you feel like you are lacking passion and excitement in other aspects of your life. But if you decide to go further just be careful that things may not be as clean and simple as in the fantasy. No judgement regardless of what you decide.

interesting question. I love my husband very much but I never felt like a sexual person until recently. i had a very religious upbringing where sex was taboo. was boring into my 30’s. maybe on my side that has been a real factor and it’s only now that i am older i am waking up to that side of myself

Do you think this mega attraction is precisely because this man is taboo and therefore its legitimately sexy (because it feels wrong)?

The problem with puritanical upbringings is that it really does mess up your natural healthy sexuality and so sex becomes this naughty dirty thing that happens in the shadows and then its hard to to feel that for someone you are legitimately with.

Ok, so imagine this hypothetical scenario- imagine you split up with your husband and get divorced. You then marry someone else (say this bloke), you then start bumping into your husband (who is now an ex) on the way to work each morning and he's suddenly flirting with you, it feels dangerous and exciting - does the thought of that elicit any stirrings?

If it does, then you have your answer. This isnt about your lack of physical attraction to your husband, it's about your upbringing and how you've been conditioned to view sex. This is worth exploring in therapy.

Rather than fantasising about this man, I'd really explore this- it could save your marriage.

hi @applepipshake - this is really interesting. your hypothetical scenario has made me realise that what you suggest is definitely a part of
this. i think i have a core value that a sexual relationship should be secret/trangresive in some way as it is shameful/taboo. i had never thought about this before. thanks very much for the thought experiment !

@EmmsyS thank you so much for the perspective. it really helps me to think more clearly about the reality rather than just feel so emotional about it. thanks for the dose of sanity that you and others have been so generous in giving me in the middle of the emotional maelstrom i had worked myself up into! I hope i can be as equally useful to someone else with a quandary on Mumsnet in the future and repay the favour ! and if it is connected to peri i can't wait until it passes !