How do you handle being attracted to someone when you’re in a committed relationship?
Question
In what circumstances might you find yourself attracted to somebody else? When is it something you can brush off versus something more weighty?
Being in a committed, monogamous relationship doesn't ensure that you will never notice another attractive person. You could find yourself attracted to someone else in a host of scenarios. Over the past decade there’s been an extraordinary proliferation of flirtations and affairs beginning online and on social media in particular. There are a lot more possibilities because we have an unprecedented degree of access to so many other people now. So it’s likely that this scenario can arise. The more important question is-- how do you consciously hold that situation with curiosity and compassion in your awareness without becoming impulsive.
We’re meaning seeking creatures, so our tendency may be to start telling ourselves a story about an attraction. Is this fleeting? Is it an innocuous fantasy or is there more to this? The meaning we make or don’t make out of it is going to drive our choices going forward. One thing to bear in mind is that we’ve been profoundly influenced and conditioned by movies, television, social media and our collective romantic fantasies about love to believe that attractions have to play out as if the Universe is giving us a sign. But that isn’t necessarily true. It depends on how much stock we put into that energetic feeling.
Question
Does it mean something bad about you or your ability to be a good partner if you find yourself attracted to someone else? How do you navigate feelings of shame that might come up?
No, not at all. Finding yourself attracted to another person is not in and of itself wrong or bad or necessarily shameful. It’s human nature to find more than one person attractive but it can quickly escalate into a moral dilemma and a mixed bag of excitement, arousal, anxiety and guilt. I think framing desire or attraction as a moral failure is problematic because it doesn’t help us move the conversation forward with ourselves. Repressing or denying what you are feeling can dig you deeper into a deep hole of guilt and shame. And it can actually fan the flames of desire that is out of bounds with your partner agreement. The psychotherapist Jack Morin is famous for saying when you mix desire with an obstacle—that leads to more excitement. So repression and shame can only cause more splitting and suffering.
While it sounds almost counter-intuitive, compassionate inquiry is a more helpful approach than judging yourself or spinning out in anxiety. However it’s essential to understand that compassion is not permission to act on an impulse. That’s a common misperception about self compassion in particular, that it can lead to indulgence and self pity or self justification. Rather, when you allow and make space for all of your difficult, paradoxical feelings to exist and bring some compassionate attention and curiosity to them, clarity can emerge. You can also learn to tolerate the tension of the pull toward an attraction by holding the boundary for yourself.
Question
How do you actually navigate desire that falls outside your partner?
The first step is having a conversation with yourself or with your therapist if you feel too confused and muddled to sort out your feelings on your own. The most useful frame I have found to navigate desire is a mindfulness practice which I’ve outlined below. It gives us a way to hold space with the emotional complexity and ambivalence that can arise from this kind of situation.
And to be fair, it’s incredibly difficult to navigate if a sexual or romantic projection has already seeded itself into your consciousness because the intensity of desire can obscure your capacity for choice making. You may not feel like you have any choice when you are flooded with dopamine, which is a neurotransmitter in the brain that drives us toward pleasure seeking behavior-- even if it exists in the realm of our imagination. Dopamine causes us to be aroused, want, seek and search. It’s also the primary neurotransmitter associated with the addiction loop. So having an awareness of both—-the neuro-chemical activation in your brain, and the fantasies that you can start to rehearse over and over can add fuel to the fire. Esther Perel has volumes to say on the nature of desire and the impossibility of saddling your partner with so many unrealistic expectations, which is also important to bear in mind as you seek perspective. Here are some ways to unpack an attraction:
1.Get quiet and listen
First, I would suggest finding a way to become quiet and listen. Meditation can be profoundly helpful here. Imagine a Self that exists outside your distracted mind—as if you were holding a swirling snow globe of thoughts and emotions and imagining them settle. Then begin with inquiry. How do I befriend myself in this situation? What am I telling myself about myself, the person I’m attracted to? my partner, and my relationship? Is it true? Is it really true?
2. Seek clarity
We often think of sexual attraction and falling in love as things that are happening to us versus thinking that we have any agency or any ability to determine our decisions. But in reality, you are making choices all along the way. And if you’re unhappy in your relationship, an attraction can bring this to the surface. So that’s an inflection point to pay attention to. I think there is real value in grappling with these questions because it can clarify where you are and help you reassess or re-affirm your commitment to your relationship and your partner, even if it’s a painful truth you’ve been avoiding and have been unwilling to come to terms with.
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3. Reaffirm what you are saying “yes” to
If you’re in a committed, content monogamous relationship, there is a clear moral incentive to press the brake on the attraction and set a boundary around the attraction. It’s not just anxiously repeating “no” to yourself. “ I’m not going to let myself go there.” It’s also an invitation to affirm what you are saying “yes” to. You’re choosing your relationship. You’re choosing your partner. By expressing appreciation and affection toward your partner, you can redirect your attention. And if you’d like more connection, intimacy, play or sexual engagement, think about how to solicit that in a positive way.
This doesn’t necessarily mean the attraction will diminish or go away immediately. It can take some time. If the attraction persists, stay in compassionate conversation with yourself. Let’s say the attraction is about emotional intimacy and not necessarily sexual, but that’s something lacking in your primary relationship, the more you deepen into what stories and painful emotions are underlying the projection, they will reveal themselves. The challenge is to keep sitting with them instead of acting on impulse. Ultimately feelings and projections are passing phenomena. They are not fixed states of being.
4. Reassess
If you’re unhappy in your relationship, and someone is giving you positive attention, then you’re already primed to start spinning a fantasy and making what couples therapist John Gottman says is the ill-fated negative comparison, in which you start comparing your partner with all their flaws to your new shiny object of attraction. If the attraction is mutual versus unrequited and one-sided, the stakes become higher because there is a higher potential to engage. Before allowing impulse to sway you, I would do some soul searching about the nature of the issues you have with your partner and give them an opportunity to respond before making a unilateral decision that could do irreparable damage. An attraction can also be a distraction from what you are not doing to maintain a loving relationship. The first stages of attraction can feel overpoweringly exciting and spontaneous, whereas in a long term companionate relationship, it requires effort to stay connected emotionally and sexually.
Caveats
If you want to open your relationship, that’s another conversation entirely, but I would do some investigation to familiarize yourself with ethical non monogamy before springing it on to your partner. Or if you’re discovering that your sexuality or your gender identity is in transition, that too would require a different approach and a different set of conversations.
Question
How do you set your own boundaries? Where’s the line?
Oftentimes it isn’t the actual setting of a boundary that is difficult, but maintaining the boundary, which means tolerating the discomfort that comes afterward. Boundaries don’t just protect you from the outside world, but they create a container or a buffer that keeps your inappropriate impulses and emotional reactivity at bay. Boundaries serve a double protective function but they also allow you to reinforce your sense of trustworthiness and accountability within yourself. It’s not so much about exerting extreme amounts of shame-based will power and control. It’s more about developing the ability to regulate your emotions and impulses without being derailed by them.
The more you learn to tolerate the discomfort, the more you build the muscle of tolerance and therefore strengthen your internal boundary. And the more we have the experience of allowing the impulse or feeling of attraction to pass, the more we can trust that it is a transient, impermanent state.
One of the challenges with attraction is the temptation to over-identify with the feeling of being emotionally, sexually or romantically thwarted or even repressed. Negotiating desires versus legitimate needs can become distorted with an ego-driven sense of entitlement that is not actually related to your partner or your attraction partner. Fantasies are not relational. They have a love or sex object at the center, but they are more about you--which begs a critical question: in an unhappy relationship, are you running away from an issue or set of issues that are unresolved or looking to recover a part of yourself that has no expression or life inside the relationship? Or both? This is what is so hard to discern.
Question
What should you tell your partner, if anything? What role do they have to play in this conversation?
This is delicate. So much depends on the nature of your relationship and the quality of trust and communication you have. Most monogamously oriented partners could feel deeply threatened by a conversation. It also depends on your partner’s attachment style to some degree and the attachment dynamic you share. If they run anxious, it could set the relationship on edge. It might be wise to talk to a therapist instead to help you process or process together.
If you have a more secure relationship, think about what your objective is in bringing this information to them. If the goal is to unload your guilt and ask them for some vague kind of emotional support, I would think twice because that isn't fair. Consider how this information will affect them and how it might stoke their insecurities. If you sense your partner is open to conversation, you could discuss how the two of you want to handle the potential for attractions. Do you want to think about a strategy together? Or make explicit your definition of trust and boundaries?
And if you are deeply unhappy, I would encourage you to address what’s happening with your partner, not out of defensiveness or with an ulterior motive to justify an affair, but to assess the relationship honestly. How can you honorably take responsibility for your piece in the relationship and seek out support together, even if it means separation is ultimately on the horizon.
An attraction during a long term committed relationship doesn’t have to spell disaster. It can be an invitation into a deeper conversation about where you are with your yourself, your partner and an opportunity to practice keeping conscious boundaries or re-evaluate things. When we can discern where we are and glean the truth value in our inquiry, we can mindfully steer that energy into channels that are available to us and that are aligned with our sense of integrity.