Hi David,

Congratulations on your wedding! I wish you all the happiness. I’m a bit late to the thread, but I had a similar experience to you. I’ve been with my husband for 7 years, married for 1. A few months ago I was at a party without my husband, I had drunk a lot of alcohol, and I struck up a conversation with an attractive man I had never met before. Within a few minutes, he touched my forearm so I thought he was flirting with me. I quickly made it clear that I’m married. He didn’t seem bothered by that, and we kept talking for another hour or so. The conversation itself was not flirty (we were talking a lot about politics haha) but he continued to touch my forearm periodically and I didn’t stop him. Nothing else happened. But the next day I felt bad that I let myself keep talking with someone I found attractive who was probably flirting with me and that I didn’t set a clear boundary about touching my arm. I think I was enjoying the attention and I was drunk so I didn’t have the awareness to leave the conversation. Like you, I feel guilty and wonder if I should I tell my husband or will it just make him unnecessarily worried? I’m completely in love with my husband and I don’t feel like anything is missing from our relationship, so I do think this was an involuntary drunken response to an attractive person but I’m still angry with myself. Like you, I learned that I want to reduce drinking for many reasons including not putting myself in a situation like this again.

One thing I wanted to add to what others have said, it might be a good idea to have a conversation about boundaries – what does your spouse consider flirting and what do they think is crossing a line? People have different ideas about this. I think I want to have this conversation with my husband but I haven’t worked up the courage/found a good way to bring it up yet. If anyone has suggestions on this I would be happy to hear. Wishing you all the best David.