Dear Sarah:

“I am still wondering how can I be attached to him?”- I don’t understand your question. Please take your time and explain this question to me clearly.

anita

Dear Sarah:

I didn’t receive your answers to my recent questions, and clearly, what I suggested to you earlier was not helpful. So, I re-read your posts and will be trying to understand better what is happening with you.

This is what you shared: “Guilty of having a crush despite being in a relationship: I was having this weird feeling that maybe he likes me… I feel something really weird inside me because I keep on thinking about him… I am feeling quite bad and this is all tormenting me. I can’t share this with anyone and it’s killing me… indirectly I told him that I have a bf… usually I am not attracted to guys, as I know I got my bf… I also asked casually about his wife.. he said he lives alone…I can’t be vanishing my whole relationship for some baseless ‘crush’… he keeps staring at me all the time and I feel intimidated.. there are.. plenty of handsome and younger guys, I never felt that way before. Because they never behaved that way… I keep thinking about him all day and I am losing focus at work, in studies…

“But the truth somewhere, if I am being honest with myself, is that I am liking him. I wait for his text. I feel so lost and tend to be weird these days… I can’t understand my feelings… as far as I know, I should not be having these feelings for somebody else, and I have known myself to be committed in a relationship no matter what… I feel like suffocating inside, I am forgetting things easily, my mind is just wandering. I can’t concentrate. Worst of all, I keep on crying… I am still wondering how can I be attached to him?”

My understanding: you are suffering, experiencing acute emotional pain and distress. Question is: why? The fast and easy answer, like the title of your thread indicates, is that (1) you feel guilty for having a crush while being in a long-term relationship with a man you plan to marry, feeling that you are a bad person for having these feelings for another man.

Other possible reason in addition to the above, are:  (2) you may be lonely, being away from your boyfriend, it being a long-distance relationship for three years, a long, long time, (3) and/ or you don’t really want to get married to your boyfriend (or to anyone at all) sometime in the next year,

(4) and/ or there is something especially attractive about this man which is responsible for the intensity of your liking him, an intensity you did not experience with men before him: (4-a) it may be the fact that he is significantly older than other men who approached you before; some women are attracted to older men, (4-b) and/ or it may be that he is of a different religion, something that makes him different from other men,  (4-c) and/ or it may be that he keeps staring at you and pursuing you even though he knows that you have a boyfriend, while men before him stopped pursuing you when they knew that you had a boyfriend,

(4-d) and/ or it may be the way he stares at you, a stare that intimidates you, you wrote: “he keeps staring at me all the time and I feel intimidated”- his stare may be a very sexual stare, and he may have awakened a part of you that you repressed all your life, a sexual, daring, defiant part.

This new sexual energy may be what is causing a strong storm of sorts inside you, causing a disturbance, a disorder. Before this man, you had things organized in your brain, like having items neatly organized on shelves. Then this sexual energy/ storm knocked all those items off the shelves and they crashed on the floor, so to speak.

This new sexual energy that created a storm inside you, may be what you described here: “something really weird inside me“, something weird that is causing you to forget things easily, to not be able to concentrate.. a storm that makes you cry, like rain falling during a storm.

anita

Dear Sarah:

Now you know that he is married. He is in a .. long-distance marriage (his wife lives in a different country).

No wonder he does not mind you being in a long-distance relationship (your boyfriend lives in a different country).

Now you know, and I know, that he is definitely, without a doubt, interested in having a romantic, sexual relationship with you, while he remains married, and while you remain in your relationship.

He occupied you for five hours at night (“we talked about 5 hours all night long”). The day after, he told you to sleep because you didn’t sleep the night before (“asking to sleep because I did not sleep whole night”)-

– “I just replied I am big enough and he did not have to tell me this. Just trying to be little rude”, you wrote. I think that you will need to be more than just a “little rude”. I think that he is going to aim at wearing you down, like water wears down rocks in a river- eventually, over time, the rocks break. If you lose more and more sleep talking to him at night, if you get more and more confused- that’s you breaking like a rock under the ongoing force of water flowing over it.

anita

Dear Sarah:

I think that you do need to see to it that he no  longer calls or messages you. Tell him to no longer call/ message you, not during work hours and not after work hours. If there is a need for him to communicate with you during work hours (?), he should do it professionally, not privately.

If he does not respect your assertion, block him from your phone.

I think that it is time for you to no longer be bamboozled by this man, see him for what he is: a married man who is looking for some good time/ for fun. When you see him staring at you, think to yourself: this is a married man who wants to have some fun with me. There is more to me than a way for a married man to have fun with!

When you think this every time he stares at you, or at any other time- over time, your feeling for him will change.

anita

Dear Sarah:

I don’t think that it is a good idea to “slow down rather than just put him off completely”, as in.. talking with him for only 3 hours at night, instead of 5.

“I could just put a point with him that it’s better to communicate at work..”- I don’t think you should make a suggestion/ put a point to him, that he limits his communication with you to the workplace, and leave it up to him to take your suggestion seriously, or not. Don’t give him that power.

“I am sort of concerned if I be rude to him, he could create issues at work for me. Don’t you think?”- not likely, because you said that he is nice to everyone- so.. it is not likely that he will become rude and vengeful. But of course, I cannot predict the future.

But I can predict that if you stay up at night talking with him, if you remain stressed, confused and exhausted because of your outside of work communication with this man- then you are very likely to have “issues at work”, such as not doing a good job, being forgetful, making mistakes, etc.

anita