Hello all. It is the first time I am writing in this website, but I am a little bit at a loss with my emotions and maybe if someone went through something similar, it could help me? I’m a 40yo guy who’s been in a relationship for almost 4 years with the sweetest, loveliest woman I have ever met. I am in love with her and lately (over the past year), we are going through IVF treatment trying to have a child. It turns out I’m not in the best shape for that and I am afraid we are getting old as my partner is 38 and we could have missed the slot.

In the meantime, my best friend moved across the Ocean to Holland and this has triggered something. Me and this girl, R, have had a somewhat brief and very turbulent relationship in the past (5 years ago). After that, we have kept a somewhat turbulent friendship, marked by fights for three years. She loved me very much and I guess she never fully moved on to me getting with someone else. Somehow in the past year the friendship with R has been so much better. She seems to have moved on, she isn’t in a relationship now from what I know, but she moved to Holland last month, and I cannot stop thinking how much I miss her. I told her. I know there is a sexual component in all of this because, over the years, we have fallen back in bed at times again but that has always been because I really enjoy sex with her, it feels home, and we are really compatible in that field.

I never doubted my relationship with my partner and this feeling doesn’t change anything. I just feel so lonely right now. I don’t have a lot of friends, I do sports in a basketball team and some players are friends with her, and being around them makes me miss her more. In all of this, I am sure I love my partner. We live together, she is the rock in my life and I am not doubting our relationship and I am not discounting her presence in my life. When the relationship with R was unbearable and I met my partner, I did not doubt for a single moment what to do.

Though I miss my friend, even though I would concede we aren’t normal friends. I know this feeling will eventually fade, but every time I am drunk, or lonely, I just reach out to her to try and talk, even for just some jokes. What am I doing? Is this a middle life crisis? Is this IVF playing with my emotions? I know I am not in love with my friend, but why do I feel she was the only one left in town to spare me for feeling so lonely?