Unwanted feelings

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ellam25

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How do you stop feelings that you can’t help?
I am married and I love my husband. He’s the only man I’ve ever been with, but recently I have found myself attracted to another man that’s close with us. I have not fantasized about this other man or made it plain that I have a crush on him and have never ever told anyone outside of this group.
I feel so awful for my husband and try to force myself not to feel this way.
Any advice/prayers? Like k said I love my husband and would never act on these feelings but they are persistent.
 
We sometimes get attracted to other people as long as we don’t venture into sin it is fine.

Pray the Rosary.
 
A feeling is a spontaneous reaction to a person, place, or thing. It can’t really be stopped. It is what you do that can be right or wrong, good or bad.

As @St.Leonard said, pray. Ask your husband to pray with you (no need to say why). Not knowing anything more, anything more said would be an assumption. Perhaps you can look into a marriage enrichment in your area, or a marriage encounter weekend. These are geared to good marriages with a goal of discovering and eliminating barriers that prevent them from being great.
 
When was the last time you and your husband had a date night? When was the last time you had real fun together?
 
We see him once or twice a month and it is never without my husband present.
 
It’s been a long time. I have a four year old and a six month old. So at least 7 months
 
Hire a sitter, call grandma, and get away for if not a weekend, at least for an evening.

If you guys love the Opera, go to an opera and dinner, if you love galleries, if you love music go hear a band, go dancing, go to the firing range, go on a hike, cooking class, just sit and linger over a meal, a game of chess, a fun board game. Your relationship is likely screaming for attention, this is why the grass looks much greener.

Laugh together, have fun together. Put the kids to bed early and cook a grown up meal/order in. Dance in the living room or sit down and watch a comedy together. Find something fun, something you used to do when you were dating maybe.
 
Satan is simply putting a temptation in your path.
Also, part of the reason this other man looks attractive to you is that you aren’t living with him all day, or even seeing him that often, so you don’t get a chance to see him “warts and all”, nor do you have to go through the hassles of getting along with each other that spouses, even loving spouses, do.

Go have some fun with your husband and remind yourself that no matter how attractive this other guy looks, he has dirty underwear and bad habits and your attraction to him is pretty much a fantasy in your head, like you’d have for a movie star.
 
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ellam25 said:
We see him once or twice a month and it is never without my husband present.
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That makes it better. If you saw him frequently or at times without your husband, that would be another thing. But this amount of interaction seems manageable. As others have said, spend quality time with your husband. Refresh your marriage by doing things you both enjoy, and remember and reflect on good times you’ve had together, like your wedding, birth of your children, etc. Replace the thoughts you have of the other man with thoughts of your husband. Pray for strength to resist any temptations you have. You’ll be fine.
 
Prayers are good. Prayers with your husband even better (those don’t have to be about this issue).

Look up the kind of things that cause oxytocin release and do the reasonable ones with your husband. Some of them are quite benign so you might be accidentally doing them with the other man.
 
Pray about it. Try not to dwell on the feelings. Feelings are not bad in and of themselves but feeding them could turn into an obsession.

This will pass and you’ll probably look back in six months and wonder why you had such intense feelings for this guy.
 
sorrowful1 said:
Once, I fell in love (truly, madly, deeply) with a colleague at work and he - with me. It wasn’t a one-night-stand kind of affair in which lust chases you. Like I said, it was - truly, madly and deeply. But alas, after a few months, I discovered that he was already in a relationship with another woman since the past many years (they weren’t married yet). And what’s more!! She worked alongside us, and I failed to “see” it!!! My heart broke, and I could literally hear it shattering like a glass crashing on the floor.

At first, I was angry with myself for my naivety, and then with him for “deceiving” me. Okay, it’d be like writing down a thesis of our love story but to cut it short - I ended it. However, it wasn’t my fault nor his. We just fell in love. He hadn’t intended to mislead me. He had wanted to “be with me” because he thought he had at last found “love” (after being in an unhappy relationship with the other girl who was equally faring “unwell” ).
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If he had truly loved you he would have left the other woman.
 
Time.
It will fade. And you might even look back at yourself and shake your head and laugh that you even thought you had feelings towards him once. Just keep your interactions few (you said about twice a month - that or less is good!) and time will show you it was a fleeting moment. Probably has to do with the new baby, the length of your marriage, other things going on in life right now. Just remind yourself, that other guy has some lousy qualities and if you really knew him as in ‘everyday’ living with or being around (like marriage), you would probably change your mind and think “what was I thinking!?” LOL.

Time.
It will fade.
 
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