Letters to the Editor
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Hey LW...
What's your number?
( Just kidding.)
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the neurochemistry is normal
LW seems to be confused about infatuation and being in love. The two things are not mutually exclusive. There's plenty of science out there that explains this situation. When you meet someone new who is attractive to you then your body releases the exciting form of dopamine. This is infatuation. It lasts for a few to several months. Then one of two things happy, the nesting hormones kick in or they don't. That is you fall in love and want to settle down or you don't and you have to end things.
Now here's the catch, you can feel both things at once for different people. You can have wonderful happy, calming, in love hormones for your wife or husband and at the same time be infatuated with someone else. The same thing is true for men and women.
So LW Cary is correct. Your feelings are normal for men and women (who knows your wife may have the hots for folks she sees during the day too). A few fantasies can be kept to yourself but once you start acting on them it's a secret no more. therefore I agree with Cary, don't act on your feelings because you are happily married. Everybody has infatuations that they don't act upon for a million different reasons.
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slippery slope
Since you can't really have this discussion without mentioning swingers, let's dig right in, shall we? Swingers are usually pretty disgusting and sooner or later, too many boundaries get crossed and someone gets hurt. The mind and the body don't always feel things simultaneously. Not everything can be controlled and when you get into these situations it can revisit in the most inopportune moments!
I have some aquaintences who "share" each other, with or without the presence of the other. They are predatory, egomaniacal and not so bright. They spend enormous amounts of time on hair removal and workouts, surgeries and pills. I don't really understand their hunger for physical perfection and it's trophies. They make lots of people uncomfortable and some people quite satisfied. They have great toys and plenty of booze for you should you choose to participate. To each his own.
Anyway, dude, don't sweat these feelings. You are human! You actually have a pulse! The problem is that you don't share these feelings with your wife. Plus, kids come before personal gratification, every time. You say 15-20, well, doesn't middle age make you want to run back to the days when you could make out and grope each other for hours? ..hell, you HAD hours to spend back then! Sounds good, but there is this thing called reality.
Don't think you can have both.
The best part of marriage is that you know each other so well and can really have some fun in bed. (It is supposed to get better.) If you aren't having fun with your wife's lips and bod, look deeply into that before dabbling in other places. Maybe you have and your desires will overtake the part of your brain dedicated to survival. We all play the destroyer sometimes.
Take these feelings and put them into something besides the hottie on the couch.
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Been there, done that
And I can tell you one of two things will occur:
1. It will be a disappointing encounter. Yes, even illicit lovers can be boring, or smell awful, or take forever to come, or laugh at your dick; or worst of all, it could be exactly like sex with your wife.
2. It will be a glorious encounter. You will experience emotions you've only read about, fly higher than you thought possible, mind meld without Spock. It will be your deliverance.
If (1), then you will have risked your marriage for crap. Even if the Missus never finds out, you will feel shamed and degraded, and never again have as high an opinion of yourself. If the Missus finds out, the shit will hit the fan. For crap. For crap!
If (2), your world will turn upside down, while hers might not. You will become obsessed, it will complicate her life as well as yours, perhaps without a satisfactory outcome. Your marriage will suffer, probably end, with all the emotional, social, parental, legal, & financial upheavals that will ensue. Perhaps it will be worth it. Probably not, but perhaps so. And if it does work out, poof! 15+ years from now you will be in another happy long-term relationship. What happens then?
If you can't stop traveling solo for work, then stop drinking when you do travel. Then take a little time to look at these women while you're sober. If they still look like they could be worth the possible destruction of absolutely everything you now hold dear, then, honey, go for it.
OTOH, perhaps a new sports car would help resolve your midlife crisis. Ooo, shiny!
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Oh my God ...
I have been considering having an affair with a guy I slept with once while single thirteen years ago (I was single at the time, I didn't find out he had a partner until just before we took our clothes off in his hotel room.) I even propositioned him about having a long term secret affair a few weeks ago - he was wise enough to say it might not be sustainable. But yes, I agree that infatuation and the rush of desire and something new and strange is like a drug. And as a mother of a young child who has been through a helluva last few years of stress with my husband, an affair seemed like a holiday, a secret place you can go to in your mind and occasionally (he lives far away in another state) with your body.
For a few days there I thought it might make everything better even! But as people have been saying here, and as he wisely said to me - what about misunderstandings? What about hurt feelings, when infatuation becomes obsession, when .... well all the unpredictable things that come with sex and infatuation happen, happen.
So what am I saying here ... that everyone's words have hit home, to me. That I love my husband, we have great sex, we are a great couple and I want to be with him forever. It's just that our life together hasn't been so fun - due to outtside challenges - and I thought I might be entitled to have a little mini break on my own. Okay, I'm not going to do it.
Thanks all.