Infidelity, cheating, and affairs . . . these are topics that we tiptoe around discussing when we’re in relationships. The prospect of being lied to and cheated on by our significant others is not only a terrifying prospect to dwell on, but it’s an even more frightening notion to consider committing against those we love. It’s no wonder that we are so averse to exploring this topic in our everyday lives!
The truth is that life is capricious and unpredictable, and while many of us are under the illusion that avoiding what makes us feel uncomfortable and embarrassed is the solution, we really need to have an open conversation that explores this taboo—and much feared—area of life.
It’s time that we stop ignoring the ominous “elephant in the room,” and start exploring why we feel so ashamed about feeling attracted to other people in loving relationships.
If you feel distressed, depraved, guilty or embarrassed for feeling attracted to others in your loving relationship, don’t allow your conscience to continue withering under the weight of your shame. Keep reading to discover why it is not only OK to feel attracted to others, but why it is normal as well.
Being Attracted to Other People is Not a Crime
Let me share with you something about myself. I am fortunate enough to currently be in a very loving, very satisfying long-term relationship that I never thought was possible to have with another human being. So I was very shocked and very surprised when I began to feel attracted to other people in my life. To my horror I found (and continue to find), that I feel intellectually, emotionally and physically attracted to others in my life completely out of the blue and with no warning whatsoever.
“What the hell is WRONG with me?” I have wondered many times before, “Why do I feel this way? . . . I SHOULDN’T feel this way.” And so ensues the endless hours of self-criticism and merciless put-downs.
Does this sound familiar to you?
If you have made feeling attracted to other people a crime in your life, you will most likely feel dirty, flawed, and irredeemably guilty like I have often felt before. Furthermore, you were probably indoctrinated with the unrealistic, fantasy-land ideal of “True love means that it is IMPOSSIBLE for you to be attracted to others.”
Let me tell you something very simple . . . this is a completely unrealistic, and completely false.
Unless you are demisexual and only feel attracted to those you have created mental or emotional bonds with, you will always feel attracted to other people, EVEN in loving relationships. This is simply the nature of being a sexual being.
For sexual beings, being attracted to others is a normal way of life—whether it is that toned guy with the infectious smile at the Deli, the girl with the big boobs and alluring perfume at work, or the neighbor with the charming personality and hysterical jokes. Feeling attracted to other people does not make you evil, it does not make you a philanderer, and it does not make you guilty of a terrible crime.
But what does count is what you decide to do with these feelings.
How Being Attracted to Others Evolves into Cheating and Lying
It is perfectly normal and perfectly OK to feel attracted to others in loving relationships. Anyone who tells you otherwise is either crippled by insecurity (e.g. “If they feel attracted to ____, they will stop feeling attracted to me and will therefore leave me”), or is deluded by the mistaken belief that “being in love means you can never be attracted to others.”
While it is OK to feel physically, emotionally and/or mentally attracted to others, the real problems start when, out of shame, we begin to hide away these feelings and refuse to acknowledge them both to ourselves and to our partners. We will explore how to acknowledge these feelings to ourselves and our significant others a bit later.
But for now, it’s really important to understand that secrecy is the core root of all “evil” in relationships as it breeds lying and cheating.
When we hide from any uncomfortable truth within ourselves—such as the fact that we feel attracted to others—we breed a type of neuroticism within us that accumulates more and more. The more we shroud our thoughts and feelings in secrecy, the more they weigh down on us and lurk in the corners of our minds. Through time, our repressed feelings and thoughts grow into monster issues that perpetuate our feelings of guilt and dirtiness. We find that we start having sexual dreams about others that we can’t avoid, or we start having uncontrollable lust issues that we don’t know how to put a reign on. Sometimes we even give into our morbid curiosities and start affairs and secret rendezvous as a way of appeasing the morbid curiosity of our Shadow Selves.
. . . and why?
All because we made feeling attracted to others a crime inside of our minds—all because we denied ourselves the right to experience and accept these feelings from the very start.
But don’t beat yourself up. I know what it’s like to feel the insufferable weight of guilt constantly press down on your shoulders, and I know what it’s like to slowly remove the burden of self-inflicted blame from your life. While the lessons that I’ve learned might not be able to solve every problem in your life right now, I do hope they help you to heal that part of you that feels “criminal” inside.
How to “Clear the Air”
First, I want to write a disclaimer. This article is written for, and directed towards, loving relationships that are built on equality and trust. If your relationship is unhealthy, unequal and/or destructive, and if you have other people in the picture (for example, children), it is not always possible to be open to your partner about your feelings of attraction towards another person or people. It is even possible that in some types of relationships (e.g. physically or emotionally abusive ones) being open and “clearing the air” can do more long-term harm than good. It is up to you to determine what kind of relationship you have and whether it would be wise or not to “clear the air.”
However, it is always possible for you to be open with yourself about your feelings of attraction towards others. Sometimes forgiving yourself and giving yourself the permission to feel what you feel is all you need to move on with your life.
It can take a lot to rewire the “you-should-never-feel-attracted-to-others-in-relationships” belief that you have been indoctrinated (usually through religion) to believe for most of your life. So if you are struggling to give yourself the permission you need to move on with your life, try repeating the following affirmations to yourself:
“It is OK to feel attracted to others, but I choose [my partner].”
“I embrace my right to feel attracted to others. This is normal and this is acceptable.”
“Although I feel attracted to this man/woman, I choose [my partner] for a good reason.”
Like me you will find that through constant mental repetition of these affirmations, you will start to embrace the inevitability of feeling attracted to others, and you will let go of the guilt associated with these feelings. Remember, you chose to be with your partner for a very good reason, and it is important to remind yourself of that.
If you discover that you are still struggling to release the guilt you feel after repeating these affirmations to yourself many times, you are probably suffering from cognitive dissonance; or the state of having two conflicting feelings and beliefs, where one side of you wants to forgive yourself, and the other wants to continue holding yourself guilty. In this case, your word alone (at first) might not be enough to convince you that you are not at fault.
So let me give you mine:
I give YOU the permission to see that it is perfectly OK to feel physically, emotionally and/or mentally attracted to another person in a loving relationship.
Take this to heart.
Letting Your Partner Know
Did I just sense an impending feeling of doom well up within you? This is normal, don’t worry!
Letting your partner know that you find others attractive doesn’t have to be as hard or as apocalyptic as you make it out to be. It can be as simple as, “That guy has a cute face, he reminds me of Orlando Bloom,” or “There’s this woman at work, she has these massive D-cups that she’s always showing off,” or “I love that guy’s smile, don’t you?” There are an infinite number of subtle ways to indicate that you find someone else attractive. You don’t necessarily need to come out and bluntly say, “Geez, that guy/girl has such a HOT BODY,” or “Wow, that woman intoxicates me with her tantalizing personality and ssssssashaying hips” to our romantic partners, but it is necessary to acknowledge your attraction in some way, shape, or form so as to not continue repressing it.
Also, remember that feeling attracted to others is a two-way street. If your partner extends the courtesy of being understanding and good-natured towards you, be mindful of returning the same favor to them. Our insecurities can make us jealous, obsessive and over-reactive, so be aware of how you respond to your partner. In other words, treat them how you would like to be treated: with open-mindedness and acceptance.
Shadow Work Journal:
Go on a journey through the deepest and darkest corners of your psyche. Embrace your inner demons, uncover your hidden gifts, and reach the next level of your spiritual growth. This is deep and powerful work!
Remember, the more comfortable and accepted they feel, the more likely they will feel safe enough to openly share with you how they feel in the future.
***
I have learned a very valuable lesson in my own life which I hope you can bring into yours, which is to build a faithful, stable and loving relationship you need to be open about your attraction to others. Cheating, lying, and infidelity are almost always driven by the pent-up temptation of exploring the forbidden and the taboo, but when you give yourself the permission to feel attracted to others there is no need to hide away anything.
By learning to accept that feeling attracted to others is a normal element of being a sexual being you nip in the bud issues such as guilt, secrecy, and unfaithfulness, reinforcing a strong foundation of trust and openness in your relationship.
What have your experiences been with this taboo topic?
I feel better after reading this. My boyfriend recently posted a photo on Facebook of a gorgeous naked girl wearing a santa hat, lying face down on a bearskin rug, with the meme: “Ladies, don’t worry about what your man wants for Christmas…it’s you, naked, wearing a santa hat.”, along with his own introductory sentiment: “Ya…something like that…lol.” My first response was the feeling of heat rushing into my stomach and I felt an uncontrollable mixture of rage and hurt, followed by telling myself not to read into this too much. Even though his post might be in bad taste and causes me to feel insecure about myself, I suppose he wouldn’t have put it out there if he thought it would offend me. Your article helped me to understand and to be truthful with myself a bit more. I have to be honest, there are times I do feel an attraction to other men…whether it’s a photo, or a gorgeous guy walking past me. But it doesn’t diminish my love for my man or cause me to think about carrying out an unfaithful act. I think about all the wonderful things he says and does for me, and so I try not to let these feelings of insignificance get the better of me. Still, I wouldn’t be posting pics of naked men publically on my Facebook wall out of simple sheer respect for my guy. I’m still sitting on the fence about whether or not his actions were in bad taste, or just an innocent healthy expression of sexually toned naughtiness. I do feel less upset and clearer-headed after reading your article. It helped me put all this into a better perspective…so thank you. I guess I need some work on my self-esteem…I would welcome any advice that might help me overcome these insecure feelings.
– Thank you –
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i feel no attraction to anyone but my boyfriend. In all my previous relationships, about 7 or 8 now, said partners had cheated on me, left me, or talked incessently about how badly they were attracted to others and how they didnt want to be exclusive to just me.
I’ve never felt true attraction to people besides my partner, i may think they look aesthetically pleasing but its never even sexual. my boyfriend on the other hand gets erections from looking at different women (not all obviously, lol) and hes also made some comments about just how amazingly beautiful some people are.
I dont understand his emotions at all on this since i have never felt attraction towards anyone besides my partner in any relationship, and so, i dont know how to not take it personally. I need help, advice, something. when he makes those comments my stomach churns, i become suicidal, i shut down, i dont know how to manage it. it just feels like a repeat of everyone else. I cant do poly and im so scared he will come out as poly from the way he speaks. im just scared
Im the same way as you. I know how you feel. My bf is the same. I just tell myself this is how guys are wired biologically. They see attractive women, they get sexual thoughts. It’s nothing personal. I am also not able to be attracted to other men than my partner, but that is how I am wired and need to understand that’s not how guys are. as long as you communicate boundaries your relationship should be ok.
I think there needs to be a very legitimate sense of boundary for acceptable behavior that you two are in agreement with in your relationship. If what he does is making you feel inadequate as a person, then he should respect and care for you enough to help you through this. The thought that “men are just wired that way” is very primitive. Yes, men tend to be more visually stimulated creatures, but as mature adults we have a measure of discipline we can uphold. I will say that just because YOU don’t find anyone else attractive, it doesn’t mean that he won’t. That is something you have to be willing to accept. But you also need to have a healthy boundary (whatever that means for you) where you compromise to maybe he can make a subtle comment but doesn’t need to pork out a boning erection just because another woman walks by. I have my own personal thoughts on that but I truly feel like you have to be honest and realistic with YOURSELF about what is harmless play that you can learn to handle and what is actually damaging to your self esteem. Because if you start feeling suicidal over these things it is not healthy to continue to allow it to happen. This sounds like a lot of introspecting on your part and healthy communication to your partner needs to happen.
I wish I had read this 8 years ago. I’m honestly tearing up looking back now & realizing this could have been the answer to all of my problems. Had I read this back then perhaps my relationship wouldn’t be a sunken ship. The damage has already been done in my relationship so anyone else reading this, please take it seriously because it might just be the advice that saves you in the future.
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My boyfriend recently told me he thought he was failing me. I asked him why he felt that way, and he said it was because he catches himself looking at other women and it makes him feel guilty because he only wants “eyes” for me. I assured him that it is okay to look at other people because let’s face it, there are really attractive people on this planet. I also said that just looking does not make me mad or upset because it’s something we as humans, and sexual beings, do without realizing. I say these things to him, in hopes to make him feel better, however, deep down, I keep thinking what would happen if he were to pursue one of those times he was “just looking.” I worry about this deep down because he has admitted to thinking about sex a lot, and has driven previous girlfriends away because of it. He also has ADHD and with this has a hard time focusing on two things at the same time but whatever he is most focused on will preside over everything else. I know he loves me and I love him, but I hope that these urges, and the fact he has ADHD, don’t turn this situation into something worse. In my case, I have yet to find another guy attractive upon meeting my boyfriend and I have no desire to think about other men in a sexual way. I truly love him, and I feel like we were meant to be. I just can’t help but have a small piece of me not being able to trust him. We are good about sharing things that come to mind and being honest about how we feel. I just don’t want to bring this back up because I don’t want him to feel even more guilty or think I don’t trust him at all. What should I do? I feel so lost..
I really am so glad I stumbled across this today. I feel like reading this will in the long run help me to understand my SO and how he feels better. I was raised by a very strict conservative christian mother. I was reminded often how sex before marriage was wrong, lusting…. wrong, etc. However, my dad was a giant flirt, completely unrepressed. In my youth I was more like my dad and my first real relationship was with someone more like my mom. I thought if they could make it work for 30 some years I could too. My biggest mistake is always comparing myself to others. The short of it was my boyfriend that became my husband was also repressed by his mother who caught his father cheating. He was never okay with the fact that I am a flirty person so over time, he repressed who I was. I would have never cheated on him until later in our relationship the guilt did cause the morbid curiosity and I found myself having an emotional affair with another man. Of course I felt shame and guilt and I as well had become like him in the 16 years we were together b/c what is good for the goose is good for the gander. Then mentality took hold. He had multiple affairs in our marriage and finally why I truly loved him, it was obvious it wasn’t going to work and we divorced. I married again 3 years or so later and he had also been cheated on. His ideal was when you are in a committed relationship you never oogle other women though he would say he was attracted to celebrity women. After 7 years of marriage he left me for another man. I felt more free to express attraction in this relationship… but only to people we didn’t know… like celebrities. Our relationship was loveless and sexless 3 years before he left, in that I moved on very quickly with a friend that I had never considered being in a relationship with. It is definitely a time in my life where things just “happened”. We moved in together after 3 months and in a week we will have been together for a year. He is 9 years younger than me which was an instant insecurity, but is also very aware of his attraction and appreciation of women in general. He was very open about this from the jump. He has said things like being around certain women alone would be bad b/c he didn’t know if he could trust himself, so always brought me with him if that was a possibility. I did find out through an unknown person that he had been sending suggestive emails to one of these women and when confronting him he knew what he had done was stupid, but would have never risked messing up what we have to relive his relationship with her. This rocked my world b/c of my past and how my brain has been trained. In that instance I did feel a line was crossed so I set a boundary b/c he would not like it if I had done the same, but it brought so many insecurities of mine to the surface. We hashed stuff out and he admitted he felt like he couldn’t talk to me about these kind of things. After reading this I feel like maybe in the long run my inability to be ok with his feeling of attraction to the opposite sex could have been a part of this. There have been a couple of women he has gone on and on about(not on a sexual level) that made me feel insecure b/c they are very attractive. Yet he always tells me how he loves me, and how he would never want to screw up what he has b/c its unlike anything else. I feel like an ass b/c after reading this I see where I am repressed, and even more so b/c of my experiences and I need to get back to the girl I once was years ago. I have obviously been blinded before but, he has proven on so many occasions that I am the #1 and I have let my insecurities make him feel as if he isn’t good enough, when he is more than enough. So glad I found this, now I can continue to undo the damage in our relationship and in myself.
How do you apply this when it’s your soul friend, or is that natural in soul friends? That’s my current struggle.
Thank you for making me feel like im not crazy. I just looked this up after im having a big fight with my girlfriend and shemade me feel like a bad person for being attracted to other people but i feel like being honest about it is better because i dont want to actually cheat on her
Firstly, thank you for all you do… your articles are refreshing and realistic… acknowledging our dark sides and not being all light and brightness all the time is like a tonic. It helps me to feel actually listened to and has helped me rid so much guilt.
This article is no exception… I’m so incredibly grateful… trawling the internet for an article that doesn’t bash me with guilt and shame.
I’ll try to keep my story short(ish)… about a year or so ago, I was on starting on a spiritual joyrney after the passing of my brother-in-law from cancer. As part of that journey, I felt inspired to correct some wrongdoings in my past where I’ve hurt others… even if they hurt me too… I felt a need to be cleansed spiritually… this led me to reaching out to my very first ex whom I met at arpund age 19… I was still recovering from an abusive childhood and still living with my abusive mother so I wasn’t exactly thinking straight… I’ll admit that I loved him and he told me this as well after only being together for a few months. I hurt him. Twice. I wasn’t thinking and I take full responsibility of my actions… after everything I’ve been through, that has and always will be my biggest regret.
Back to a year ago and I messaged him on social media and was expecting a brush off and being dismissed… but he was really lovely. Married now and so am I… I was not expecting any butterflies or deep feelings to come back to life but they did with full force. I admitted my feelings and we’ve had on/off contact ever since. We’ve pretty much blocked each other on social media which is really sad but understandable. He’s definitely the flame to my moth so now I keep all feelings to myself. I won’t ever disclose to my husband… he deserves better. This article has given me so much permission and reassurance that my feelings are normal. I’ll always feel affection for my ex and I will allow to flow when they bubble to the surface until they sink again for a while. Thank you so much!
My boyfriend just decided he is poly amorish. Because that is just what it is you describe. I am demisexual, I feel no need for more than him, but I have always knew this for him, and I have always felt the right to also commit to others. But now that moment is there, I find it scary, I feel insecure. He is doing his very best to show me I am his number one, and to be honest things are better than ever. So I feel quite ok about it all. We always had a distant relationship with not being together very often anyway, but oddly enough, it feels like I see him more than ever now. And it is not cheating this way, he says if he cant be open polyamorish, he will turn to cheating because it is just how he sexualy feels to share his love. He (and me) are open about it and he slows down if I feel difficult, he doesnt have a lot of others and its not his goal either, he just wants his chance to explore with others and not in a one night fling. He is also demisexual so he needs a connection to be build first. I am curious to how this will work out for us, and it feels comfortable for me that I can also see other men, without jealousy without double thoughts. I do not need more lovers, but have plenty of male friends I just love to talk with and hang out with. And slowely I come to realise that what you write in this blog, is just the way humans are programmed, but religion has mostly forced our mindsets to monogamy (leading to cheating in many cases).
Hi Luna. I’m curious to hear your (and other people’s) thoughts on this topic: I’ve heard many spiritual teachers say that in truth, there are no relationships and also that if we really, truly love someone, we will give them total freedom, even the freedom to sleep with other people. I also like what you’ve written here about the idea of being in a committed, exclusive relationship where it’s okay to feel attracted to others, but not necessarily to act on those emotions. For me, I am not in a relationship, but I am interested in if two people can be in a relationship that embodies BothOf those qualities (giving total permission to the other to be with other people and yet choosing each other). Curious to hear what your thoughts are.
Hi Jeremiah. Thanks for the questions. What you describe here sounds a lot like polyamory, except it sounds like the hierarchal kind (versus non-hierarchal) where one person always remains the most important in a partner’s life in a polyamorous relationship. Does it work? That’s open to opinion. Personally, I believe that most people in this day and age don’t have the mental, emotional, or spiritual maturity to pull it off. But that’s not to say it’s impossible, just that it would be very, very hard. It would probably become the central ‘project’ or focus of one’s life as so much mindful energy would need to be invested into it. I hope that helps. :)