This is genuinely so stupid and embarrassing. My marriage is an objectively happy one, my wife and I are truly well matched. We’ve known each other for 8 years, and I love her and our life together. If anything ever happened to change our status quo I would be truly devastated. I say all this to highlight the fact that I don’t want anything about my relationship to change.
Why do I periodically think about this girl I met 10 years ago? We never dated or anything, my dumb teenage self unknowingly sabatoged any chance at that. I had an opportunity to be friends with her and fumbled it so hard, she for sure ended up thinking I was such a weirdo. My thoughts periodically wander to her and wonder what her life is like, and I succumbed to the thoughts today and looked her up. We would NOT be a good match. She works at a catholic school. I won’t go into details but that fact alone is enough to tell me our personalities wouldn’t match up.
The problem is that (and I have NEVER admitted this or typed it out before) I am still more physically attracted to her than any other person I’ve ever seen in my life. I’m not even talking about monkey brained sexual attraction, I’m talking like heart-clenching, soul-aching, only-exists-in-19th-century-poetry level attraction. I am DRAWN to this person. And I don’t even want to be! What gives? Is it because the first time I saw her was when I was in my formative years as a mentally unstable teenager? It can’t have been healthy to be in the state of mind I was in and then stumble upon a muse-worthy attraction like that.
How do I train myself out of this way of thinking? Someone please help me sever my brain’s connection to these useless feelings.
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That’s the attraction you feel before you discover that the object is a real person that likely doesn’t match up with the version you had in your head (even if it’s just pure physical attraction, actually being involved and dealing with those logistics makes it different) and go through the boredom and domesticity of existence together.
I guarantee you that if your wife had been the one you fumbled and you somehow ended up circling back and marrying this person, it’d be your wife that you’re fantasizing about this way and putting on a pedestal of fairytale attraction. It’s natural. Just try not to fixate on it being ‘different’, because it’s not— it was just unrealized.
Being a teenager at the time and having those insane hormones going on probably contributes to this and your recall of it, too. The roller coaster magnetism feeling is just your brain trying to get you to interact with a potential suitable mate via dopamine hit, for the better or worse.
I can’t give you much advice, but I can say I know exactly what you’re feeling. I’ve been married over a decade and still had LOVE with my one-sided childhood crush. We grew up together (5th – 12th grade). I had told her hold I felt, she didn’t feel the same. That stayed with me until only a couple of years ago.