I (22F) have been dating my boyfriend (22M) for a while now, and I really don’t want to lose him. When we’re together, we laugh a lot, he makes me smile just by looking at me, and he genuinely makes me happy—especially in person. Sometimes when I’m upset, just hearing his voice on the phone calms me. He brings peace. I know he cares, and I feel it.
But here’s the issue… even though I love our time together, I still catch myself crushing on other guys. For example, there’s this guy at the gym—nothing’s happened between us, but I find myself hoping for his attention. I imagine him looking at me, I even imagine us doing things together, and that makes me feel so guilty. It’s not emotional cheating, but it feels like mental cheating, and I don’t understand why I’m like this.
And this isn’t the first time this happened. In a past relationship, I was with a great guy who really loved me, but I ended up crushing on two other people. I blamed myself so much for that and ended the relationship, thinking that maybe I just didn’t love him. I told myself the next time would be different. And now here I am, again, in a seemingly better relationship—with stronger physical attraction and deeper connection—but still finding myself fantasizing about someone else.
I’ve already gone through the self-blame cycle. What I want is to understand why I do this. Is there something wrong with me? Am I wired to self-sabotage when things get too real or too peaceful? Do I crave attention? Or am I just not cut out for relationships?
I feel really confused, and I don’t know what’s going on inside me.
Has anyone else gone through this? How do you deal with it?
Any advice would help.
TL;DR : I’m in a happy relationship with a caring boyfriend who makes me laugh and feel safe, but I still catch myself fantasizing about other guys – especially one at the gym. This has happened in past relationships too. I feel guilty and confused, and I don’t understand why I keep doing this even when I’m with someone I like.
Comments
tl;dr Nothing. You are just fine. Don’t let any men tell you there is anything wrong with using your imagination.
You’re human and you have animalistic desires based on someone’s physical appearance. It’s natural, just don’t cross the line
It’s normal to be attracted to other people or fantasize. The thing is not to let it consume you or dwell too much into it.
Keeping the spark alive between you is important too, many times couples fall into a routine and can become comfortable but “boring”.
Communicating and trying new things, fantasies or even just normal activities to keep life fun is key for a long, healthy relationship.
It only depends on how far you bring that fantasy. Do you try to stalk these crush on socials ? Does it affect your aexual life with ur partner ? Would your partner have any way of finding out and being hurt ? If not, I think it’s pretty normal to have a secret garden of fantasies in ur mind. As long as it doesn’t actively affect ur relationship, don’t feel guilty:)
Attraction to other guys and the fantasies it something normal. You self-sabotage and dwelling on guilt isn’t. For the latter you need therapy.
Being in a relationship is like being on a diet at a buffet. You’re going to look at all the other food and wonder how it tastes. But you want the diet to work out so you don’t get any of it.
as others have said, it’s very normal to have small, harmless “crushes” or fantasize about other people. it’s human to notice people you find attractive. it becomes a problem when you start giving that person too much attention, going out of your way to be around them, neglecting or judging your partner because you’re thinking about them, etc etc etc – doing things that actually do feed into it and blur or outright cross the line. what matters isn’t your thinking someone else is cute, it’s what you do about it 🙂
Polyamory is a thing and some people just aren’t wired for monogamy no matter how hard they try. It’s not that there’s necessarily anything “wrong” with you; however, you should figure out if you’re just having normal crushes and fantasies that you would never follow through on, or if you would potentially want relationship(s) with any other(s) in addition to each of the relationships you’ve had. If it’s just crushes and fantasies – that’s pretty normal, a lot of people have that! If it’s that you legitimately want more than one, that’s not wrong, it’s just not western society’s default.
It doesn’t sound like you’re acting on these crushes. They just sound like fantasies.
Like you describe this gym guy and the thoughts you have. You say you hope for his attention.
Okay. Cool. What would you do if you actually got it? Gym guy saunters over, rubs a towel over a glistening bicep, leans against a machine, flashes his pearly whites, and smoothly asks you for your number.
This crush is only a problem if you indulge it. If you’re like “no thanks, I got a boyfriend.” then it’s fine.
Adding gym guy to social media “as a friend” would be self-destructive. Going out of your way to be at the gym as the same time as gym guy is self-destructive. Fantasizing about gym guy in private is fine.
Liking attention from strangers is only a real issue if you’re bad at establishing firm boundaries and then respecting them. It’s like the electric fence in Jurassic Park. Everything’s fine if the electricity’s still on and the raptors are in their pen. But they’ll always be testing it so, uh, don’t turn the power off.
But I dunno… the fact that you feel bad about feeling this way is, actually, a pretty good sign. It implies you know there are lines you don’t cross.
The last thing I’m going to leave you with is that I don’t know what your boyfriend is about but there are men out there who actually like it when other men notice or even flirt with their partners. Find one of those kinds of dudes and you may be able to occasionally dabble in (reasonable) attention seeking behaviors guilt-free.
So we can’t really change or intervene in our feelings. Attraction works in complex ways. Being in a committed relationship doesn’t always mean that you won’t develop feelings/crushes on other people. If you’re crushing on or fantasizing about someone, that might not really mean anything unless your innocent feelings become irresistible emotions you want to act upon. You can’t really change who you’re attracted to, op, no matter how much you love your partner and that’s totally ok. Pretty much everyone develops innocent crushes or fantasizes about other people even though they are in happy, committed and serious relationships. It’s okay to feel confused but in my opinion you shouldn’t feel guilty for what you’re experiencing right now as long as you don’t actually end up acting upon these feelings by physically cheating, or interacting with your crush in a way that would hurt your partner. The definition of cheating is subjective but from what you’ve described it seems like you’re going through a very normal human experience and it doesn’t sound like cheating.