Tempted by the Fruit of Another
Married but crushing…on someone else.
For the last several months, I’ve been grappling with feelings for someone other than my wife. By way of attempted self-exorcism, I’ve started and stopped a couple of posts/essays about it. But I couldn’t quite stay with it. Then I happened upon this exceptionally well written and moving article by Ellen Eastwood, which helped me organize and come to better terms with what’s been going on with me.
It started off innocently…which never seems to be a good sign:
Dr. K is a new physician in our practice: young, bright, gorgeous. Initially, I thought she was perhaps a bit out of my league…although I suppose that is in the eye of the beholder.
But until now, I never would have considered her someone who I would develop feelings for, as the position has been filled, well and thoroughly, for a long time. My last serious crush was over three decades ago. I married her. We have done life, family, and adulthood together, and are planning to leave it all behind and retire in a few years.
It’s not that I haven’t felt the occasional passing fancy for women I find attractive. It’s not as if I haven’t noticed a few other women having reactions to me which looked a fair bit like a crush. I’ve even been unsubtly hit on a few times…more than a few if you ask my wife. She says I miss it a lot, which makes sense, given that I am neither looking for it, nor is it intuitive to me why a wedding ring could be more of a provocation than a deterrent. But until recently, I’ve been unmoved in any significant way. Having feelings for someone else has never happened to this degree. Nowhere near it.
I’m finding it more than a bit surprising, and at times overwhelming.
What is different about Dr. K from every other attractive woman with I’ve crossed paths, what absolutely slays me about her — is her mind, her spirit, her heart. She is quite bright, and not showy about it. She is an independent and adventurous soul, in a city that seems filled with tedious suburban socialites who seem mostly interested in measuring and judging each other by their cars, homes, children’s colleges. She has a gentle, personable manner with her patients that probably steals their hearts a little too.
And perhaps most of all, I couldn’t scare her off.
If I trace back my interactions with Dr. K, I notice that I did most of the typical things I do semi-consciously to dissuade women from being interested in me. To wit, I just act like myself: Socializing came up, and I told her I didn’t drink. This reliably sends anyone with an alcohol-centered social life — meaning most folks — running in the other direction. I mentioned that, as much as I love my work, I tend to get good and sick of talking to people by about 11 am. I groused a little about how easily I tire of the polite chit-chat at obligatory work social functions. Even if someone couldn’t pick up on the streak of Autistic Spectrum to which I referred obliquely, I made no secret of my lack of “proper” extroversion. I joked about my age (mid-fifties), taking care of patients younger than me for age related conditions. What attractive, accomplished, woman in her early thirties wouldn’t be turned off at this point?
But she still clearly enjoyed my company. “Really good to see you again,” she said at the end of a shift.
Yes, stab me in the heart and give it a good twist.
Dr. K and I don’t interact outside of work, but we clearly enjoy it when our paths cross. We joke, enjoy each other’s company, linger a bit longer talking to each other than is necessary. When we look at each other, there’s no mistaking the electricity…not sparks, but arcing bolts of lightning.
It is both enlivening and soul-searing.
In my rational moments, it’s obvious that it’s a dead end street, and can never be anything else. This is particularly so if Dr. K and I were to turn something that seems to me adorable and sweet (with a generous side order of excruciating) into something tawdry and destructive. It won’t happen; I simply won’t let it happen. I couldn’t do that to my wife, our marriage, our kids, Dr. K’s career, my career. All of these things could be utterly wiped out by a single misdeed. And hopefully Dr. K knows that the version of me that would cross that line is not someone she would want in her life.
Even if I were single and available, things with the Dr. K would have almost no chance of working out as well as my wife and I have. Infatuation, even when profound, is a mere beginning. Thirty plus years of being together has given my wife and I a degree of comfort and familiarity with each other that could likely never be bettered in any other relationship I could have at this point.
But my feelings on this matter seem stubbornly resistant to reason.
It’s easy to fill in the numerous things I don’t know about Dr. K with idealizations. As a result, it is awfully hard to let go of this crushing crush that can be almost anything I make it in my head, untainted by too much reality. I’ll never know the dozens of ways we are probably wrong for each other, the myriad ways we’d irritate the heck out of each other, the many important ways that my wife and I are better for each other than she and I could ever be.
My wife knows about it. We have talked about it, as we talked about it roughly 12 years ago when something similar happened with her. The conversations — both over a decade ago and now — haven’t been fun, but bringing it out in the open makes it essentially impossible for me to act on. Not surprisingly, my wife hasn’t wanted to discuss it beyond the initial couple chats. She expects me to handle it both appropriately and without involving her too much, as the whole subject understandably pains her.
And I will…no matter how much it sucks, which it does frequently.
But I frequently find myself feeling stuck and alone with this. Perhaps I deserve no sympathy, but I wonder whom could I talk to about it when I’m feeling really achy…other guys? Which fantasy football obsessed, bourbon drinking golfer of a fellow male physician could listen respectfully, respond with insight and understanding, and maintain discretion?
None as far as I can tell. In my experience, most dudes are emotional idiots, even grown-up doctors.
So I just stew in my own juices.
I often think there’s some purpose to events and meetings in my life, particularly emotionally significant ones. But it’s hard to see it here.
Just a beautiful and eviscerating scene from life’s rich pageant, I suppose.
Next…the whys and hows of it, both relationally and biologically.
