I Have a Crush on My Friend’s Husband and it’s Kinda Nice
I even think it’s a really positive thing!
There are some people with whom you feel so comfortable, you can’t believe that you haven’t known them their entire life. Or even much more than a year.
That’s how I feel when I am with my friend, Cara.
We became good friends when she began coming to my yoga classes and I just sensed something about her that intrigued and attracted me.
She had a magnetic sense of humour and would laugh out loud when she lost her balance while performing an asana. Or she would crack a joke about something totally random during the class and have me in fits.
One day, I invited her for coffee after the class and that was it, we became fast friends.
There was another side to her too.
Sometimes she could really moan.
I mean, can’t we all? But she could easily get in that “down-in-the-dumps” kind of rut when she was on a rant, it would go on and on.
I remember one time, when we were about to get into our cars to go home, and she needed to tell me a long list of complaints she had about her son’s school. The wind was blowing and the weather was coming in cold, and it wasn’t until I got into the car that I realised how chilled through I was from standing and being a good, listening friend for nearly half an hour in the cold wind.
But what surprised me most were her bitter complaints about her husband. Not the complaints per se, but the image she had painted of him relative to the man I eventually met.
As anyone would do with a good friend, when they have moans about their significant other, I would listen.
She needed someone to bounce off and offload to, that was for sure, and that’s all I was doing. I wasn’t offering any advice or giving my opinion on the man that I was hearing about, though I was silently forming my own opinion of him from what she said — irritating and sexist.
She painted a picture of someone who lacked empathy and held himself in such high regard that he considered his professional life far superior to her own.
They are both doctors, by the way. But his position is a very senior one, as head of the respiratory health department of the local hospital, whereas she is merely an anaesthetist — I say “merely” with tongue in cheek.
I had an image in my head of a cold, sullen-looking older man. A serious man who didn’t have time for women and their whims and fancies, who holds himself loftily above anyone else due to his important position in society.
Which was why, when I met the man finally, one day that I went to their house for coffee, I was shocked to find a warm, kind-faced man who had a genuine interest in those he met, and much more youthful than I had imagined.
He was gentle with the children and soft in the way he spoke to me. He was participating in meal-planning for the family and compiling a shopping list, which he would then go out and buy while Cara and I sat and nattered in the garden over coffee.
He was almost the entire opposite of this awful, frustrating husband that I had been led to believe him to be.
The unexpectedly sweet nature of this man threw me.
I don’t know if it was because he was such a long way from what I had expected or if these feelings would have arisen anyway, but some strange chemistry occurred.
I know it was two-way. You just know these things.
It was the next time I saw him — when we, by chance, met out in town one day — that we got to chatting and there was an instant connection. As if we were the friends, not simply introduced via my friend, his spouse.
It was a long, long way from any of those polite conversations that you make simply because it would be rude not to. No, we quickly got onto discussions about a great novel that I was holding in my hand, and our favourite authors and fiction genres.
We spoke about local walks that we both knew well, and about running, for it turns out we both enjoy rough-terrain running routes.
It all felt so natural and easy. It was an uplifting conversation from which I came away with that extra skip in my step, a broad, glowing smile across my face, and a knowing feeling.
I believe a part of me felt he deserved to spend a moment with a woman who isn’t busy berating him and seeing what he wasn’t doing rather than what he was doing. Somehow, those complaining monologues of Cara’s had left me wondering how he really felt — it certainly wasn’t sullen, as I had expected, but perhaps a bit deflated in his marriage.
I suspect he also did enjoy having a conversation with someone completely neutral, yet female, who could appreciate him simply for the positivity he was beaming right there and then.
And yes, for his good looks, his kind eyes, and a number of interests we had in common.
Since that time, we have met on several occasions — a couple of times when I have been to Cara’s to give her private yoga classes, and social occasions, during which we have chatted long. There is that little bit of magic every time. A hit of dopamine that makes those tiny moments into something so much bigger.
Is it wrong, though, to have such feelings about a married man? Married, no less, to my friend?
If I was to pose this question to the me of ten years ago, I would probably have said yes, this is absolutely wrong!
But now, I see things differently. I don’t see attraction as something that has to be followed through at all.
I, too, am married. Very happily married to the most wonderful man in the world.
An artist, a teacher, a lover, a best friend — he is everything to me.
But he also knows the moments of warm, inner glow that come from an unlikely attraction that will never lead to anything. From feeling appreciated and desired, even when that desire is never, ever acted upon.
We are both fully open about these things and we believe that feelings are feelings — they are there to be felt and to be enjoyed, but not to necessarily pursue them further.
Years back, when I was pregnant for the first time (none of my four pregnancies were carried to term) and I developed that glow, that plumping of my breasts and hips, some unlikely chemistry occurred between my best friend’s partner and me.
It took me by surprise but all four of us spoke frankly about it. There was nothing better than having it all out in the open and being very clear that feelings like those simply remain as feelings and nothing more.
Yet, more importantly, my husband and I recognised that chemistry like that with people outside of our marriage was incredibly valuable.
Two people can become far too used to one another, to the point that we stop feeling like they appreciate our wit, our intellect, or our looks. They stop commenting on how we look or what we have done, and even sex can start to feel simply expected and repetitive, less interesting and less frequent.
We had both been in relationships prior to meeting one another in which this stagnation had occurred, and had both felt unappreciated by our significant others.
Although we didn’t necessarily believe that we would stop showing our appreciation to one another, we also realised that, when full trust was there between us, we could enjoy feeling admired by, and form sexually-enhancing connections with, people outside of our marriage— and reciprocate that admiration too. And, more importantly, by feeling free to open our hearts and enjoy those feelings, we were giving each other gifts that only added to the magical chemistry between the two of us.
We have spoken, too, about the possibility of opening up our marriage and sleeping with other people and decided that we didn’t desire that at all.
The fact is that neither of us wants to be intimate with anyone other than one another and that isn’t set to change. But we can still enjoy feeling sexually and intellectually powerful with other people, and make them feel that way too!
Back to my friend’s husband…
My complete and honest impression is that there is nothing harmful whatsoever in enjoying this little bit of chemistry.
If anything, I believe that, by making him feel like a more admired and desirable person — albeit subtly through subliminal communication — this will only help their marriage rather than detract from it.
I would certainly never, ever do anything about it and I am sure as heck that he wouldn’t either. It would never go any further than the fun of feeling all those warm, tingly feelings, and that’s that.
I am not ashamed nor regretful that I have allowed there to be feelings between myself and my friend’s husband. Meanwhile, I am noticing more joy in their relationship and I believe that, perhaps, that reminder of how good it can feel to be seen as someone has helped somewhat.
In recent weeks, I have observed a greater solidarity between the two of them and heard of them taking time away from work together to go cycling — something they haven’t done for years due to the grind of balancing a professional life and children. And Cara has seemed happier than I have seen her for a long time.
This is all new in the last few weeks.
I can’t say for sure that it has anything to do with me, but I sure know how sexy it makes me feel when I feel that heart-opening experience of allowing feelings to flow with others outside of my marriage, and how much more I appreciate my husband as a result. So I can only assume that there may be some of that magic going on there too.
