Help! I’m Married But I Have a Crush!
Tracey’s Tip: You’re married, not dead! There’s nothing wrong with a harmless crush — so long as it stays harmless
International sex educator Tracey Cox and award-winning podcast host Zibby Owens have joined forces for a weekly Q&A podcast answering your anonymous sex questions.
This week, Tracey responds to questions about if crushes are still appropriate when you’re married, how to tell your partner his workday porn habits make you uncomfortable, and what to do if you find yourself in a sexless marriage.
Read an excerpt below and follow this link to listen to the entire episode.
Q: I’m happily married but have a crush on one of the dads I see on the school run. We have a chat and a laugh and now and then go for a coffee. Nothing is going to happen — I’ve had crushes before and they just fade out over time — but I’m curious if this happens to other married women. How do other people handle it? Is it something I should tell my partner and have a laugh about? Or should it stay a secret? What does it say about my marriage?
A: I think it’s very common for people to develop crushes when married– you’re married, not dead!
One US study revealed 98% of men and 80% of women have fantasized about someone other than their current partner in the past two months. Why do we enjoy having a crush? Attention, ego, excitement, and because they release all those deliciously intoxicating hormones you experience at the start of a relationship. And no matter how much you love your partner, they don’t flood your body in the same way when you’ve been together for years.
Often, people develop crushes on celebrities. I was obsessed with Don Draper from Mad Men. Jon Hamm. I was like a teenager: I would seriously look at photos of him in character for ages. My husband thought it was funny and so did I really.
I don’t think it says anything bad about your marriage. I’m very happily married but it didn’t stop me from having a crush on Jon Hamm. Feeling excited or attracted to someone else doesn’t mean you aren’t excited or attracted to your partner. It’s how you feel about it and what you do with it that’s important.
If you think of it as something non-threatening and a bit of fun, that’s usually exactly what it is. If it disturbs you and makes you think, ‘Why isn’t my partner more like that!’ then it’s highlighting possible future problems in your relationship.
Should you flirt or not flirt? I think in this situation — he’s a school-run Dad and the most they’re doing is going for coffee — it’s probably OK to have a bit of banter. But if that moves into texting at other times, you’re playing with fire. I would set very clear boundaries and stick to them. A coffee now and then is probably OK but anything more than that, no.
This is why I think you should tell your spouse about the crush. Even if they are amused rather than threatened, it does put them on alert. If you do start to have too much contact or it gets out of hand, they will notice and hopefully put an end to it. This, of course, depends entirely on the personality of your partner. Be wary if your partner has low self-esteem because this won’t help. But if your partner is confident in themselves and secure that you love them, it can be something you share lightly and with humor.
My final point is this: while both your marriages are happy and healthy, this is nothing to worry about. But if either of you starts to have problems in your marriage and start confiding in each other, that’s when crushes become extremely dangerous and tip over into affairs. You see this guy regularly, the attraction is clearly mutual, if you do start to experience problems, you have a replacement partner right in front of you. This is not a good thing!
Q: I’m no prude and have nothing against people watching porn but I am alarmed by the amount of time my boyfriend now spends watching it on his phone. We both work from home and it’s ramped up since then. He thinks it’s funny when I catch him and doesn’t try to hide it. But it’s starting to bug me, looking over and seeing women doing degrading things for hours each day. Am I over-reacting?
A: This working from home thing is causing all sorts of problems. This is one of them — in the office, you had to be careful getting caught with the wrong thing on your screen. At home, different story. A study done this week found 17% of us are binging on social media since working from home. 15% are messaging friends, 5% are gambling and 5% are using their work devices to watch porn.
That’s not the most shocking thing: a third of the people who are watching porn do it for 2–4 hours of their workday and 20% said they watched porn for 4–8 hours a day. So, sadly, this isn’t just your problem. If this study reflects the new work at home habits around the Western world, which I suspect it does, it’s happening everywhere.
Porn use is out of control for men, generally. Pornhub was visited by 42 billion times in 2019 by an audience that’s 68% male and 32% female. Traffic spikes at 4 pm and 10 pm. We know that young boys growing up with porn learn terrible lessons about sex and that it can cause all sorts of problems sexually for couples. Men think what’s happening onscreen is the norm, and it isn’t. It teaches little about how to pleasure women– the sort of porn men watch doesn’t anyway!
But still, men see it as harmless. Another study in 2019 reviewed 130 studies on porn looking at why people use it. They found that for most men, porn is a meaningless sexual indulgence. It’s a ‘bit of fun.’ This is why men don’t understand why women get upset about it: they see it as completely separate from their relationship with you and the real world.
I’m assuming it’s not causing problems with your sex life and you’re having good sex on a regular basis. If it was affecting real-life sex, that’s another thing. But if he’s doing it for amusement and the fact that he doesn’t hide or thinks it’s funny suggests to me he is one of these men. His motivation is simple. I’m not sure I would relish watching my partner consume a steady diet of porn for hours on end –probably what would annoy me the most is the waste of time– but then, is scrolling endlessly through social media a good use of time? Am not sure it is.
I’m assuming you’ve told him it annoys you but have you told him why? Have you explained that it makes you anxious and sad thinking about how some porn does exploit women? Not all porn does –there are plenty of porn stars in complete control of their careers– but you’re totally within your rights to say you find it distasteful.
Men simply don’t see excessive porn use as a problem and are perplexed when women do. I think you make it clear it’s getting to you, ask him not to watch it when you are around, and explain your reasons. But don’t be surprised if nothing changes. Porn is his entertainment. If it really bothers you, then maybe this guy isn’t for you.
I don’t think you’re over-reacting. I would be very concerned if my husband was doing this. What’s he like as a boyfriend when he’s not watching porn? Is he that fantastic that it’s worth putting up with this?
Q: Please help me Zibby and Tracey. I married my wife three years ago after being together for seven years. She’s never been that interested in sex but now we don’t have sex at all. It stopped when we got married. We’re in our late 30s and our kids are now at school. I love her but I’m not prepared to never have sex again. She refuses to talk about it.
A: You’re definitely not alone. A sexual frequency survey conducted by UK sex researcher Suzy Godson found that 20% of 3,500 participants were not having sex at all. Sexless marriages are very, very common and I hear about them all the time. The more we talk about it on the podcast, the more questions we get about it.
A fact about sexless marriages: once you have stopped having sex for longer than a year, it nearly always stays that way unless one or both of you tackle the problem head-on. Alarm bells ring loudly for me reading your question for many reasons. First up, your ages. Late 30s is very young to be taking sex out of a relationship. The reason that might explain it for that age group is new babies or toddlers, but you say your children are at school. Second, she’s never been that interested in sex. Finally, she refuses to talk about it.
You have a situation where you’re married to someone who has never really been interested in sex. She’s not had sex with you for three years and won’t talk to you about it. Where can you go with this? I’m assuming there hasn’t been some past sexual trauma that you know of that might explain why no sex is on offer? Was she ever open to exploring ways to make sex more enjoyable for her? Is there anywhere to go with that? Is she an otherwise kind, caring person who thinks about your needs as well as her own? Because this behavior doesn’t not suggest that she is.
If that is the case, your only options are to satisfy yourself by masturbating or seek sex outside your relationship, with or without her permission. Does either of these options appeal to you? I’m guessing not. I’ve seen people in their late 50s take this option but not late 30s. Where’s the intimacy in your marriage if there is no sex? Sexless marriages can survive if both people are happy about it, you’ve talked extensively, exhausted all options and both accepted it’s a good decision. But this isn’t the case here.
You have young children, you say you love her. That’s enough motivation to try to make this work. But that is never going to happen unless she will talk to you about why. Think through what you want from this before you talk with her, especially about what you want to do if she says ‘Yes, sex is over for me.”
Then you ask her, again, to talk with you about the fact you haven’t had sex in the past three years. If she refuses point blank, write all this in an email or letter and send it to her. Tell her that you are worried it means you won’t ever have sex again. Are you correct in assuming that? How does SHE feel about that? Has she thought about how YOU feel about that — that you are being robbed of something very precious at such a young age? Will she work with you to find a solution? See a sex therapist or tell you why she has never been interested?
You need all this information before you can make an informed decision. If she makes it clear sex is over and there’s no real thought about how that might affect you, it’s time to make some hard decisions.
