So, background, obviously I married my wife so I love her a lot. After 5 years we've settled into a very stable relationship and since we hit 30 it's like a maturity milestone has hit and we're communicating better than we ever did and any problems we used to have are mostly gone / don't seem intractable. We have a big house, a dog, good jobs, basically we've been somewhat blessed from above with the easy life.
But I do have a problem, and nobody involved knows a single thing about it. I'm dealing with it totally on my own and, from the title you can see there are obvious reasons I can't discuss this with anyone. I cannot afford therapy.
about a year and a half ago my wife's younger sister hit some hard times, the details are not really relevant but to cut to the chase she lost her apartment and we offered her to stay in our house for a while, we have some spare rooms, it was no big deal. Until this point I obviously spent plenty of time with her at various family events and knew we had some things in common so I thought, a few months can't be too bad. In total she ended up living with us 9 months.
Now, shortly after she moved in, my wife was sent on a three month work trip so it was just the sister and I in the house for an extended time. It wasn't that weird at first, really, just like getting a new roommate which is something I experienced plenty of times at college. But we very quickly settled into a routine that was probably somewhat closer than many roommates, like making or ordering dinner together most nights, doing a single wash load, in short really she just inherited the "long term partner" role in my domestic life from my wife. I dunno if I'm maybe putting more importance on that in my memory than is really true though.
The first thing I remember noticing was our shared interest in movies, we spent many long nights watching a movie then discussing it, she had an encyclopedic knowledge and watched a lot of the same YT channels and listened to the same podcasts on movies and film history and basically we really hit it off on that. I thought that was really great, obviously, I'm a fairly major nerd on these things and it was something that nobody had really shared this interest with me before.
Then after a few weeks, I remember she came in from a tough shift - she's an ICU nurse - and she was talking about some hard shit she had went through that day. She was just venting, she's got a hard exterior so she didn't seem stressed or whatever, "all part of the day job" type thing, I don't really know anything about this world or have any friends in a medical job, so, I was asking a bunch of questions about scanarios and medication and care as a profession in general and I caught myself feeling a real sense of just being really impressed with her depth of knowledge, commitment and caring nature, I felt a deep respect for her and it was the first time I remember thinking "wow, she's amazing"...
I'm not going to round up every single memory I have where I remember falling more and more for her but to cut to the chase by the end of my wife's work trip I was consumed with deep and strong feelings for her, we were great friends and i was loving having a fresh and new and exciting friendship compared to my very settled long term life where my wife and i don't particularly have very much to find out about each other.
The problem I faced and continue to face is, because I was seriously hiding these feelings (not repressing, I was letting myself wallow in the sadness of knowing we will never ever be together), it manifested itself in ways I know to be ugly, for example being jealous when she would describe going on dates, watching movies with other guys, if she had anyone back to our house from a date I had to make excuses to just not be around, which was not always possible, into the bargain here we remain close friends so I get to hear all about the ups and downs of her ongoing relationships, comfort her through heartbreaks and also hearing about various sexual proclivities as if i were one of her girl friends.
How has this affected my relationship with my wife, you might ask, I mean, it varies from week to week, sometimes her sister is not at the front of my mind and everything is okay, other times I will give my wife a hug and she'll tell me she feels loved right now and my thoughts are just guilt that I can't focus on her 100% because of these hang ups I have, I feel like I don't deserve her and if I have this huge crush I don't love her as much as I should. Other examples of bad ways this affects our relationship, if we have an argument I am sometimes in my head thinking "[the sister] would be on my side in this," or just vague notions that I would be better off / more suited with her. I hate these feelings, I will never voice them but I feel them and then I feel guilt for feeling them.
I honestly think I am hiding it very well, I don't think my wife has the first idea about it, but obviously I personally am not being anywhere CLOSE to the best partner I can be to her when I'm so caught up on this fantasy world crush, and that's very shitty for her and I want to be better.
For the 6 months I lived with both of them the feelings burnt brightly and I was counting down the days until she moved out hoping that with distance I would just forget about it and move on with my life. but it's been almost a year now and I continue to have these feelings, very strongly, and when they do go away something usually brings them back. this remains the case even though we obviously don't chat or hang out anywhere near as much as when we lived together. i have waited long enough for these feelings to subside naturally and need to take active steps to repress them or get rid of them. as it stands i can't sleep over it, I'm going grey, I'm just staring into space thinking about it when I should be working, and the most obvious solution seems like it would be to leave my wife so I never fucking see her again. Please help
tldr: caught a very serious crush on my wife's sister. i'm not a moron so have been hiding this instead of even considering sharing it or acting on it. i have waited too long for the feelings to subside naturally and need to actively take steps to repress this bullshit before i explode into a million pieces.
Submitted March 30, 2020 at 04:44PM by troubledsoul7 https://ift.tt/2WXBTXQ
No comments:
Post a Comment