Oh dear

Ugh.

Why the hell do people ever deal in absolutes when talking about what a relationship should look like - that goes for both sides here.

Monogamous committed relationships may be the ideal for some, but they take a lot of hard work and effort to actually maintain, and it's naive to think it's easy to honour the monogamous commitment. Mistakes can be made despite the best intentions and efforts of all concerned.


Open relationships work very well for some people, but not everybody is cut our for them. They come with their own challenges and they need a different type of maintenance. There fact there's consent doesn't mean third parties can't jeopardise the relationship.

There is no right way or wrong way. And no matter what your relationship looks like there's no guarantee it will last (even taking third parties out of the equation).

Oh, and since Dan Savage is making a pretty good living out of giving relationship advice I would guess his comments about relationships would be relevant.


Anyway, OP. You're starting point in all this should be your wife - both in being guided by your commitment to her and as the person you would ideally talk to.

Perhaps she would be willing to give you permission to explore but I imagine you know her well enough to know what the answer might be. I'm sure you have plenty of conversations over the years on what your relationship is and should be and what type of commitment you have made to each other.

Aside from that, is she the person you should be talking to. I know sometimes it may be difficult to talk to your partner about feelings and attractions for another person but while people are quick to point out your obligations to her, hers to you are overlooked. She should hopefully be there for you if you need to work through issues in life - even if it's uncomfortable.

If the expectation is you'll remain faithful then honour that, but maybe talking to her night help you sort through the feelings, and voicing them might help contextualise them a bit and help resolve any impulse urges.

So, to recap:

The OP is a happily married man with kids who has never - until now - experienced homosexual attraction. However he has now met a man who might be signalling a sexual interest in him, and he finds himself “intrigued”. He asks three questions.

1. “Is he interested in me sexually?”

He could be. On the other hand, he could be just an awkward guy with an inappropriate sense of humour and a poor understanding of social boundaries. There’s a lot of them about.

2. “Am I an idiot?”

No. Not yet, anyway.

3. “What should I do?”

Beyond experiencing a feeling of intrigue, nothing.

Unless you really, really want to. In which case . . .

Step one is to talk to your wife. You’re doing nothing until you’ve done this. You have a huge amount invested in your happy marriage and your kids. You absolutely do not want to stuff this up because you are “intrigued” by the prospect of a same-sex encounter with a socially-maladjusted work colleague. Besides, you have made commitments of fidelity and exclusivity, and you’re not a cheating piece of sh*t, are you? So you need to talk to your wife about what intrigues you, sexually speaking, and negotiate with her what you are both comfortable for you to do with your feelings of intrigue.

And - you know your wife better than we do, I expect - you may already have a pretty good idea of what her response will be. And that may be a response you don’t want to experience. In which case, don’t raise the issue with your wife, and don’t do anything that you should have discussed with her first.

You have already mades choice in life which rule out feeling free to explore the intriguing possibilities offered by sexually ambiguous slightly weird work colleagues with no regard to the impact on your relationships or on other people’s lives.

If you enjoy it, why is that a problem?

Take the same-sex thing out of it. If a female work colleague was flirting with you, I can see that you might enjoy that. It's good to have somebody confirm that they find you attractive. Presumably you are mature enough to enjoy that feeling and at the same time not abandon your wife and children and run off with the flirter?

Fine. Well, this is not very different. This guy (possibly) thinks you are attractive. What's not to enjoy about (possibly) being found attractive? Although it's in a work environment, where it might make you uncomfortable, in reality it doesn't seem to be making you uncomfortable, so no problem there. If he comes on stronger, and it starts to make you uncomfortable, you can tell him to stop, but you don't need to worry about that unless and until it happens.

darsheblows wrote: »

I hope not

You have 3 choices here
1 Do nothing and politely ask the guy to back off
2 Discuss the issue with your wife
3 Pursue it and cheat on your wife

You can choose option no 3 if you want but of course you should be aware of the potential consequences including possible marital breakdown.

Well, any fourth choice we could suggest would certainly be even less great.

Option 1 doesn't look so dreadful, it has to be said. Everyone who marries is making a decision that there is an array of as-yet-unknown sexual and romantic opportunities which they are ruling out. Presumably they feel that the advantages of marriage more than outweigh the disadvantages of making this choice. You might not have expected that this particular opportunity (if indeed it is an opportunity - we can't be sure it is!) is one that you would feel a twinge of regret at letting pass, but so what?

And of course if you had made the decision not to marry, you'd have ruled out different possibilities for yourself. It's not as though marriage is a unique set of fetters.

Growing up means the freedom of making your own choices, but also the responsibility of embracing the consequences of the choices you make. The choice to marry doesn't mean that neither of you can ever explore new developments in your sexual and romantic interests; it means you are committed to exploring them in a way that does not exclude or cheat one another. Exactly how that plays out in practice is something that you and your spouse have to nut out together as life unfolds for you.

It's superficially tempting to say that your reluctance even to discuss your new-found curiosity with your wife points to a lack of openness and intimacy in your sexual communication with one another but, actually, that wouldn't be true. It's far more likely that you communicate very well with one another on matters of sexuality - well enough that you know how she would be affected by such a disclosure, and it's not an effect you wish to inflict upon her. In which case saying nothing to your wife and dropping the whole idea is not a failure in courage on your part.

What's being done here appears to meet any definition out there of sexual harassment - it may be just easier for you to complain about it, to be honest.

It's all fun and games until someone gets hurt!!!

Regardless of what you did and with whom, you still betrayed your wife. I feel sorry for her more than anything.