Life is often not like a movie love story. Even if you've found the right one and you want to tie your life to him, from time to time you may feel sympathy for other people. Sometimes a harmless feeling turns into a strong desire, and you find yourself at a crossroads – to break up or to continue?
Your relationship isn't doomed if you like someone else. This is just a sign that it is time to change something or listen to yourself. How to do the right thing and not hurt anyone's feelings? We asked this question to psychologists.
Ziyada Saidutova
Master of Psychology, practicing psychologist
ziyada.tilda.ws/
We can like other people when we're in a relationship, and that's perfectly normal. A pretty, well-groomed girl attracts attention and is pleasant to look at. There's nothing wrong with it when your boyfriend pays attention to pretty girls. Just like you might like the way a guy looks when he walks by. As a rule, we are attracted to what we have in ourselves, or to qualities we don't like in ourselves.
You shouldn't tell your partner that. It's important to figure out and understand for yourself what the need is behind your interest. Paying too much attention to the other may reveal what is missing in your relationship. For example, openness, ease, a sense of humor. What did you like most about the other person?
It's worth giving up the idea of a perfect partner – one who meets every need. For example, he may not like skiing, but for you it is crucial. Maybe it's time to find some company for skating, and leave the time with your partner for romantic evenings?
You can act naturally with the other person you like. And inside yourself to explore your own feelings around him. How you are with him? What thoughts and experiences arise?
Think about what you like about your current relationship? You're getting what you want in your relationship? You feel loved, valued, important to your partner? Why did you choose your boyfriend?? And he'll be on to you? How valuable a relationship is to you? These questions can help you figure out if your relationship with your current partner is worth continuing.
If you want to keep your current relationship, but feelings for the other person are gripping you, and it turns out that they are mutual, a frank and honest conversation with that person will help you. It's worth acknowledging that there is sympathy, but there are also limitations beyond which you won't go – for example, beyond talking, or light flirting. It will relieve tension, intense desire and fantasies about an unfulfilled relationship.
Natalia Slovesnikova
Psychoanalytic Therapist
The fact that we like others when we are in a relationship is normal, but always difficult. We are all simultaneously seeking calm and an explosion of emotions, constancy and exciting unpredictability, stability and contradictory feelings. We don't find it in one person and look at others. We want to get everything once and for all – combine the opposite, mutually exclusive, but all our life we cope with contradictions and changes.
At your age, as clichéd as it may seem, contradictions are not your second, but your core self. You're going through a period of life where you're learning to deal with these contradictions. And love is the most important but painful thing we are all doomed to learn from.
Whatever you decide, it's okay. No one knows the future! ♪ We dream, we surmise, we hope, but we don't know ♪. We predict from previous experiences, but even then we make mistakes. So it's inevitable to try. Experience helps, but it is not always obvious, we do not always remember and recognize it, often we do not see the repetition and "stepping on a rake.
That's why it almost always takes someone else, someone to talk to, to understand, to realize, to rethink something. Talk to ! It's an opportunity to reflect. Tell! It's an opportunity to hear. No matter what the answer is, you're better off hearing and understanding yourself. Give yourself time to think, reflect, what you have not found and what you are looking for.
Should I tell my partner?? Think about why. If you feel guilty, don't tell me. Guilt won't go away like that, but you'll hurt him. You want to understand yourself and your relationship, talk. You can't make up your mind? Pick a conversation. First to someone else, then to your partner.