I might be falling in love with my husband’s identical twin brother. My husband and I have been in a traditional monogamous cishet straight marriage for 12 years. It wasn’t until the last few years that I started catching feelings for my brother-in-law, who is also married. I started to notice my BIL in a way that surprised me when we went on a family vacation together. He’s just so empathetic, compassionate and articulate. He also has the same body my husband does (obviously), although my BIL is a little fitter than my husband.
What is really hard to understand is that my feelings for my husband haven’t changed. Do I love them both? Is that possible?
Our sex life isn’t suffering. I’ve never been someone who can have orgasms without a vibrator assist, and I’m fine with that. Sometimes though, I find myself thinking about my BIL and feel extremely turned on. When he’s not around I miss him. I’ve even dream about the two of us just talking to each other.
I feel extremely guilty about this because acting on it would mean betraying everyone I love. Sometimes it’s extremely overwhelming. I find myself watching my BIL and wondering if he feels the same way about me. I think he might — to a degree — but I know neither of us would want to jeopardize our marriages, and I would never ask my BIL to jeopardize his relationship with his brother. I also love my sister-in-law very much. But I can't help but wonder that in some weird parallel universe maybe I was meant to be with my BIL.
I can’t tell anyone about this, and I’m desperate to hear what you think. Could I have chosen the wrong twin? I am afraid the only way forward is to just keep quietly loving my BIL and never say anything.
— Crumbling Rapidly Under Stupid Heartache
It’s certainly possible to love more than one romantic partner at a time — please see the hundreds of columns I’ve written over the years about polyamory — but it’s not always possible for a particular individual to have more than one romantic partner at a time.
Like, say, someone in a traditional monogamous cishet straight marriage.
You know what else is possible?
It’s possible for a cishet married monogamously married person to have one of those run-of-the-mill, all-consuming, life-affirming, harmless crushes on someone they’re not married to. It’s not a sign that there’s something wrong with their marriage. Even happily married people sometimes fantasize about alternative timelines where they’re married to someone else, e.g., that friendly coworker, that hot barista, that unattainable movie star, etc., instead of the person waiting for them at home.
But when the object of a crush is someone explosively inappropriate… when the disclosure of the crush would create a blast radius so wide nothing for miles could possibly survive… that crush can best be understood as a kind of death wish. In other words, CRUSH: sometimes a crush is just a crush, and sometimes a crush is a manifestation of a subconscious desire to blow it all up.
What can be done about a death-wish crush? Nothing. All you can do — if you don’t wanna blow it all up — is wait it out, same as you would one of those harmless crushes. It might take a few weeks or months… or it might take the rest of your life... but crushes, death-wish or otherwise, like everything else, don’t last forever.
P.S. I see two upsides to this death-wish crush of yours, CRUSH, given your particular and highly unique circumstances. First, if your husband ever finds out you have a crush on his brother — and here’s hoping he never does — it’s not like you have a crush on his physical opposite. Unlike a woman with brown hair and small breasts who realizes her husband is crushing on a blond with big tits, your husband won’t have to worry that he isn’t your type. And if like all married people you sometimes fantasize about other people while you’re having sex with your spouse, CRUSH, you won’t have to close your eyes to picture your crush instead of your husband. You won’t even have to squint.
I’m a manin my 30s. I have been in several serious relationships with women, but I am also attracted to men. My interest in men is purely sexual.
I have kept this a secret my entire life. I do enjoy watching gay porn and I fantasize about having sex with a man, but I have turned down several opportunities to be sexual with a man, which I almost regret.
I am now in a serious relationship with someone I love. She wants to settle down, get married and have kids. Do I owe her the truth? Or do I take this to the grave? My girlfriend is very supportive of the LGBTQ community. But I don’t know if she would be open to actually bringing another man into our bed or letting me experiment with another man on my own.
— Truth Or Lying Daily
You’re bisexual and heteroromantic, TOLD — only attracted to women romantically but attracted to both men and women sexually.
One of the reasons bisexual people have worse mental health outcomes than straight or gay people is not being out to their romantic partners or having romantic partners who are openly hostile to their bisexuality. For the sake of your own mental health, you need to tell your girlfriend the truth before you marry her.
And you owe your girlfriend the truth.
When you ask a person to enter into an open-ended and hopefully lifelong romantic and sexual relationship with you, your sexual orientation is a highly relevant data point. Your girlfriend can’t meaningfully consent to marrying you in the absence of this information.
You aren’t going to be able to take this to the grave. You might lose your girlfriend by doing the right thing and coming out to her now, TOLD, but you stand to lose a lot more if you get caught cheating on your wife with a man a decade from now.
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