This blog post shows an objective side of falling for someone else while in a relationship, which you may not want to read about now while you fantasize about your crush.
But considering that you are deciding on something this big, it is not a bad idea to get informed about practical experiences with the same situations, just to make the best decision for yourself.
Today, I had a conversation with a client on this topic, and it occurred to me to offer a perspective no one talks about.
When discussing falling for someone else while in a relationship, we usually focus on the moral aspect—who might get hurt, whether it’s too risky, emotions, passion, etc.
But let’s talk about something worth considering if you fall for someone else while in a relationship.
Let’s use these parameters:
- You are in a good, functional relationship.
- Your partner is a decent person, and the relationship is solid.
- You fantasize about someone new who has appeared.
- We’ll also include the possibility that the person you’ve fallen for is your ex (you have a current partner, but you’ve fallen for your ex).
We’ll cover it all: whether you don’t know this person well or if you do know them well.
Why We Are In Love With Someone – Psychological Explanation
You Really Don’t Know This Person
Knowing someone well means spending 24/7 with them, being emotionally, practically, psychologically, and in planning, focused on each other.
That’s why I must assert that anyone you haven’t been in a relationship with falls into the category of: you don’t know this person well enough. Which leads us to the healthy logic that everything you think about this person falls into the realm of fantasy.
- If you’ve once been in a relationship with this person, and you think you know them, think this way: You’ve probably repressed all the reasons you broke up and brought only the things you liked about them to the surface. And let’s not forget: the reasons you broke up are essential. They are what ultimately separated you.
To justify your feelings, you will convince yourself that you know this person well, see who they are, and that maybe they are your soulmate. Some people even go so far as to claim that proper connections aren’t visible but felt, and so on.
However, these thoughts are a dangerous trap, so please read this text if you are falling for someone else while in a relationship. It may give you a new perspective.
The essence is that if you’re not spending time with this person in intimate exchanges and closeness, you don’t know them well enough, and most of what you know about them is:
- Imagined,
- Enhanced to maintain their perfection,
- Suppressed to avoid tarnishing your idealized fantasy.
If you stop doing these things, you’ll see how ordinary this person is, which is the story’s core.
Ordinary people do ordinary things. And ordinary things start to annoy, bore, and frustrate others.
The fact that you don’t know anyone without flaws or anyone special should probably tell you that there’s no chance this one person is uniquely particular. Realistically, the chances are slim that you’ve found the only flawless person in the world.
So, if we know that this person isn’t unique, we also know that they won’t constantly do extraordinary things that you may be hoping for. They won’t always take you by the hand to see unique places (they may do it twice or thrice until they run out of ideas for unique places). Lovemaking won’t be incredible every time. They won’t smile every time they see you. They won’t excite and entertain you all day long.
But they will do ordinary things that will start to annoy, bore, and frustrate you, and you’ll argue about them. And if you fail to overcome these things, they might even break you apart.
Which brings me to the first thing that will happen if you choose this person: Your new partner will soon start to show traits you won’t like, and they’ll become annoying.
No fantasy will be able to justify them.
📌 If this doesn’t happen, it unfortunately just means that you are not in a good emotional-psychological state, as you continue to idealize an ordinary person.
Secondly, if you enter into a relationship with this new person, you will need to arrange practical matters.
What do I mean by practical matters? I mean everything that needs to be discussed for the relationship to function.
From how often you’ll see each other, where and how you’ll celebrate holidays, how you’ll travel, what movies you’ll watch, who pays the bills and where, whether gifts are exchanged or not, how many messages a day you expect, whether you like each other’s friends, which family members you’ll get along with, who will cook, who will clean the house, how your hobbies fit together, children, etc.
Can you imagine all the situations you can think of and how you’ll negotiate them with this new partner?
We also have the emotional-psychological aspects: how you react when your partner is feeling down, how they react to you, and how you respond when you’re disappointed, sad, or hormonal, and vice versa.
For the relationship to be functional, you’ll have to discuss these and find solutions that work for both of you; otherwise, you’ll constantly argue about them.
So, that’s the second thing that will happen between you: Many discussions and adjustments lie ahead.
Is my relationship worth fighting for?
The third important thing is that you are raising the stakes if you leave your partner and your previous life. You’ll be putting a lot on the line with this new relationship, which will create obligations for him (which can be burdensome for him), and perhaps he will also develop obligations for you (which can be demanding for you).
We can say that you’ll enter this relationship burdened with responsibilities toward each other.
Fourth, because of those breakups, you’ll feel a certain way. Guilty, immoral, angry—whatever the case, you won’t feel happy or proud of yourself.
Fifth is the logistics of your life.
How will the people around you react to your breakup? Your mutual friends, your family, his family, whom you may love. Then there’s also the issue of finances and moving.
You will have to arrange my things, you will have to sacrifice many things and you will not be happy because of many things.
Finally, sixth, you won’t know if it will last, making you feel even more insecure and scared.
The added problem here is that you’ve already invested a lot in this relationship (you left your previous life for this person), so you’ll likely want some guarantees that it was worth it.
How to Communicate Better In a Relationship
The bottom line is, if you leave your partner, you can expect the following:
- The person you fantasize about is an average person with many flaws that will start to annoy you.
- You’ll have to work on the relationship, which means dealing with every aspect of it. I predict at least two years of adjusting to each other.
- You’ll either burden that person or they will burden you with obligations. If you leave your partner for this person, you’ll have made a significant investment in them, making it even harder for you to detach.
- You’ll feel bad for a while because of what you did to your partner.
- Your life will have to change, leaving you feeling uncertain, maybe scared, worried, etc., for a time.
- The anxiety you’ll feel from the possibility that things might fall apart will be present in the relationship, possibly turning you into someone who constantly seeks reassurance and guarantees of love.
I want to tell you that, despite your best intentions, if you leave your partner to be with someone else, the relationship may be fun for a few days, but after that, all of this will come into play.
As a new couple, you’re looking at two years of practical, physical, emotional, and psychological adjusting, which will be very challenging. There will be very little room for nice things because you’ll enter the relationship already feeling anxious about whether your decision was correct and because nothing around you is stable yet.
The essence is that you’ll have a relationship burdened by issues and difficult circumstances. This obviously means that all the beautiful things you now imagine happening won’t stand a chance at first. Maybe they’ll have an opportunity in two years, since even good things require security and stability to be built upon. And to build security and stability, you will need those two years, which will be overloaded… you already know.
No one thinks about this, but this is the reality I deal with professionally.
Life is lovely in our heads, but it is accurate.
8 Qualities to Look For In Your Life Partner?
A Different Scenario
A different scenario is possible only if your current partner is not ideal or has some flaws you cannot tolerate. And if your new option is genuinely different from what I’ve mentioned. I still think there will be flaws, but maybe you are perfectly compatible so that you can overcome at least those aspects more easily.
Final word
That’s why my suggestion is, if your partner is good and you have stability with them, to keep both worlds (assuming you can’t control your fantasies about that person). If your partner is good and you have stability with them.
Don’t leave your partner, but leave the person you fantasize about in the realm of fantasy.
Since you can’t change what you see and feel about them right now, with time you can diminish it by viewing that person through the lens of reality and seeing them as they really are.
If you give yourself enough time to observe that person and not embellish what you see, you’ll soon notice all their flaws and things you would never want to live with.
And if you still can’t move on after six months of this, consider whether that person is manipulating you very well or if they’re truly your soulmate and worthy of leaving your partner.
I hope that this text has opened some perspectives for you if you are falling for someone else while in a relationship. Dee
