“I’m attracted to another person but I love my partner.” This is something very common and that we can clearly see in programs like the island of temptations. But what is even more common, unfortunately, is that we associate this attraction with love in a systematic way, and we pronounce phrases like “If I am attracted to another person, it is that love has ended.” Nothing could be further from the truth.
We tell you what science and experts say about the sexual attraction towards other people that we can feel when we have a partnerAlthough we anticipate something: if it happens to you, calm down, it’s normal.
I love my partner but I’m attracted to another person
Feeling attraction and desire for other people while having a partner is something totally natural and the explanation is to dismantle one of the myths of romantic love more common. As explained by the sexologist and psychologist María Esclapez in her book I love me, I love you, “valuing the physique of a person, real or fictitious, or feeling attracted to her is not synonymous with stopping loving your partner or infidelity”. And adds that attraction is a physiological processand that feeling love for one person and attraction for another is more than possible since “the parts of the brain that are responsible for processing love and attraction are different.”
I love myself, I love you: A guide to developing healthy relationships (and improving the ones you already have) (Bruguera Tendencies)
Being attracted to someone is tied to chemistry and is out of our control. We have to think, for example, that the appearance is processed in the brain in less than 2 seconds, enough time for our brain to make a judgment and for the attraction to occur, something that can happen to you when you go on the subway, on the street or in a nightclub.
On a chemical level, the period of ovulation of the woman It is where we release the most pheromones, something that instinctively attracts heterosexual men who, upon perceiving them, raise their blood testosterone levels by more than 100% in minutes. For this reason, for example, we can smell someone and the chemical substances present in that smell arouse a sexual attraction in us without a cognitive component coming into play, not even an intentional one.
And it’s not the same as wanting to have sex with another person, mind you. According to F. López SánchezProfessor of Psychology of Sexuality at the University of Salamanca, “in attraction there is always something external to one’s own desire, be it a person, real or fantasized object, which is preferred or selected, for its erotic value, among other possibilities. Desire is felt and is expressed in attractions. Hunger is one thing and another is what you like to eat more.”
Being in a relationship doesn’t mean we stop being attracted to other people. When we feel attracted to another person, what we do is fantasize about them.and that is something healthy, that does not harm anyone and that also helps to develop erotic creativity, as Esclapez herself points out in her book sexual intelligence.
Sexual intelligence: Practice intelligent sex. Develop your sexual potential (Lifestyle)
What to do if I am attracted to another person
We are already clear that it is normal to feel attracted to other people even while in a relationship. Now, if that physical attraction generated desire in you, Esclapez proposes that to channel it let’s masturbate or… have sex with our partner. Depending on your relationship, this last solution can pose two problems.
The first is that your partner doesn’t mind you thinking about someone else while you’re having sex, but Esclapez hits the nail on the head when he asks “how do you know what the other person is thinking? The only way is for your partner to tell you but why should they? By demanding to “know everything” we can run the risk of sincericide and that words that are not transcendental, such as a sexual fantasyhurt another person unnecessarily. Communication as a couple is keybut that does not mean telling us absolutely everything, that we are not Marshall and Lily.
The second problem is that we can feel guilty, something that the psychologist dismantles in a very simple way: “Thoughts are just that, thoughts. Your head does not know if what it thinks is right or wrong, the connotation or the moral burden is up to you and to know it is to climb a step on the scale of sexual intelligence.”
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Photos | omar lopez, Kenny Eliason and Velizar Ivanov in Unsplash
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