It’s normal, and okay, says Marin, to desire other people, even when you’re in a committed long-term relationship that you want to stay in. And it’s common. There’s not notable research on exactly how common but Marin would be willing to venture that pretty much everybody in a long-term relationship will experience this feeling, this curiosity, at one time or another. We don’t lose our ability to feel chemistry with someone else. And there’s no point in beating yourself up about it, says Marin—we can’t control our attraction anyway.
There’s perhaps nothing more human than our ability to imagine, than to wonder, what if? It’s why some of us turn to fiction—to novels, to film—as a balm, as a way to quasi-experience all the inner and outer lives, the scenarios, the places, we can’t possibly fit in during our time here.
“Any time that we make a decision, there’s always going to be grief about the decision that we didn’t make,” says Marin. Even if you’re with someone who is completely right for you—as much as anyone could be completely right for you—you’ll probably wonder, What would it be like to be with somebody else?
Let Yourself Be Curious
It’s what you do with that wondering that matters.
“We don’t have control over the feelings themselves, but we do have control over what we do with the feelings,” says Marin. And most of the time, we just need to ‘feel the feelings’. Simple, not easy. But where we really get into trouble, says Marin, is when we fight our feelings. Then they take up disproportionate space in our mind.
“There is research showing that when we ‘feel our feelings’, on average, a feeling will pass through us in about 90 seconds.” (Which seems like a typo but is not.) So normally, when Marin is working with a client on this, they’re just creating the space for them to say, “Yeah, I’m attracted to someone, and it’s okay.” From there, a lot of the time, the attraction loses its thrill.
Now, there’s a particular brand of wondering, and grief, that some of us know, intimately. It’s the kind that might surface if you met your partner when you were quite young. Which Marin can speak to personally: “I met my husband when I was 23. I didn’t think I was going to be meeting my person that young. I thought I still had a lot of oats to sow.” Relatable. When Marin looks at the decision in front of her, being with her person versus getting to have a few more sexual experiences, she happens to choose the former. “But can I give myself the space to acknowledge, hey, that could have been really fun, man? I could have had some wild experiences. I could have had some exciting things happen. I could have met some cool people. I can allow myself to feel that.”
Sex therapist Emily Jamea, PhD, says this proposition tends to be the most challenging for the clients she sees who have, say, only been with one person since they were 20 years old. “A lot of them will experience this almost existential crisis, usually if they’re approaching midlife, where they get kind of frantically curious about what it would be like to be with someone else,” says Jamea. Also relatable.
And maybe 90 seconds won’t be enough time to feel that existential crisis feeling. So give yourself more time to see whether that feeling fades or grows, says Jamea. But try to avoid acting impulsively. If six months down the line, you’re thinking, you really want to have sex with someone else: Scroll down to read more on what to do!
Add Excitement to Your Relationship
For now, let’s say you’re just experiencing some mild crush energy (and, put in its own bottle, is there anything more delightful than mild crush energy?). You might begin by bringing that enthusiasm of the outside attraction back into your relationship. This is what Marin coaches people to do. “It’s not that you’re continuing to engage with the other person or think about them, but it’s just letting yourself feel a little excited. So maybe it gives you that extra spring in your step.” With her partner, Marin will sometimes even come home and tell him, for example, that a guy at the coffee shop flirted with her that morning. Not because she’s trying to make her partner feel bad, but because she knows with him, specifically, he’ll feel kind of excited by that. (Of course, other people would be attracted to her, and here she is coming home to him.)
It’s also possible that there’s something a little deeper at the root of the allure you feel when someone besides your partner flirts with you. And this might be that you’re getting something that you’ve been missing from your partner. Are you? That’s a great question to ask yourself, says Marin; and if the answer is yes, then that gives you something else that you can share with your partner. Maybe that’s saying: Hey, I’d love to flirt more. Or for you to compliment me more, or touch me more in passing.
If it feels awkward to share this kind of feeling with your partner, Jamea says to lead with the feeling of awkwardness. That could sound like: Hey, I have some things I want to share with you about our sex life, and I feel a bit nervous and awkward about it. But I know you’re safe, and you’re not going to judge me. (It’s perhaps worthy of a parenthetical to spell out that Jamea does not recommend asking if your partner can provide a safe space—put out the assumption that they will, that it’s a standard they can, and will, live up to.) And then, yeah, of course, welcome any thoughts and feelings that they might have as well.
What keeps a relationship exciting, though? Marin starts with emotional connection. “For most of us, we need to feel real emotional connection with our partner in order to experience more of those passionate feelings,” says Marin. “And most couples are lacking in the emotional connection realm unfortunately.” Some simple things you can do on an everyday-ish basis that can help change that: Express gratitude for your partner—gratitude is one of the strongest predictors of marital satisfaction. (And, it’s fast, free and feels good to give and receive.) Marin is also a fan of nonsexual touch—and eye contact. “It’s pretty wild how little eye contact most people in long-term relationships make, but just that experience of trying to literally see each other a little bit more often can make a big difference.” You can also try the 20-second hug, or the 6-second kiss—the amount of time it seems the body needs to release oxytocin while doing those things, explains Marin.
Jamea points to an area of research called self-expansion (and the work of psychologist Amy Muise): Couples who try new things together—not explicitly sexual, but, for example, shucking an oyster or taking a dance class for the first time—experience a rise in sexual desire. (In a series of studies, those couples were 36 times more likely to have sex with their partner on the day of the new experience. And their greater sexual satisfaction sustained over time.) Sometimes just doing something different outside the bedroom is enough to add a sense of novelty, says Jamea. And it can deepen intimacy and strengthen that emotional connection.
But, hey, sometimes, it is fun to move it to the bedroom. In the appendix of Jamea’s book, Anatomy of Desire, there’s a checklist of different things you might want to try sexually (it’s broken up into the categories of giving, receiving, mutual, positions, and solo). When she’s working with a couple, Jamea will have them individually check off what intrigues them, and then they compare notes.
If this sounds intimidating (or like a hard pass), take baby steps. Actually, it’s almost always a good idea to take baby steps, according to Jamea. (Her book explores the relationship between flow state and great sex; and one of the best predictors of flow state is striking the right balance between how challenging something is, and how skilled you are at it.) “If you had lights-off vanilla sex the majority of your relationship, you should not try power-play dynamics the very next night.” Also, you don’t need to. Why skip over all the fun stuff in between?
Like, lingerie. “I love lingerie,” says Jamea. “I think it’s beautiful. We are visual creatures.” But is it just going to end up on the floor? Perhaps. But maybe it’s even more romantic if it does. “Think about when you’re getting your birthday present,” says Marin. “Imagine your partner just handing you an unwrapped gift versus taking that time to put a little wrapping paper on, and there’s a bow on it.” Lingerie also just takes seconds to put it on, and seeing it can spark joy, too. And even when you take the little effort for yourself to wear lingerie you like—that can feel confident-boosting, says Marin. So much of sex need not be that…complicated, she reminds us. And, as Jamea says, sex is a form of adult play. Enjoy.
If Interested in Exploring Nonmonogamy – and What’s In Between
Now, let’s say you try all that and then some but your desire to have sex with someone else is growing considerably stronger. Or, you already know it’s stronger than your desire to try all that. While a fleeting crush is typically a fleeting crush in Marin’s and Jamea’s practices, for some people, it is a signal, or an invitation for deeper reflection. In general, Marin never wants people to just default to monogamy as a relationship model. But rather to consciously weigh it, and decide which is the right kind of relationship for you.
If you’re not sure, but you potentially want to explore nonmonogamy with your partner, Marin recommends thinking, early on, of the practicalities involved. And if there’s one person in particular whom you’re attracted to beside your partner, Marin recommends thinking beyond this crush: Are you down to go back on dating sites? What would it feel like to go on a date with somebody else? Imagine having that conversation with your partner. “Once you start thinking more about the logistical details of doing it rather than just the excitement of, Ooh, what would it be like to make out with this hot person—then that can bring you back to earth a bit.” (For some people, coming back down to earth will feel like sweet relief. For everyone else, fly on.)
Or, as Jamea says, there are all those choose-your-hard memes. Every type of relationship has its challenges (and its joys). Nonmonogamy is not a cure-all for dissatisfaction in your primary relationship. You wouldn’t want to do it as a Band-Aid for an emotional or sexual deficit in your relationship (same as you wouldn’t want to have a baby to avoid getting a divorce). Ideally, you’d work with a couples therapist, and your primary relationship would be in fairly good shape before you start exploring beyond it and having sex with other people.
But, also, still, there are baby steps you could take. There’s a lot to explore, says Jamea, between nothing and having a full-on emotional and sexual relationship with another person. For example, she’s worked with couples who have joined online sex parties, during which you can wear a mask and virtually explore what it’s like to be with someone else with some anonymity and distance.
Which isn’t to say that the goal should be to talk yourself out of going bigger—if there’s ever a goal, it’s perhaps to try to get, and stay close enough to yourself that you can feel what you want more strongly than you can feel what others want. And you have options to explore along the way.
