“Afraid I’ll act on fantasies for my wife’s cousin”
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From a LW:
“I have been married to my wife for ten years now. We’ve had our share of ups and downs with extramarital affairs on my part and financial issues. We have four beautiful children. I’ve gone to therapy for my issues in the past as well as other things.
About a year ago my wife gets a urgent desperate text from her cousin around 25 yrs old. She’s getting evicted with nowhere to go. The deal was she was gonna stay with us for a year and in the time she would work to save her money and get her own place.
Over the years time I’ve gotten to know her a little bit but I still keep a distance from her. Lately, she’s been going out with her friends more and more often, usually wearing something skimpy. She has a naturally flat stomach and tattoos, and is so sexy to me.
I find myself fantasizing about her more and more in a sexual nature. In reality I don’t interact with her much more than pleasantries in passing through the kitchen. I haven’t acted out my thoughts but I need help on how to keep the thoughts outta my head and stop my from making the biggest mistake of my life. I love my wife and the life we’ve built but I feel her cousin represents the single life and certain freedoms I miss when I was her age.
Please help.”
You “keep from making the biggest mistake of your life” by recognizing that any sexual advance you would make on your niece would be predatory and disgusting. She relies on you for housing and propositioning her, or even flirting with her, would put her in the absolutely terrible and terrifying position of feeling like she has to comply to keep a roof over her head. You have power over her. Even if she says no and you respect that, it would put her in the horrible position of having to tell your wife and knowing she’s blowing up your marriage while also risking being kicked out if she’s not believed/is blamed for the situation, or staying quiet and living the rest of her time there in fear of interaction with you, or that you will find some reason to kick her out so your wife doesn’t find out about YOUR bad behavior. This poor young woman has shown ZERO signs of interest in her much older uncle, the man married to the aunt she loves and who took her in. What in the world makes you think she would even WANT to have an affair with you and blow up her closest family connection? That none of these things has occurred to you makes me think you see this woman as an object and not a human being. Your prior affairs make me think you see ALL women this way. It seems clear you need to go back to therapy.
Upon rereading I see that she is your wife’s cousin, not her niece, but all advice still applies. This is gross male behavior and entitlement at its finest.
I can tell you that you better get yourself together and stop this right now. If you’re thinking it, the women around you can smell it. You better wise up and straighten out. You’re not 25 and she is off limits. I doubt your eyes are looking in the right places if you’re scanning her body like that. Do you respect women? Do,you love and respect your wife? Then pay her your sexual attention. Romance her.
Yeahhh. Everything @golfer.gal said about the imbalance in the power dynamics and the fact that this woman has shown zero signs of interest notwithstanding is spot on. I don’t think we stop noticing or feeling attracted to people once we partner off, but this made it sound like you don’t think you can control your manly-man urges. (My immediate thought at the detail about the cousin’s flat stomach is that your wife’s is no longer like that after growing your four beautiful children.) Agreed you should go back to therapy.
All my life I’ve resented this line of “stop me I can’t help myself” garbage, as if men were just animals who couldn’t be held responsible for their own behavior. Fantasize all you want, but how you ACT is entirely within your control. If you’re so much of an out-of-control creep that you can’t be trusted to behave around your wife’s relative, then you should be behind bars.
(Never mind something that might not have occurred to the LW: what gives you the slightest idea that SHE finds YOU attractive? Most 25 year olds are not — Hollywood fantasies notwithstanding — panting for oldsters.)
If you’re thinking, the women in your house can smell it. You better get your head right, stop sniffing around your cousin by marriage, and work out your fantasies on your wife.
