I don't have the answers yet, but I have learned enough to be dangerous, and ask better questions..

This is a topic driving me crazy. The real title ought to be "Impossible Love" because why else do you meet someone you fall madly in love with, only to find out they are married???

(sorry Jim - this is not addressed to you, though you are a nice guy and very hunky. Whaddya' think scaryfary?)

This conundrum is happening to two of my friends, as well as to me. Why do we meet people who are married, and with whom we fall in love? Why do we attract to people when we are married? Why couldn't us single people have that much chemistry with another nice single person who happens to turn up?

Now, before you trot out the ten commandments and condemn me for eternity, I should tell you that nothing ever happened, other than mentally and emotionally, in my case. I never let anything physical manifest and kept the door against an affair tightly shut. I think Jesus said, though, that what you think is just as bad as what you do. The Buddhists would say that's because action originates in thought, so what you think does become reality.

So I push it out of my mind.

But still the connection persists and I am buggered if I know why.

It's happening to another friend too, and as a result, I have now moved across the spectrum of morally condemning such stuff to a more forgiving landscape where I wonder if certain things don't just have to happen because...well, because they just do. I mean, maybe people just have to go through certain things, whether they want to or not. I have noticed some people just have to wrestle with substance addiction. I don't know why, and it seems silly to me, but for whatever reason, it is necessary for their own development. Well, maybe understanding extra-marital affairs (doesn't that sound so much cleaner than cheating??) is necessary to mine. Who am I to say, that if we removed the morals and laws that we put in place around marriage, that it would emerge that people who are really meant to be together would find one another more easily? What if the point of attraction to someone else during your marriage is to help you grow within your marriage?

My parents, 38 years later, are still madly in love with one another and don't even LOOK at anyone else. But someone who is open...well, I wonder if they are open because something is missing that they need.

This is not a terribly organized rant, just a meander into what I am sure is highly dangerous territory. But I just wonder why these things happen sometimes....