So I’ve been with my Fiancé for 9 years, we got engaged a year and a half ago. We met my current FP about 4 years ago. We all three work together and we are part of a very close friend family, all of whom work in the same place. So yeah, it’s complicated. Yes, my fiancé knows about my “crush.” He is an amazingly understanding person who has been dealing with me for over a decade and never ceases to surprise me with his resilience to coping with my illness. I think he must underestimate my feelings for FP, probably willingly. They have become close friends. They work in the same department and share a lot of interests. Half the time FP is over our place hanging out my my fiancé. I know that they both have a lot of respect for one another. The way my fiancé has dealt with this, without letting my “crush” change his relationship with my FP, the way he still respects him and hasn’t gotten all macho threatened makes me appreciate my fiancé even more. He keeps me safe and he loves me....way more than I love him, TBH. At least, that’s how I feel right now. And we all know how I feel at this exact moment in time is the reality of the rest of my entire life forever (/s)

It has been ramping up slowly for a long time but recently I have become increasingly OBSESSIVE about my FP. It’s been many years since this has happened to me but it used to happen with guys all the time before I met my fiancé. Part of me wants to say this isn’t even BPD, just that I am actually with the wrong person. I know I’m supposed to say: that’s the BPD talking. But factually it could be accurate. It is just getting relentless. Because of the fact that we are all friends and work together, we see each other almost every day. We all go on trips together. And FP and I just gravitate toward each other constantly. I won’t ruminate on the things I enjoy about my relationship with FP, even though that’s mostly what I came here to do. It’s just driving me crazy. I resent having to resist nurturing the feelings I have for him - it feels like I am killing something sweet and pure. I also feel sad that he doesn’t have a partner. Its not like he’s crazy attractive...until you get to know him. And since he spends all his time working tbh it is hard to get to know him. It took me a few years to catch on to all of the things about him I admire. I have been dealing with this for awhile, it was around this time 3 years ago that I had the moment I realized I had feelings for him. The thing is I just keep maneuvering to be around him. Whenever I am, and I’m not just filtering things, but my mood is almost always improved by the insightful things he says and his positive personality. I don’t get the FP things where I’m afraid he hates me or I feel insecure about myself. He bolsters my self-esteem. His being in my life truly improves it.

I feel like I’m in a really twisting position. I feel pretty guilty...that I don’t feel as guilty as I think I should. Instead of feeling bad for like emotionally cheating on my fiancé right in front of him, I feel resentful of him for being an obstacle to the progression of a relationship I feel could be wonderful. Then I feel guilty about that. Fiancé and I have pretty typical back and forth, black and white splitting type of challenges that we acknowledge and work through together. When I feel love for him I know it is real but that is hard to remember when I don’t feel it. And this is much much easier on the occasions that it happens to go a few days in between when we see FP. But my life is so peppered with loss and grief that cutting out FP is just not something I am willing to do, even aside from the fact that it is kind of impossible.

I try to unite the ideas that FP can be a great person, and in sooooo many ways different than my fiancé, and also that my fiancé can be a great person even though he is lacking in those qualities that make my relationship with FP so good. Finding the middle path between two things that are different, rather than shifting jarringly between one being absolutely right and one being absolutely wrong...typical behavior I know. I don’t know how to practice this dialectic, even though I understand the mechanism. 

I know this is a rant and I’m thankful if any of y’all read it though. Does anyone have similar experiences? How do you practice bringing the two realities together
