After over 12 years of facilitating couples therapy with hundreds of couples, my advice for a healthy monogamous relationship is to stay romantically focused on your partner. Especially in Los Angeles or other major metropolitan areas where there are lots of attractive people who can become a distraction or source of fantasy with destructive consequences. However, attraction to someone outside of your relationship is not necessarily fatal to a long love.
I first heard this contrary point as a young Marine stationed in Japan, walking with a supervisor across our base who exchanged a smile with a gorgeous older woman passing by us. I was 18 and my boss was in his 40s and married. He said something to me that day that has stuck with me, “Matos, it doesn’t matter where you get your appetite, as long as you eat at home.”
Surprising recent research suggests that the salty Marine was partially right. If you’ve been in a committed relationship and have been attracted to other people or even had a fleeting crush, it doesn’t immediately equate to significant trouble for your relationship (O’Sullivan, Belu, & Tramonte, 2025).
I’ve worked with many clients, mostly men, on discerning their commitment to their romantic relationships. Often this discernment kicks off after they experience romantic or sexual attraction to women outside of their committed relationships. The phenomenon is not limited to men and there’s growing evidence that it is a common experience with upwards of 70% of adults in monogamous relationships reporting attraction to someone other than their partner (Mullinax et al, 2016).
Attraction may occur with in-person interactions with known others (i.e. workplace professional relationships) but it can also happen on social media platforms with unknown others and/or parasocial relationships.
There are several levels of interpretation of connections with attractive extra-relational persons that determine an increasing risk of relationship deterioration. To be attracted to someone else is one thing, to view someone else as a potential alternative to your partner is a more precarious situation. Considering romantic alternatives is largely a function of relationship satisfaction (Abbasi & Alghamdi, 2018).
Examples of Situational Risk in Attraction Outside the Relationship
Here are several hypotheticals with increasing risk to your committed relationship:
- Low Risk: You’re satisfied in your current relationship and are infrequently interacting with others who you find sexually attractive, in-person or online.
- Moderate Risk: You’re somewhat dissatisfied in your current romance and find yourself actively seeking interactions in-person or on social media with attractive others.
- High Risk: You’re dissatisfied in your marriage or long-term relationship and you have frequent, consistent contact with sexually attractive colleagues or community members.
I’ve written often on this page about the fundamental necessity for trust and commitment in long-term relationships. Commitment is a function of focus and future-orientation on the longevity of your monogamous connection to your partner. It is about engaging in behaviors that fortify your relationship, to include couples therapy when romantic or sexual dissatisfaction creeps up in a long-term love. Trust is reinforced by consistently making good decisions that level up your fondness and admiration for one another, emotional connection, and transparent communication. In the absence of significant dissatisfaction and high levels of commitment, fleeting crushes can be fairly benign.
Strategies to Handle Developing Feelings for Someone Else
If you’ve found yourself in a sticky situation where you’re developing an intimate, emotional connection with someone you see frequently, here’s a few suggestions:
- Focus on your marriage or long-term relationship. Where there is negative sentiment override (emotional exhaustion from conflict), changes in the quality of your sexual lives, and dissatisfaction—address it now. Don’t wait. Make repair and emotional attunement a priority. Reinvest and strengthen your attachment. Seek couples therapy with a well-trained and experienced couples psychologist.
- Don’t entertain fantasies if you’re dissatisfied in your relationship. Turn toward your partner and bid for romantic and sexual connection. The dopaminergic response from initially fantasizing about the extra-relational person or worse, masturbating thinking about them, will only reinforce the idea of them as a viable alternative to your partner. Use cognitive-behavioral strategies of distraction, thought stopping, and treating fantasies as cognitive distortions by challenging them: this isn’t an option, this isn’t helpful, I’m committed to my partner, etc.
- Set clear boundaries for yourself and limit interactions. Commit to professional interactions free of innuendo or anything resembling flirting. Do not disclose or discuss challenges in your romantic relationship with this person. Do not seek to spend more time with them than is absolutely necessary. Do not nurture emotional intimacy.
The good news is that healthy, long-term love can withstand the trials of modern life and prevail in the midst of a thousand temptations over decades. Being amongst attractive people and even the occasional fleeting crush has nothing on a fierce committed, monogamous relationship. And the growing challenges of potential emotional infidelity on social media or in the workplace can be successfully neutralized with a focus on nurturing a satisfying love with novelty and open, gentle communication.
