How a crush can save a marriage
The adult crush depicted in a new TV series is not unusual in real life, says Zoe Strimpel
Theresa* was 36 when she started to feel desire for a man who was not her husband. Happily married for six and a half years to a successful barrister, Theresa had a two-year-old son and a career that she was happy with. Her husband, Stuart, continued to be romantic as well as dependable – she couldn’t deny that everything in her life was satisfying. Except, maybe, her sex life. Which is what, she thinks, could have sparked her fantasies about her work colleague.
Adult crushes can, of course, go a variety of ways, all depending on whether they spin off into full-blown affairs. Having a crush from within a marriage isn’t in itself that remarkable or concerning; crushes are a normal part of human life, often starting in childhood.
But the question of whether crushes should be allowed, perhaps even encouraged, in relationships is a salient one. As well as plaguing the minds of all the long-term marrieds for whom the sexy and flirtatious new colleague or the friendly Italian barista at Costa Coffee can become a daily distraction to the domestic day to day, the role of crushes in longterm relationships is now the main focus of Amazon Prime’s big new comedy series, I Love Dick.
The latest project from Jill Soloway, creator of the Emmy award-winning series Transparent, this delicately titled series is based on the 1997 novel by the American film-maker Chris Kraus. Semi-autobiographical, the book explores Kraus developing a passionate obsession with “Dick”, a friend of her academic husband, Sylvere Lotringer. “Dick” was later revealed to be the British cultural critic Dick Hebdige, whose mixture of cowboy swagger and academic sensitivity is now being captured for TV by Kevin Bacon.
In a happy, but sexless marriage, the show examines how Chris’s crush consumes her; a fact that her husband registers as they discuss how attractive Dick is, which then gives way to his wife being free to pursue her crush with more dedication. Key to the whole thing is that the crush, her “affair of the mind”, is a ferocious force for artistic inspiration, a muse for her creativity. From that point of view this intellectual as well as sexual passion is a good thing; possibly the best thing that ever happened to Chris and her marriage.
But for those who aren’t looking for creative muses, as in most married couples, how should a crush be seen? A threat or a healthy bit of escapism? Sexual firecracker for the marital bed or sexual destruction?
Theresa’s infatuation didn’t lead to an affair. Yes, she was charmed by her colleague’s sense of humour and, after bonding over team drinks, spent weeks fantasising about him. But none of this led her to cheating on her husband (even if it had been on the cards from his point of view, which she never found out). Instead, as she put it to me and her other female friends, she took it as a sign that she and her husband were having a bit of a lull. As such, she was pretty sure the obsession would pass. Her colleague got a serious girlfriend a month later, he went less often to work gatherings, and slowly Theresa forgot about him. The only thing that changed for Theresa was a renewed interest in sex that delighted her husband.
However, says Val Sampson, an Edinburgh-based relationship therapist: “Finding someone else attractive is normal. Just because we’re in a relationship doesn’t mean we stop thinking about other people.” But Sampson also notes that the reason crushes are most often the way teenagers experience sexuality is that they are easier to handle because they aren’t realistic; crushes are skewed, bite-sized bits of sexuality perfect for a first foray, but a “really powerful crush later in life”, she says, can be a “bad sign” suggesting that something is lacking in your relationship. Anything as all-consuming as the crush in I Love Dick isn’t, according to Sampson, always good news for your relationship. Theresa did indeed get off lucky.
Or did she? A study published last year in the Journal of Sex & Marital Studies on the way women handle crushes within long-term relationships points to another possible interpretation. For most of the women studied, their crushes did not affect the main relationship negatively, and in many instances, hankering after someone who was not their partner had a positive impact on their sex lives. Only a minority of the women surveyed admitted to acting on their crushes; for the majority it was purely a fantasy.
And fantasy is a crucial part of being human. The trick is not to confuse it with reality. But if you do fall into the grasp of a raging frisson, then there is one final benefit.
“A crush in adulthood can wake you up to how powerful feelings towards another person can be,” says Sampson. “We can become a bit low dose in our sexual relationships, and an infatuation can be a reminder that human relationships can be powerful, dynamite things.”
*Some names and details have been changed.