MY HEART IS TRYING TO RULE MY HEAD

I have fallen desperately in love with a beautiful woman I met recently. I’m normally quite a level-headed guy who doesn’t allow my emotions to rule my head, but in this instance I simply feel helpless as I can’t stop thinking about her.

The problem is she’s married but she has told me that she’s unhappy in her marriage and is contemplating divorce.

Her husband is a bully, drinks a lot and has been involved with other women. If she was my wife, I would never treat her like that. I would cherish her and not even have the need to look at other women.

I feel such a strong need to protect her and to only be good to her. She gave me her phone number and suggested that we meet up and have coffee sometime.

It feels as if the card with her number on it is burning a hole in my pocket. I take it everywhere with me, but I haven’t phoned her yet. What should I do? Bertus, email

Good for you that you haven’t reacted to your instinct to contact her even though you clearly have strong feelings for her. This shows that your head is still in control at this stage.

The bottom line is that married women and married men are bad news if you’re single. All it’s going to do is complicate your life and it’s very likely that someone – or possibly even everyone involved – is going to get hurt.

Don’t start any type of relationship with her. An affair is definitely not a good idea. But you need to understand that even just a friendship will be risky because you’re clearly very much in love with her. You might think you can keep it platonic, but when there are feelings involved there can be no guarantee of that.

The best thing you can do is to send her a message telling her that although you find her incredibly attractive and want to get to know her better, you can’t do that right now because she’s married.

Tell her she should contact you once she’s divorced. By doing this you’ll safeguard yourself from getting into a very messy situation that could potentially hurt you very much.