Dear Dr. Love, My husband and I have been married for four years but we don’t have any children. He had two grown up children from his first marriage though. My husband is twice my age and his youngest son is only 3 years older than me.My husband and I knew each other through Penpal. After a few months of correspondence, he went to our place and we decided to get married. Few months after, I met his son and that ‘s when my problem started.Actually, I thought I just care about him because he’s my husband ‘s son but I have realized that there’s something more. I think I have fallen in love with him and I don’t know how and why.This feeling has been going on for more than two years hoping that it will go away. But it didn’t, it’s getting stronger instead; and I’m very afraid of my husband finding about this.Is it embassing and shameful feeling? If this is some kind of insanity, what can I do to stop this? PLEASE HELP!!!
Calling your feelings shameful is a symptom of the fact that your conscience is assaulting you. One must never pass value judgments on feelings. Feelings are irrational, illogical and often downright crazy. To try to subject feelings the laws of logic or morality will make you completely insane.Feelings are not shameful, wrong, bad or otherwise. They simply are what they are. Just as the wind blows in various directions, so do feelings. Accept them or you will become an emotional mess. In fact, the attempt to repress feelings is at the heart of many neuroses ( mental illnesses).So, I do commend you for allowing yourself to admit to all your feelings. Yours are no different from the next guy’s. If more people were truly honest with themselves, they would find that they have feelings of love and even sexual attraction for family members.The incest taboo (law against having sex with or marrying immediate family members) was created precisely because such feelings are so universal. What you need to do is to make sure that you are clear on the difference between feelings and actions. Accept that you can think, feel, or even fantasize about whatever you want, so long as you know that you cannot act on certain feelings.Once you become very clear on the difference between feelings and actions, then you can enjoy all your feelings, sexual and otherwise. Right now your guilt is eating you up. That’s the problem, not the feelings themselves.So, make peace with your feelings. Know that you can’t and won’t act on them, and you will be fine. If you can’t reach this place on your own, then do talk to a professional.
