Guilty and confused....sorry its long

[Lilith1980]

Hi all, I'm so sorry I havent been on for such a long time. I got engaged a couple of months ago and what with trying to set up my own business, its just been manic so other things have been put on the back burner. I wondered if anyone could offer some advice but its a bit of a long one.

My fiance has been busy with his work recently, we got back from Rome mid-August and he proposed to me out there. Since then, things have been pretty hectic. He has worked for most of the weekends since we came back and although I have been there helping out and been with him, we haven't had any quality time together.

His friend who was helping him with his work as well, stayed at our place a lot - for the last two weeks me and my fiance had about 4 evenings on our own, but he has been stayed for the last 3-4 weeks. This mate also stayed at weekends due to the work being done at weekends.

I guess I felt a bit sidelined - my fiance would moan about being skint and then the next day when we went to the pub, he paid for this mate's dinner and drinks all night. This really hurt and I felt like second best to be honest. We've had a few rows over the course of the last month or so and my fiance did think I moaned about it too much and this made him feel pressured to keep me happy when he had all this work to do. I realise my moaning cant have helped, but I just felt like we weren't really having much of a relationship, plus the seemingly lack of interest on his part towards the wedding (we get married next August).

This week though we are having to ourselves which is really nice but I just feel a bit guilty and confused about things....

Because I felt sidelined and kind of "out on my own", it was a bit of a comfort to come to work and be around people I get on with just to forget about what was happening at home. There is a guy who works in the same team as me and we get on really well, have a laugh etc, he tells me about girls he meets and asks for advice cos he's a bit hopeless in that department! I've talked to him about all the wedding plans since getting engaged and seeing as I only moved to the Midlands 6 months ago, its nice to have someone I have a good rapport with. All this going on with my fiance, I felt the need to talk to someone and I dont really have many other friends up here yet so I talked to this guy. I wasn't blaming my fiance, I was just expressing my frustration at the situation, and with him to be honest, and my anger at his friend who knew we were rowing about not spending time together, but still stayed over. This guy gave me some advice but more than anything it was just nice to vent to someone.

Nothing has happened between me and this guy and nothing will because I love my fiance and I want to marry him - me and this guy just get on well and have a laugh. I'd like to think we were friends as I don't have any friends up here apart from the ones me and my fiance socialise with together. But I have just felt very unhappy recently and down about the whole situation and I found myself literally day-dreaming about what it would be like to marry this guy which is the most ridiculous thing ever, I know! And I know it sounds awful but sometimes when my fiance has been cuddling me this week I have imagined its this guy and when that happens I just tell my mind to stop and I feel so cr*p because I dont know why my mind is doing this. The same thing happens when we get intimate and I feel ashamed as that's not me at all. I want to be with my fiance the things I am thinking are so left-field but my mind keeps doing it. Even if I tell my mind to "shut up" I still feel bad for thinking it in the first place.

When we first got engaged I was so excited and so incredibly happy but due to the lack of quality time recently I havent felt so inclined to sort things out for the wedding as I thought our relationship was going down hill. But why have I taken such a pessimistic view?

Can anyone offer me some advice? I willl point out that I am waiting to see a counsellor with MIND, not in relation to these things but because of the anxiety. I have suffered since I was 14 and need to sort it out. It causes my mind to blow things out of all proporation and make things bigger than what they are. So me feeling left out automatically means that the relationship is doomed to fail. Me getting on well with someone at work automatically means there is something going on. And these two added together automatically make me wonder about whether I am marrying the right person. I hate my head.

So I am wondering whether all these stupid thoughts are due to the anxiety or just my way of temporarily coping with feeling a bit left out. How could I think it was going to pot just because of a month or so of my fiance being busy. I love him so much, we are such a good team. It has been great these last couple of days just having evenings in with him, but these thoughts are still popping into my head.

I know I sound mad, I just hoped someone could shed some light on this for me or offer their opinion. Really sorry this is so long, thank you for reading this far. xxxx

[confusedrob]

Hi Lilith,

Sorry to hear of your dilemma and i wouldn't like to say for sure, but it sounds to me like the anxiety could be playing playing tricks. You may well have some slight feelings for this other guy, but most people would shrug them off and ignore them as meaningless, but us being anxiety suffers we give these thoughts far more weight that we should. We over analyse them and thety become magnified until we believe there must be something in them.

How do you feel when you are calm and relaxed and not feeling the anxiety? That is likely to be your true feeling.

This is just what i'm beginning to learn about my anxiety, hope it helps.

Take care

Rob

[Lilith1980]

When I am relaxed I feel great and so positive about me and my fiance. Like just after we came back from Rome I felt great and was so enthusiastic about organising the wedding. I think I had a week or two where I felt elated all of the time. And now its the total opposite - I had said to myself that this elated feeling may not last forever but try to hang onto it. I just didnt realise I would feel so bad.

I admit I find the guy at work attractive but I find girls attractive but don't fancy them. I think maybe I am taking the fact that being at work and having a laugh with him have given me a break from the stress at home and maybe my anxiety is making this to be more than what it really is.

[Ma Larkin]

I would feel exactly the same way as you do. When I was married I had a new guy start at work and there was instant attraction. It never went anywhere apart from just chatting and flirting, even though I loved my hubby madly, but I found myself going home talking about this guy and my hubby said "do you fancy him or something". Then I had to watch what I was saying all the time, but it was hard because I worked with this guy every day and I felt really guilty that my hubby asked me if I fancied him and I really blushed at the time, which made me look even guiltier. My hubby was out every night with his mates, either working in a pub, playing pool and at weekends played football so I was flattered that someone at work was paying me attention. Then my anxiety got really bad at one point because of the attraction I had with this guy, I couldn't eat and my sleep was suffering but I just had to keep telling myself that there was nothing going on as long as I didn't make something go on. I hope you understand what I mean, its really hard to explain things at times. In the end I did get over the guy at work and still work with him every day. We still get on very well, and funnily enough my hubby is long gone after he did the dirty on me!!

I'm sure you were just feeling a bit left out and neglected and being able to air your vents on someone else made you feel good, but would you feel the same if you were venting to another woman? Probably not, some men think women can't have a platonic friendship with a man but we can, and always remember that. You haven't done anything wrong and once your relationship with your b-f is back on track, I'm sure you will be fine.

Les xx

[Lilith1980]

Thank you so much Les, you have made me feel so much better. I was on the verge of convincing myself that something was going on, my mind really does do my head in!

I did speak to woman at work about how I felt too but to be honest she just slagged my fiance off which I didnt want, I wanted constructive advice and I wanted to get a bloke's opinion to make sure I wasn't being too harsh.

I think it is an attention thing to be honest, we make each other laugh and I guess it was nice to have that given the situation at home. Just got to give me and my fiance some time to get things back on track :-)