QA201 QUESTION: I’d like understand why it is that I feel attracted to married men?

ANSWER: There are several aspects to this answer, which all converge at one point. For one reason, it is a very subtle, unconscious level in you in which you want to repeat a pattern with your parents. In this pattern you are governed by the wish to take your father away from your mother. That is very strong in you, and you have to act it out precisely because you are not conscious of this wish.

At the same time, there is also another level which appears almost like the opposite to this, but which is equally true. With a married man, you are not called upon to relate in a whole and total relationship. There is always an inbuilt excuse which makes it rational on your part to hold back your feelings.

For there is this side in you that does not want to admit that you do not want to give your feelings, so you need an outer situation that condones this fact. You can be safely attracted if you know there is no realistic possibility to be total and whole in the relationship. On these two levels, which seem like a contradiction but which both form two parts of a whole, this is what governs you here.

It would be very important on your part to connect with it, to make these attitudes, these desires, these ways of thinking and feeling, this approach to life, really conscious, that you can feelingly connect with this reality.

There’s still a third aspect that is part of the whole picture. And that is you wish to continue blaming, and this is like an iron-tight case where you can always blame, either way: if you succeed, you can blame because you can then in some subtle way identify with the other woman, which you may experience as guilt. You can certainly be justified in your blame and your resentment and your being closed up when you do not succeed to win your father away from your mother.

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