I’m obsessed with my boyfriend’s wife.
To start off, they are separated. This isn’t a cheating story. I (F25) met him (M37) a year after the breakup. The divorce is just taking a while to complete.
I tend to ask a lot of ‘invasive’ questions on first dates, so I learned a lot about my BF and his wife’s relationship on that first night — what their love was like, what their fights were like etc — I was so curious for some reason. Me and him ended up hitting it off really well that night and I’ve spent most weekends at his place since.
I usually never pry into peoples’ privacy because I’m very comfortable with being direct — if I wanna know, I’ll just ask. But once I started ‘snooping’ I couldn’t stop.
Once while he was at work, I saw a stack of old photos and documents shoved into a corner and I was completely taken over by my curiosities. I immediately recognized it as the ‘memories with the ex’ stack. I spent ages looking at old photos of the two of them and leaned that his current flat is the flat they had together. The bed I sleep in with him is the bed they used to share. This put a feeling in me I haven’t had before. Not like ‘the other woman’ type of thing, but like I felt her absence in this house, and I missed her(????). I thought she was beautiful, and looked a bit like me (also found out my BF has a type lol). I carefully rearranged the stack just how I’d found it and felt so guilty afterwards.
But…
Another time I was over, the feeling came over me again and I read some notes she’d been leaving in the mailbox. They were mostly just small notes, practical stuff for the divorce. Some were a little more personal. It seems as though she still loves him, and it makes me feel connected to her somehow. I also like how she writes, it seems she’s poetic even with banal stuff.
I started thinking about her often. I found her instagram and I secretly browse it sometimes. I have no fkn clue why I do this and it makes me feel creepy. I sweat like a kid doing something I know I’m not allowed to do.
She still lives in our city, so sometimes I fantasize that we’ll be on the same bus or that I’ll see her crossing the street. Weird shit.
I’ve been wanting to get this off my chest for a long time, but every time I attempt to share it with friends I hear how insane I sound, and I backtrack to say it’s just a jealousy thing — but I know it’s not. I’m not sure what it is.