If you’ve found yourself in this situation more than once, this may not just be about him.
You didn't plan this. You didn't decide to fall in love with someone who can't fully choose you. You didn't choose the secrecy, the particular loneliness of a relationship that exists in margins: stolen hours, a life you can't talk about openly, the exhausting maintenance of something invisible to everyone else.
And yet here you are. Trying to figure out what to do with feelings this size in a situation this complicated.
This piece won't tell you what to decide. But it will help you think more clearly about what's actually being offered, about the stories that make the situation feel more possible than it is, and what may be contributing to the strength of the pull toward this particular person.
Start with what's in front of you. Then we'll go deeper.
What's Actually Being Offered And What to Watch
The first and most useful question is not about your feelings. It's about his behaviour.
Feelings are real regardless of circumstances. But behaviour is what tells you what's actually available and in this kind of situation, the gap between what someone feels and what they're willing to do is often the most important piece of information you have.
The stories, and what they mean
If he's married or in a committed relationship, you've probably heard some version of certain things. The marriage is over in everything but name. They stay together for the children. His partner doesn't understand him the way you do. He's going to leave; he just needs more time.
These narratives deserve honest examination, not because they're necessarily false, but because of the function they serve. They make the situation feel like a temporary obstacle to something that is already, essentially, decided. They position you as the solution to his unhappiness rather than a complication within it. And they shift the weight of the situation onto circumstances rather than onto choice.
The more useful measure is concrete movement. Not words about the future, but actual steps in the present: honest conversations with his partner, any real change in the structure of his life, evidence that the situation is genuinely in motion rather than being managed as it is.
Promises about the future are easier to evaluate when they are accompanied by concrete changes over time. Separation can be complicated and slow, but there is still a difference between a difficult process that is actually unfolding and an indefinite future that remains largely unchanged.
That management can go on for a very long time. Years, sometimes. And the person waiting inside it spends those years in a holding pattern, not fully in, not able to fully move on, existing in the margins of someone else's life while their own passes.
What Are the Waiting Costs
This is the part that doesn't get talked about honestly enough.
There is the secrecy, the exhausting maintenance of something that can't be acknowledged, the absence of ordinary things, the events you can't attend and the people you can't tell. There is the waiting; your access to him is always conditional on what's happening in his other life; there are structural limits on when and how your needs can be accommodated.
There is the loneliness. You're in a relationship, and you are profoundly alone in it. You carry it without being able to share it. You manage your feelings without the usual places to put them. The relationship is significant and invisible simultaneously.
And there is the slow erosion of your own life. The things you're not doing because this is taking up so much internal space. The future you're not building because some part of you is still waiting to see how this resolves.
None of this is what the pull toward him felt like at the beginning. The pull felt like finally being seen, like something real. The cost is what accumulates underneath it over time.
The Honest Assessment
Two questions worth sitting with, separately from your feelings about him:
If his behaviour, not his words, but his behaviour, were the only information you had about what he intends, what would that information tell you?
And: if a close friend described this situation to you exactly as it is, what would you tell her?
The gap between those two answers and what you're currently doing is usually where the most important clarity lives.
Reflection: Think about what has actually changed in the situation since it began, not what has been said about what might change, but what has concretely shifted. If the answer is very little, that is itself important information about what is actually being offered.
Why This Situation Feels So Compelling
If the situation is painful and the cost is real, why does the pull feel so strong? Why is it so hard to simply see the situation clearly and act on what you see?
Part of the answer is straightforward: the feelings are real. The connection is real. Real things are genuinely hard to walk away from, and the difficulty of doing so doesn't require further explanation.
But for many people in this situation, particularly those for whom this isn't the first time, who look back and see a pattern of relationships that lived in this same gap between what was offered and what was needed, there's something else worth understanding.
Moments of tenderness can feel real.
When Unavailability Feels Familiar
For some people, this particular kind of relationship is not entirely new. Previous relationships may also have involved waiting, uncertainty, having limited access to someone, or working hard for moments of closeness.
Earlier experiences can influence what we expect from relationships and what we become skilled at navigating. If you have often had to monitor another person's availability, adapt around their needs or tolerate ambiguity in order to stay connected, you may find yourself slipping into that role again surprisingly easily.
Uncertainty can also intensify attention. When contact is restricted and closeness is intermittent, individual moments together may feel especially significant. Absence creates anticipation; reunion brings relief; and the contrast between the two can make the connection feel unusually powerful.
None of this means the feelings are false, or that everyone involved with an unavailable person has an attachment pattern underneath it. But if this is one of several relationships in which you have been waiting for someone to become fully available, the repetition may be worth noticing.
That covers the useful mechanism without claiming that childhood created a nervous-system template that is now choosing married men.
What Does Being Chosen Mean Here?
When you are waiting for someone who cannot currently offer a full relationship, being “chosen” can take on enormous emotional significance. It can begin to represent more than a change in circumstances: proof that the relationship was real, that the waiting was worthwhile, or that you mattered enough for something fundamental to change.
For some people, that meaning connects with older experiences of having to work for closeness or wondering whether they mattered enough to be prioritised. For others, it belongs entirely to this relationship.
Either way, it can be useful to separate two questions: Do I want this person? and What would being chosen by this person prove to me?
The answers may overlap, but they are not necessarily the same.
That keeps the depth of your original section without interpreting every reader through an attachment lens.
I would also remove the current reflection asking what full availability feels like in the body and whether it feels flat or suspicious. That now belongs much more naturally in Why Emotionally Unavailable Partners Feel So Familiar or Why Chaos Can Feel Like Chemistry.
If There Is a Pattern
If this is not the first time you have become deeply attached to someone who could not fully show up, the repetition itself may be worth exploring.
The useful question is not What is wrong with me that I keep doing this? but What keeps becoming familiar in these relationships?
Perhaps you repeatedly find yourself waiting. Perhaps you become most invested when another person's availability is uncertain. Perhaps you accommodate circumstances that leave little room for your own needs. Or perhaps becoming involved with someone who cannot fully commit offers a form of closeness that also preserves some distance.
There may not be one explanation. Attachment history can be relevant, but so can circumstance, self-worth, previous relationships, loneliness, hope, attraction and the particular person involved.
Recognising the pattern does not automatically change it. But it can help you notice earlier what role you are beginning to occupy and whether the relationship that is developing can actually meet you there.
A Practical Note on Where You Are Now
Whatever you decide about this situation, a few things are worth being honest about.
If he repeatedly says the situation is about to change but little actually changes over time, that is important information. Words about the future, however sincere they feel in the moment of saying them, need to be weighed against behaviour over time. People who are genuinely moving toward something move. People who are managing the situation as it is tend to continue managing it.
If the situation has been ongoing for a significant period without concrete change, the most honest assessment is that this is the situation, not a temporary obstacle to something else. The question then becomes not when things will change but whether this is something you can genuinely sustain, or whether you're sustaining it on hope rather than evidence.
If you're more isolated from your support network than you were before this began, that's worth noticing. If the secrecy of the relationship has left you increasingly isolated, that isolation deserves attention in its own right. Having at least one place where you can speak honestly can make it easier to think clearly about what you want.
Knowing that a situation is painful does not automatically make it easy to leave. Attachment, hope, grief, uncertainty and the prospect of losing something meaningful can all make action much harder than insight alone would suggest.
If you'd like support making sense of this situation, or the pattern underneath it, I'm here.
📧 kat@safespacecounsellingservices.com.au
📞 0452 285 526
Frequently Asked Questions
Is it wrong to be in love with someone who's married?
Feelings don't arrive with moral warnings, and the pull toward this person isn't evidence of a character failure. What you do with those feelings involves choices, and those choices have effects on other people. But the feeling itself isn't the issue. What's worth examining is whether this specific situation can actually give you what you need and whether the cost of it is proportionate to what you're receiving.
What if he really does leave his partner for me?
Some people do leave and go on to form relationships with the person they were involved with. A change in relationship status, however, does not automatically resolve everything that preceded it. Trust, secrecy, expectations, grief from the previous relationship and the transition into an ordinary day-to-day partnership may all need attention. What matters is what the relationship becomes once it no longer exists primarily in stolen or restricted time.
He says he's unhappy in his marriage and that we have something real. How do I know what to believe?
Both things can be true; he can be genuinely unhappy, and the connection between you can be genuinely real, and neither of those things changes what's actually available to you right now. The relevant question isn't whether his feelings are sincere. It's whether his behaviour matches the story he's telling.
You do not have to determine whether his feelings are genuine in order to evaluate what is actually available to you. Whatever he feels, his behaviour over time tells you what kind of relationship he can currently offer.
I know I should create distance, but I can't seem to do it. What does that mean?
It usually means the relationship matters to you and that distance brings a real sense of loss. Hope can make separation especially difficult because creating distance may also mean giving up the future you have been imagining. Understanding what you fear losing can be more useful than criticising yourself for not being able to switch the feelings off.
How do I stop feeling this way?
You may not be able to decide not to feel something. But reducing the contact, checking, anticipation and private rituals that continually reactivate the relationship can give the feelings less material to organise themselves around. Rebuilding parts of your life that have been crowded out by the relationship matters too.
Is this always about a pattern, or can it just be the wrong situation?
It can be simply the situation. Not everyone who falls for someone unavailable has a deep pattern driving it, sometimes circumstances produce a genuine connection with poor timing, and the experience is painful without being diagnostic of anything beyond the situation itself. The pattern question becomes more relevant if this has happened before, or if available people consistently feel less compelling than unavailable ones, or if the pull toward unavailability feels like something more than bad luck. If you recognise the pattern description in this piece, it's worth exploring further. If it doesn't resonate, trust that.
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