Married folks: How often do you have those "connections" with others?
 

I mean when you meet someone and you find that there's an instantaneous emotional connection. The type when you say to yourself "another time, another place, it could easily be..."

Just curious. Tell me that they're normal. ;)

It's normal to find yourself interested in other people. I am not someone that believe in the myth of romantic love that says there is only one person for each of us.

That said, the key is what you do about that interest.

Since I have been married (almost 3 years) I haven't had any sort of emotional or otherwise connection with anyone but my husband.

There have been plenty of women who I've met who I would have wanted to date and maybe marry if I wasn't already happily married.

I can't say thats an emotional connection though, its a potential emotional connection, but it takes more than casual contact for an emotional connection.

About every two years or so I meet someone who makes me ponder the Multiple Universe theory of existence. I'm content to let the alternate Me's take those paths.

EDIT: (I'm a dumbass)

...

I think the perception of the connection is a personal thing. Individual. Everything we think, we think alone. Everything we know, we know alone.

I think we crave drama as much as we need stability, but we don't know how much we need stability until we've had too much drama.

That's just the point I was trying to make but failed to articulate. Potential is not kinetic.

Yeah, I didn't want to agree with him either. :D

I have an emotional reaction. That happens all the time. I probably fall in love with some pretty girl walking down the street a dozen times a day. An emotional connection is rather different.

I connect with people all the time, doesn't mean that I need to sleep with them or love them for the rest of my life. It doesn't mean that I can wake up next to them every day.

YES. I think it might be tempting to *think* we have a connection with someone else (when married or in an otherwise committed relationship), but as almost everyone else here has said... it matters what you do about it, and how you deal with those thoughts. I do think it's normal to think about other people now and then... most of us aren't robots, we're human. But it takes maturity to know the damage done by a need for drama... and some people take a long time to learn that lesson. Stability beats out drama every time, in the long run... that's my perspective.

Interesting question.

I've never had a "connection" with anyone other than my wife, since I got married. Then again, I am very much an introvert, and I don't easily open up to someone I don't know well, so developing such a connection would not be easy for me anyway.

Of course I've met girls who I thought were cute (which is more important to me than 'hot', by far) and who seemed intellectually interesting. And I may have thought, "if I weren't married, I'd ask her out." But that wasn't because I wished I weren't married - not at all. It was just a manner of scaling that person.

I don't establish a connection easily, but when I do, it's very strong. Perhaps my standoffish behavior is a defense mechanism of sorts. I'd rather not develop such a connection with someone outside of marriage, because of the depth of the manner in which I connect.

I think everyone loves romance. And I also think this may be what you are actually referring to.

Excitement is an emotion and that's the real basis for romance. It's new, different, with an attractive person with whom you have something in common, possibly something you enjoy that is different from what your SO enjoys. And then you remember that the grass isn't always greener and that one day reality will set in.

I'm not sure about a "connection" because, for me at least, part of that connection has to go both ways and I'm simply not looking. I can still see a good looking girl and think, "damn, if I was single I'd totally ask her out", but that's not a connection, really. Since my 'feelers' aren't out for that type of thing anymore, I don't ever really have a 'moment' with anyone in that kind of way *shrug*