Ever been in love with one of your characters?

[charm]

This is my first time admitting this problem to anyone. I am so glad I have found a group of people who may understand.

I have had MD most of my life. I have made up so many different characters and stories and gone on so many wonderful adventures (in my head).

But the thing I am really struggling with is that I am so in love with a character. He is the same central character that I have been using since I was about 12 years old (27 now). Yes he has changed over the years, as have I but his personality and history has remained pretty constant.

The thing is I am married. I actually managed to stop with the romantic daydreams for the past few years but lately I have found myself doing it again. And I have been indulging these phantasys and HE is back, better and more wonderful then ever before and I have fallen for him again. He is like an old friend that has growen up with me, a part of me that I have missed so much these past few years.

The problem is that lately I find myself wanting to spend less time with my real life husband and more time with my dream man. Real life husband just can not live up (not his fault the dream guy sets an impossibly high bar).

I decided recently that for the sake of my marriage I need to stop, but its so hard because Im in love with this guy and I cant bare to think of not having him around (even though he never was). Its like Im actually breaking up with someone, I have been so sad and cry for no reason. I can't tell my husband about this! I can't tell anyone.  But I'm sure he must be noticing how distant and "off" I have been.

So glad to find an online forum of people who might understand.

Has anyone ever been in this situation before?

[Kathy]

I almost always fantasize around a television show and a character that I have a "crush" on.  When I got married a few years ago I still would enter my fantasy world but not nearly as much. Then my  husband got very sick and I went there more often. I hate it because I should have been there more for him during that time. I should have been focused on him completely. Then he passed away and now I've gone deep into my own world. I don't want to be around anyone...just in my own world. 

[LJ]

OH MY WORD! You sound just like me.......   The "other" man is just safer.  No let-downs, no disappointments.  Really nothing more to say.  He is more than likely more attractive, taller, stronger and definitely more attentive.  Our poor "real husbands" will never measure up for long.  Even though they are good guys they will never compare.  It's sad because if our "real husbands" were taken, or left us we would forever beat ourselves up for throwing them over in favor of the dd husband.

More's he pity........  I say we try to let it all go.  I'm not saying our feelings are not valid, just more time wasted.

[Jalashala]

I have fallen in love with a few of them, but I also DD in third person with multiple characters, so it's always through the eyes of someone else.  

[Ziggy Valentine]

Yes, I have and I am in love with my "other world" husband but in real life, I don't even know him. I really want to find someone in real life to be with but every guy I talk to, I compare to him and it ruins it. I think, "This guy could never be as great as him." and I don't even try (and even if I tried, most guys really don't like me.) The men I do attract are men that I would never be with. It's nothing to do with looks or anything (I'm more of a personality type person) but I just can't see being with them. They're not someone I want. That's the biggest problem (for me) about this "other" world because I am always going to compare my real life with it and it's always going to come out on top.

[SwanInTheWater]

YES YES YES. I am currently going through this and it has been going on for a year now. It started when my boyfriend of two years at the time was not giving me what I felt I needed. It put a huge wedge between us because I did not want to see him, I wanted to stay home and daydream so I could be with this guy. After my boyfriend and I made three years together, we broke up. It wasn't 100% because of the daydreaming, but that is what pushed me over the edge.
I wish I had some advice for you... I have this fear that no man will be good enough for me because this dream guy is impeccable. So throughout this year I have tried to get over him. For a little while I would stop daydreaming about him but then I would suddenly fall in love all over again. I actually just recently fell in love with him again this week. It's kind of like I never really stopped loving him, but I was able to stop daydreaming about him, although I thought about him every single day.

[Christine]

I've never been in a real relationship in the "real" world, because no one could ever be as perfect as my MD partner.  As someone else said above--this is why it is maladaptive!  I guess I would love to have a real life boyfriend/husband, but how could I when I have a perfect one already???

[northern gal]

I have been in love with characters in my DD.  I think one of them, who is a real person, started out being a crush on the real guy (who was married like me)...since I obviously couldn't be with him in real life, he just became my DD man...and then I realized how unhappy I was in my marriage and how poorly treated I was.  Both the real and DD man treated me so much better, and made me happy like I was before I was married...so this started the momentum towards my divorce.  It was the best thing that ever happened to me.   When he was retiring from work earlier this year, I was tempted in the last phone call to almost disclose the crush I had on him a few years ago...I'm over the crush of the real guy, occasionally I still go back to him in my DD.  I'll probably never see the real guy ever again, but I always will have the DD.

[LeAnn Marcum]

Yes. I admired a fictional character from an anime that I was obsessed with 3 summers ago, and I felt that I could have that kind of relationship with someone in real life. So I looked for the person that fit the character in my anime dreamland, and I truly believed that it would end up like the characters in the story. But as I started fantasizing about us and planning the storyline of how it would all work out, I began to hide from her and feed a growing fear of being around her. Stalking her everyday for a whole school year from behind a brick wall, I began to fall in love with her. Maybe not in reality, but in my fantasies. The illusion finally broke when I got the courage to transfer schools to confess my feelings to her, she thought I was really creepy and went to the guidance counselor. She called my mom and said that if I didn't stop, that I would be arrested for stalking. Even though I was heartbroken, I had finally broken free of my misleading alternate world.