Life as a couple is that thing you’ve always wanted. You have been with your boyfriend for five years and you feel that you have finally achieved that emotional security and stability you longed for, until one day Juan appeared and you felt an immediate and irresistible attraction to him. Is this normal? What is happening to you?
A study published in May 2025 in The Journal of Sex Research titled: It’s Just a Small Crush: Attraction to an Alternative and the Quality of Romantic Relationships, Breakups and Infidelity, analyzed what happens when, while in a relationship, attraction to another person appears. Its results point to that feeling a crush is not, by itself, synonymous with infidelity, nor does it necessarily mean there is an underlying problem.
The key is in what we do with that attraction, because the more it is fed and intensifies, the more it reveals about how the main relationship works and how it is lived. “Feeling attraction is not equivalent to being unfaithful nor does it necessarily imply dissatisfaction with the relationship. The relevant thing is usually not the appearance of that interest, but how it is managed. There is an important difference between recognizing that someone is attractive to us and actively feeding that interest through recurring fantasies, seeking contact, or emotional involvement,” says Miriam Morales, the psychologist expert in couples therapy.
When is biology and when is betrayal?
The report from The Journal Of Sex Research noted that feeling attraction to another person while you’re in a relationship is relatively common, even in monogamous relationships. In a sample of 542 adults aged 22 to 35 who were in exclusive relationships, all had experienced attraction to a possible alternative, and feeling that attraction did not necessarily mean they would end up being unfaithful.
“Attraction is a biological matter. A fleeting attraction tends to appear and disappear without major consequences. The real risk begins when a person starts to idealize someone external, constantly compares them with their partner, or builds a parallel emotional connection; there, the situation becomes a threat to the bond,” explains Miriam Morales. And she adds: “When we are no longer talking about an automatic biological response, but about conscious decisions about where emotional attention is directed, a boundary begins to be crossed. That is the true onset of infidelity.”
Having a potential love interest ‘on the back burner’
You thought it couldn’t happen to you, and in the end, you cross the line. You feel very good about the crush you’ve met and consciously decide to take the relationship to the next level.
Because the idea of maintaining a sentimental alternative doesn’t seem as exceptional as one might think. A survey published by Talker Research, published in December 2025, noted that around one in six American adults with a partner claims to have another person in mind to whom they would reciprocate emotionally. The percentage is somewhat higher among men: 19% acknowledge having that “person on the bench,” compared with 12% of women. The data come from the responses of 1,279 people who were in a relationship at the time of participating in the survey.
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“Feeling attraction to another person arises in relationships in which there is something in the current partner that is not fully satisfying, although it can also occur in satisfying and stable relationships, but it is not the same as having someone on the back burner, although both things may share some elements,” argues the psychologist.
For the specialist, when one begins to maintain a potential amorous bond, it is usually for several reasons. “Everything that implies keeping a psychologically open alternative, that is, considering another person as a possible option if the current relationship ended or stopped working, is usually because either you don’t feel well within the relationship you are in, or due to your own attachment system, which tends to be the anxious style, characterized by a greater fear of rejection or abandonment and a strong need for closeness and security in the relationship,” explains the expert. “There is also often a lot of fear about not being able to cope or fear of loneliness that it generates and they cannot end the relationship if they do not start a new one,” she continues.
An attraction that evolves into falling in love
You may not have planned to fall in love, but feeling a strong attraction to someone outside your romantic relationship could evolve into something more if the feeling is reciprocated. Miriam Morales alludes to something very important if you want someone who attracts us intensely to stop occupying space in our mind. “The main difference lies in the degree of emotional investment and in the function that that third person fulfills in the mind of the one who keeps them as an alternative. Because intense attraction can indeed lead to falling in love,” she says.
And she details: “You begin to fall in love with a person precisely with an attraction that feeds itself through closeness, admiration, the emotional connection or fantasy. The more mental space that person occupies and the more emotional meaning they acquire, the greater the probabilities that feelings typical of falling in love will appear.”
The expert concludes that, in these cases, falling in love does not depend solely on compatibility or the attraction toward the other person, but certain psychological and neurobiological processes that cannot be easily controlled also intervene. “The novelty, the mystery, the idealization and the uncertainty intensely activate the brain’s reward circuits. Here, the emotions associated with a new person tend to feel especially intense and, at times, more exciting than those experienced in a consolidated relationship. Still, the appearance of a strong attraction or even falling in love with a third person does not necessarily mean that there is a problem in the current relationship,” concludes.
