Would You Tell Your Guy If You Had a Girl Crush?

The latest lesbian alert over Kim Zolciak (if you blinked, it was about whether The Real Housewife of Atlanta had come out with DJ Tracy Young or was still with boyfriend Big Poppa) got me thinking about real housewives who really have girl crushes.

Here we are celebrating our newfound sexual fluidity-the rather recent understanding that women can be attracted to one another without meaning we're gay, or bi, or the least bit un-hetero. How fun! But what's it doing to the guys? From a quick check on planet dude, I'd say everything from causing confusion to devastation. (Read "Flirting with Disaster" for a little taste.)

Russ Chapman has a story, for example. Here's an outgoing guy, a chef at an Irish pub in New Jersey and father of two. One night, he tells me, he was out with his wife of 12 years. He remembers putting his arm around her, and her pushing it away. It happened twice. He knew something was up, and sure enough, a few days later he discovered a handwritten love letter.

The letter was one thing. The signature-a woman's-was another, and it blew his mind. He and his wife had enjoyed a steamy sex life, especially at the beginning, not that it hadn't ebbed and flowed with having children, like many couples. But in her journal (which he also found), "she wrote that when she had sex with her partner, it was the first time she'd ever had her eyes open, because she was truly where she wanted to be," Russ says. "And all of the sudden it dawned on me that her eyes were always closed when we were making love-or at least I was. I'm not sure what she was doing. It's funny how you can go through life with something right in front of you, and it never clicks."

Mark, an actor and salesman in New Jersey, thinks about that too, although he suspects his wife's own confusion about her sexual leanings made it harder to get to the truth, even with marriage therapy. Their sex life had been"rather bleak for a long, long time," as he puts it, but he chalked it up, in part, to having a child with a disability. "You rationalize," he says. "And I loved her." At one point-when she suddenly went on a mad diet and exercise program-he asked her if she was seeing someone. "There are no other men but you," she told him. The word "men" rung in his ears later, when he finally got her to confess to having a 16-month affair with her female friend. "I kept thinking it was me, me, me," says Mark, now divorced. "But I realized there was nothing I could do to compete with this. I was relieved and then very sad."

These are such heart-wrenching stories. And they make me wonder what you should you do if you find yourself flirting on the girl side.

If it's just a crush, maybe nothing, suggests Tina Tessina, PhD, author of Gay Relationships: How to find them, how to improve them, how to make them last. "Feelings of attraction can mean many things-and you should consider them slowly, over time, without acting on them." A crush can fade, for example. And longing for intimacy with another woman may be a warning sign that something is lacking in your marriage. On the other hand, if your attraction is pulling you away from your man, The Straight Spouse Network (which both Russ and Mark belong to) urges you to be honest, for his sake, so he doesn't blame himself (read these helpful tips on what to say.)

Russ, now divorced, wishes he'd known what was coming. After finding out about his wife's sexuality, he came close to suicide. "If she had been truthful to me at the beginning, I'm not sure what would have happened because I was head over heels in love with her," he says. "But I was never given the option."


Tell us what you think. Would you tell your man? We're dying to hear...

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[Photo credit: WireImage]