Why married men flirt?

by married Jake

I’m married. I love my wife. We’re having a baby. And still I flirt. A little. Nothing over the line. But what is the line? Safarigirl asked that question in a comment.

Let me summarize: Reader Safarigirl works at a company (no doubt one with zebras, elephants, maybe a rabid hyena), and a certain attractive guy also works at the same company. In fact, I think he might actually be the rabid hyena. Anyway, Safarigirl and Hyena flirt pretty heavily. They have the kind of heady sexual tension you might find on the savanna. Then she finds out he has a girlfriend. That he lives with. Then he gets married to this girlfriend. Safarigirl cuts it off, but still he pursues. (Because he’s, you know, a rabid hyena.) And now she’s all like Why does he keep pursuing me when he’s married and he’s a nice guy who doesn’t just seem to be looking for sex?

Let me tell you something first. There are two kinds of married guys: married guys who flirt and married guys who don’t. Married guys who never flirt are a freaking mystery to me. They’re like monks or something. They’re wired differently from me. I respect them tremendously, but I do not envy them. On the other hand, guys who are died-in-the-wool flirts will always flirt, even when they’re married. That doesn’t necessarily mean they’re going to act on that flirtation. It just means they like it. And if they’ve sworn off flirting, it means they’re subverting their flirt impulse. And they’re miserable.

I’m a flirt. I have always been a flirt. Maybe if I had more self-esteem or something I wouldn’t need to do it, but the fact is I love it. Nothing racy. No physical contact. I just like having flirty conversations—playful ones, not overtly sexual or anything. My wife knows about it, and at first she really hated it. But now she just knows it’s who I am. And she remembered that’s why she liked me in the first place and that I will never change, and that she’s the person I like flirting with the most and am committed to entirely. She trusts me that I won’t go over the line, and I trust me that I won’t go over the line. I’ve been with her on-and-off for something like four years, and I’ve never gone over the line.

However, Safarigirl brings up a different point: This guy has gone over the line, and she wants to know what it means.

Here’s the thing, Safarigirl: He’ll keep flirting with you. You’ll keep flirting with him. It’ll be fun. You’ll both enjoy it. It’ll be excruciating. It’ll be like foreplay before sex. You’ll have periods where you’re flirting more seriously, and then one of you will pull away. And then you’ll orbit each other for a while. And inevitably it’ll happen again — unless you start dating someone you fall in love with, or his wife finds out, or he starts flirting with someone else instead.

The thing you have to realize is that you’re in it for different reasons. You’re in it because you’re a little in love with him, and the only satisfactory resolution there for you is to be with him FOR REALZ. He’s in it because he wants to keep the single part of himself alive. Marrying you would be just as much a problem for him as marrying his wife seems to be.

He can’t let you go because letting go of you is letting go of something very symbolic to him. It’s letting go of the butterfly feeling. Letting go of the thrill of having a new person be attracted to you. Letting go of a huge part of the male brain that develops from the time we go through puberty until we tie the knot: the pursuer. But if you are actually in love with him, and not just in it for the flirt (or even the possibility of a roll in the hay), you have to shut it down. Get back in the Safari Jeep, and drive away from the Hyena.

And dude, here’s one fact you very symbolically skipped over: You might not have known he had a girlfriend when you fell in love with him. But I bet he knew! That’s all you need to know.
What do you guys think is crossing the line for a married guy?