Hi neutrino. It's very nice to meet you. I'm new here, so I feel newbie-ish-like. Anyway, I can relate to what you're feeling because I have been there.

I am going through a divorce. When I was dating my ex-wife, there were good times and bad, and during that experience, I was suffering from a lot of depression and paranoia. I also had (and still do) self-esteem issues. And to be honest, I wasn't all that happy with her. There was always that 'something' missing, know what I mean? The sex was okay at best, and she didn't meet my emotional and intellectual needs all that much either. But we did have some good times.

The mistake I made was being with her for the wrong reasons. I didn't think I could find someone else because I didn't believe anyone else could love me, and I was also afraid to let her down and break her heart. What this led to was me having crushes on every other woman I met, including her sister. I never acted on any of my desires to be with these women, not until we were nine years married and she asked for a separation. We separated and I began pursuing other women. I fell in love with one of them and we live together now.

What I learned about myself is that I have needs, and I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that everybody has needs. There, I said it! So if we all have needs, and assuming they are healthy needs that won't negatively affect others, then they must be met. Some needs you can meet yourself, as I'm currently learning from Dr. Jonice Webb's book Running On Empty. However, I believe that some needs have to be met by others, like your partner, your friends, your whatever.

So what I'm saying is, having a crush on another person didn't make me a bad person, but it was (desperately) telling me that something was wrong in my life. And it was that my needs weren't being met. I'm slowly learning that when my body is telling me that something is wrong, or something doesn't feel right, it's in my best interest to give it my full attention and figure out WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON???

I guess you might want to ask yourself the question, "what is this crush, or feeling, telling me?"

And btw, the fact that you're here with concerns about doing the right thing or having inappropriate thoughts, it tells me that you're really not so bad (read, you are not a bad person). :-)