it has taken over my head and I am getting nothing done

We started this in January. Six months, four evenings, no disasters. My wife is happy. Our marriage is better than it has been in years by any measure I can think of.

The problem is that I cannot stop thinking about it.

Not in a distressed way. Not jealousy. I think about it the way you think about a house move or a court case, which is to say constantly and about all of it at once. What happened. What might happen. What she said. What he might have thought. Whether the next one will be like the last one.

I read about it for a couple of hours most evenings. I read about it on my phone at work. I have started leaving my desk to read about it, which I did not do even in the worst period of my twenties.

The practical damage so far. Two missed deadlines in June. A conversation with my manager which was polite and which I would rather not have had again. Sleep down to about five hours because the last thing I do is read and the first thing I do is read.

My wife knows I am interested and has no idea it is like this. When she brings it up in a normal way, once a fortnight, I can be perfectly casual about it. Then she goes out and I open my phone.

There is a thing I have noticed which may be relevant. It got worse in April when a project at work went badly, and worse again in June when the same project went badly a second time.

So is this a phase? Does the volume come down? And has anybody got it back under control without giving the whole thing up, because I do not want to give it up, and I also cannot carry on like this until Christmas.