Not just an addiction or infatuation or whatever it may be called. Isn't this person a BS is trying so desperately to recover, in love with someone else in the end?

I am trying to understand how you can make someone love you if they are in love with someone else.

Sorry... I know this is going to p/o a few people but I am just trying to figure all this out. I mean, having to "Stand by your man/woman" while he/she falls out of love with the OP I just don't know how anyone does that. And if it is love, what if the WWS never does fall out of love and just "settles"?? isn't that unfair to the BS??

Thanks,
B <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/confused.gif" alt="" />

I think its important to understand that "love" is much more than a feeling, it is a commitment based on a decision. Feelings ebb and flow and come and go, and if a "relationship" is based on that, it is doomed to failure. Most affairs fail because they are based on fleeting feelings and founded on deceit and fraud. Since trust is the foundation of any solid relationship they quickly crumble when the heat wears off and reality sets in.

The answer to your question really hinges on your definition of love.

Infantuation..even near obsession is a hallmark of early romance.

Feelings of attachment come a little later..and as time progresses the lust/obsession gives way to more mature attachment/mutual care...at which point -----> a person will usually notice a new attraction.

It's at that moment and the ones that follow which determine and give weight to our declared beliefs about love.

If they indulge in the new attraction..they will move into the early romace stage and experience the chemical dump just as they did in the previous romance...then it will progress..and again...and again...because that is the nature of the beast. It is a cycle..it is not sustainable.

So..when you ask..are they in love..I could say "yes" and say "no" and be telling the truth in both cases.

Depending on which direction your particular wind blows on the issue pretty much detemrines how you process that knowledge.

I think you're on to something that confuses many...something that took me a long time to understand.

Early immature "love" IS in fact this same kind of infatuation many start their marriages with...virtually indistinguishable...

But as Mel pointed out, affair love never has the chance to mature into a full, legitimate love of conscious volition. It's locked into a mode of supercharged fantasy...like Peter Pan was forever a boy...

Maybe it would help if we had words to distinguish it...like we distinguish between LIONS and CUBS,,,

A CUB that never grows up cannot be called a LION...

Harley says that if you fill and meet each other EN's you will re-experience the feelings of love and romance.

Dr. Harley, also says to spend 15 hours weekly doing recreational activities that are enjoyable to both of you. Doing this will create those feelings of love and romance you are comparing to the feelings for the OM.

Try to remember, the OM is you fantasy.

He is not real.

He doesn't fart in your presence.

He is still perfect in your eyes because he is still trying to keep up the illusion of the perfect person.

He gets to play without pay.

Your husband, is what love is all about.

He is the one that has stuck by your side, when you were sick, grumpy, and not a good person to be around.

He is the one that you depend on to stand tall when the world collaspes.

Love is sticking with a person inspite of their faults.

Fantasy is staying because the person appears to be everything you want him to be. Why, because you don't really know the person until you have made a commitment to them.

Until n/c is complete and withdrawal is over, your thinking will probably be in the direction of thinking you can't love your husband if you are in love with the OM.

Once withdrawal is over, and the fantasy is shattered, your whole mind set will change.

You will realize, just how special of a guy your husband is to want not only to save your marriage after your betrayal, but to embrace the OC as his own.

k.d.'s heartbreak

McB-

When we first fall in love, it feels like something magical has happened. Our heart rate increases, our blood pressure goes up, our breathing becomes more rapid and shallow…Our mind and body begin to crave the feelings we are experiencing, and we know that the person we are falling in love with is the source of those feelings. We long to be with that person. We experience withdrawal when we are apart. We KNOW we are in love!

The process is exactly the same when we use crack! The feelings are the same and are actually caused by the same chemicals in the brain.

The problem with falling in love is that the “feeling” of “falling in love” can’t be sustained forever. The kids get sick in the middle of the night. The bills pile up. Work drags you apart...At first you experience withdrawal, but soon, you need to get on with life because the kids are still sick. The bills still need to be paid, and work is still waiting for us to get there.

So one day, we feel distant from our spouse. Maybe he/she was short with us this morning, maybe he/she has been gone for 2 days for work…or worse for FUN! If he/she was only here so we could talk to them….

Enter a “friend” from work (or the local bar…where ever)…This person listens to us. They seem to know how we feel, they really listen! We tell them why we are so sad. “You poor thing. I’d NEVER leave you alone”…We share the details of what is missing in our life (especially our M). This person just seems to care so much about how we feel (kind of like our spouse did when we first met?) . Soon, we begin to long for time with this other person. We start to have withdrawal when we aren’t together. It’s just like we are falling in love all over again, but this time with someone else.

Does it mean we are “out of love” with our spouse?

No, but it does mean that the feelings we experience when falling in love are not there for the one we married. We’ve become used to them. They are always there for us…(except for the [email]d@mned[/email] fishing trip when the kids got sick and I had to deal with it alone.)

If love is magic and we can fall in and out of love because of no fault of our own, we must leave our S to be with this new love.

But that conflicts with our sense of ethics. What we are doing to our S is just wrong. But we feel so good when we are with this OP.

So now we rewrite our code of ethics to make it ok to be with OP. It is, after all, our S’s fault that this happened. If they’d been there when we needed them last spring…We can’t make it right in our own mind, so we rewrite our ethics some more (“I don’t love you any more”) We rewrite history (“I never really loved you”) We forsake the one we said we’d forsake all others for because we want the “feeling”. We even try to get God to approve of what we are doing (“I’ve prayed about this and have decided it is for the best”) …

We lie to cover up the time we spend with OP. We lie about why the dishes aren’t done (the lawn isn’t mowed). We lie about why there is this giant wall between us. And when our S finds out (or suspects) something is going on, we lie about it some more. Our code of ethics is being modified on the fly as we try justify everything we are doing to our family. Our S, kids, in-laws, siblings, parents, friends….every one we know is being affected by what we are doing and the lies we are telling.

The OP is all we long for. After all, things are so good with them (Yeah…no bills, no sick kids in the middle of the night, no having to run off to work and leave us alone)
Life in an A is just like a fairy tale…exactly!

Is it love?

Yes?

Is it right?

Not if we are married!

Does any of this sound familiar?

I think Noodle did a pretty good job of hitting on the question of love. But let's try to distinguish a difference between love and being "in love," after all, isn't that something that wandering spouses frequently use to describe their feelings?

"I love you, but I'm not in love with you."

Dr. Scott Peck said love is a matter of will. You love someone because you want to love them, and love without commitment is nothing.

Dr. Frank Pittman says, "Falling in love has little to do with loving, and more to do with romance, which is a form of exotic and narcissistic suffering in which the specialness of a loving relationship gets distorted into an obsession with suffering and sacrifices to keep things intense enough to make the world and reality fade away."

Viewed in that sense, it is easy to see how people involved in affairs can be swept up in an emotional tornado that is more intense than a romance between two single people. The intensity of the emotion is so much greater with infidelity because it is heightened by the secrecy, the lies, and deception necessary to sustain it. It is further fueled after discovery because the lovers are now forced to consider the sacrifices they must make to stay together. Since they believe they are soul mates, they are often prepared to sacrifice everything -- spouse and family, financial security, etc. -- to maintain the relationship. And it is this willingness to make these sacrifices and the resultant suffering that, in a twisted way, forces the cheater to build the significance of the affair even further. It manifests itself in the belief that "I love you so much that I am willing to give up all this to stay with you."

Is this love? Well, it isn't the kind of lasting love that sustains happy marriages, though even Pittman acknowledges that most marriages start out with a form of the "in love" state.

The principal difference is that, as Low Orbit points out, the "in love" state in an adulterous affair is an exaggerated fantasy. Its flaws will eventually be revealed to one or both participants.

As to how one person can love someone and then claim to fall in love with someone else, Pittman points out that it isn't unusual to find ourselves attracted to someone other than our own spouse, but that doesn't mean we have to act on it. Most of us have managed to avoid becoming shoplifters by exercising that kind of self-control.

A mature love requires us to truly know our partner and accept them for what they are, not what we wish or imagine them to be.

in my situation, after they have now been together for so long.....have even lived together for over a year now.....i fear they ARE past the infatuaiton phase and have developed an attachment to each other




it seems to me that they have both made the decision to be committed to EACH OTHER now.....so hasn't it become real love?



it seems that my H and OW trust each other......they have made the CHOICE to believe they ONLY cheated before because they were with someone they "never really loved and married for all the wrong reasons" and they believe the OP wilol never cheat on THEM because they are "soul mates"




i think that the reason my H's affair has not ended is because this is now who they are to each other

i'm afraid that my greatest fear has happened....they do love each other now...not just think they are "in love" with each other

It is stupid love. It is hormones/brain chemicals lying to the thinking part of the brain.

I know my xh does NOT love his wistress wifey. Not at all...when he was speaking with me ovr the phone...he found out she did not pick up ds from school as I said I was close by and could do so since the wistress was unable to do so (she is a sahm...I am a working mom)...he called her..put her on speakerphone while I was on the cell with him listening...he barked orders out to her and spoke to her quite rudely. I actually giggled when he got back...I said..."honeymoon over so quickly darth?" He said "whatever."

It's all ME ME ME! And when the novelty wears off..either they have sacrificed so much to get to that point and that is why they don't leave each other...or else they will cheat on each other and lie and end it.

Either way...I think they're doomed. It is not forever kinda love...not like being married thirty years or something. I think they may be together at best a few...and then erupt horridly into flames...kinda like spontaneous combustion!

Sad...like a slow stupid train wreck...or watching the captain of the titanic take a nip from his hip flask and say "what iceberg...I don't see an iceberg?"

McBecca,

Here is a very good old thread on this:

The difference between the Fog and Love

Also read this extract from the book ”Road Less Traveled”

I heard once that puppy love is true love to the puppy...As we grow we know this is not really true love, although it feels like it is to the puppy. Same with falling "in love". It is love to the people "in love". And we know this isn't true love too.
My father is 88 years old and in the hospital dying. Just days left. I have been witnessing what real love is as my mother holds his hand, stokes his head and says " I love you".
He had a stroke over a year ago and she has fed, bathed, and taken care of him sense. She will not put him in a nursing home even as hard on her as it is.
She still wants him to come home from the hospital to be with her, even though he could never walk, talk, or take care of hiself again.
To me, this is true love and an example of the love I would want to give and receive in my marriage.