@fullmoon16,

This stood out to me. Dr. Harley truly understands how romantic love works, and when he talks about a "Love Bank Balance", he's talking about a balance that has a threshold above which you're in love, and below which you are not.

Let's arbitrarily say your romantic love threshold is 900 Love Units. Below that, you're not in love, above that, you are. The other man starts at 0 balance. One day, he opens up to you and talks about his struggles with his kids and how he wants to do better. 2 points in your bank for his Family Commitment, and an extra point for Openness & Honesty. In turn, you open up to him, and he listens attentively to your struggles for an hour. With Conversation as a BIG Emotional Need for you, he unknowingly deposits ten Love Units in your Love Bank.

He now has 13 points in your Love Bank. You happen to see a photo of this Other Man in which he looks particularly dashing. Two more points in the Love Bank for Physical Attractiveness. He calls you to thoughtfully point out a sale at a local store on an item you discussed on the phone last week. Ten points in the bank for Affection, because doing favors of that sort usually fills the emotional need for Affection.

See how the balance piles up? All this time, you're just friends.

One time you see him drunk, and this unappealing view subtracts a few points from your Love Bank. Another time he shouts at his kids in your presence, subtracting more points for his Angry Outburst. Yet one more time, he dismisses your concerns on the phone as being worried about nothing, devaluing your opinion and subtracting a few more points for his Disrespectful Judgment.

One night, you're feeling particularly vulnerable. You have a few drinks to relax at home. The other man calls. Now, what you don't know is that having drinks or being under emotional stress often lowers your own personal Love Bank threshold: you can feel in-love at a lower balance than usual. Let's assume OM's balance has been hovering in the low seven-hundreds for a while. But the fight with your husband lowered your Romantic Love threshold by a hundred points, then a few glasses of wine lowered it another hundred points. Suddenly after a conversation on the phone, you realize you have feelings for him. They weren't there the day earlier. And sometimes they aren't there the day after if he didn't deposit enough units to exceed your sober & calm Romantic Love Threshold.

But if someone has surpassed that threshold, you're "in love". Your higher brain functions are short-circuited around that person. Your highest priority becomes meeting their needs so that they will be with you. And it's trivial for an affair partner to deposit units in a way that your spouse can't match. You're not washing the affair partner's socks every day, seeing their bad habits, listening to them complain about work, listening to casual demands spouses usually make on their partners, suffering through their anger regularly, etc. It's a fantasy-world, and it's very easy to end up in-love with someone other than your spouse because you never experience the Love Busters they engage in that withdraw Love Units.

We're all wired this way. Given the same set of circumstances, unless someone protects themselves against it, every person would have an affair.

The difference in your case is that you haven't made love... YET.

If you continue in the presence of the Other Person long enough, you will. It's biology. That's why No-Contact-For-Life is so crucial. Romantic relationships either escalate -- you grow closer -- or die. There is no middle ground, and they are constantly going one direction or the other.

My wife's emotional affair last year was immensely destructive to my marriage. Thinking of it as a line you won't cross leads to you one day finding yourself in bed with the other person, thinking that if you just don't do the next thing, you're "safe". Thinking of it as a process you need to follow to stay in love with your husband, and avoid falling in love with anyone else, leads to a fulfilling monogamous relationship with the person you pledged your life to.

Just the admission of love for -- and discussion of marriage to -- the affair partner is enough to wreak havoc in a marriage for years. Day after tomorrow is the one-year anniversary of the day I recorded my wife discussing leaving me, taking our four kids, marrying the other man, and raising six kids together. There isn't a single day that I don't think about that conversation in the 363 days since.

Not. One. Day.