And this is EXACTLY why psychobabble is so popular amongst laymen who think it's okay to diagnose themselves. Anyone can search for any silly term on Wikipedia (because they probably don't even know what the DSM is, not that it isn't continually revised for changes anyways) and apply that psychobabble to distract from their own selfish actions.

Classic wayward thread indeed, almost a "notable post" if I say so myself.

What are your thoughts now?

Goldilocks.
The wickedness of mans heart knows no bounds.
It is how we react to others actions that matter.
Consider the Holocaust. I have no doubt that some survivors probably became violent killers or rapists.
A third of the worlds children are hungry or starving right now. Some resort to killing and robbing others don't.

Sick people have affairs. They make poor decisions.
If you call upon God to save you He will. But you must also repent of your sins, wether childhood abuse made you more incline to commit them or not. And part of repentance in a marriage is to tell your husband. Otherwise you are lieing to him. And certainly visit a professional to help heal.

But you are responsible for your actions. An accountable to God and your husband for infidelity. Being honest and admitting what you have done is the first step towards being healthy

I remember reading up on limerance early in discovering WH's A. Hoping this explained his actions. It didn't. Because everyone experiences "limerance" at one point or another... it is a part of early relationships, infatuation, whatever we want to call it.

I have experienced it. I have not had an A.

Goldilocks... are you still following?

These posts are designed to get you thinking. If you are following, what are your thoughts?

Goldi, if you're still lurking, my thoughts (which I hope you'll regard as 'positive input', as you said you're seeking):

I didn't have any childhood trauma -- certainly not compared with people who are abused. My parents fought like cats & dogs before splitting up just after I left for college, but there was never any physical violence or threats thereof, and lots of people's parents fight & get divorced. I also suspect that there are lots of well-born people in loving families who end up going off the rails & having affairs. So why do they cheat? Why did I cheat? The 'trauma' explanation doesn't cover it.

The only explanation that makes any sense is, "I got selfish." Now, that's seemingly not a very satisfying explanation. I thrashed around, mentally, for 7 months after my affair trying to make sense of "Why?" Why did I do what I did? "I got selfish" wasn't what I wanted to hear. It didn't fit with the self-image I'd cultivated for so many years.

But as a way forward for me & for my marriage, it was & is a lot more practical & useful than casting blame on childhood events. If you can indulge me in my own psychobabble, admitting my selfishness actually gave me power over my future decisions. And when I acknowledged that selfishness to my wife, after we'd already been in recovery for over 7 months, I believe it gave her some extra measure of hope that I'd be accountable going forward, and that I wasn't going to latch onto some 'explanation' that, to one degree or another, let me off the hook.

She didn't want to know that I had any sort of explanation that let me off the hook in any way. She wanted to know that it Wasn't. Ever. Going. To Happen. Again.

Blaming my behavior on past events in my life wouldn't ever get me there, because those past events, by definition, have already occurred in the past, and I couldn't ever change 'em.

Blaming one's infidelity on past events in one's life means one will always have an 'out,' an excuse, an escape hatch from accountability, because those past events, by definition, have already occurred in the past, and we can't change 'em. So if they led us off the rails before, it's awfully probable that they'll do it again.

As a path forward, the only explanation that does any good is an explanation that puts accountability back where it belongs: Squarely on your own shoulders.

Accountability isn't your enemy. It's actually a great friend: It's what can keep you on a right path going forward. You should be embracing it.

And you can't be partially accountable any more than you can be partially pregnant. You either embrace accountability in full, or you run from it altogether.

Let me know if anyone disagrees with that.

Absolutely

This is the beginning, middle, and end of every foggy thought, every attempt at blame, and every justification ever heard from a wayward, anywhere on the face of the planet.


What?


Well, let's see... how would it look logically;


I am a good person.

Adultery is bad.

Therefore, only bad people commit adultery.


I committed adultery.

I am not a bad person.


If I am not a bad person, and I committed adultery... how can adultery be bad?


Oh... well, my situation must be special. I am sick, and not in control of bad decisions.

I was wronged, therefore I am owed a few mistakes...



etc, etc, etc.



There is an endless litany of faulty logic and semi-logical connections gone through in an attempt to reconcile the first lines;

I am not a bad person.

Adultery is bad.

I committed adultery, but I am not a bad person.

Recovery, reconciliation, and redemption are what solves that dilemma, Goldilocks.

Goldi, you sound like every criminal I�ve ever heard on the witness stand that blames childhood abuse (etc) for their crimes.

I�ve got a friend who was raped and molested by her father for years, and she is probably the kindest, sweetest person I know. She�s an amazing person � a loving mother, a faithful wife, and a wonderful friend.

My STBXBH was abandoned by his bio-dad. He grew up with emotional abuse, watched his mother and stepfather physically and emotionally abuse each other and commit adultery on each other. He turned to alcohol and drugs and fought to get himself sober. He remained faithful to me.

I had two parents who loved each other and me. The day my dad was buried would have been my parents� 44th wedding anniversary. No one ever hit me, other than an occasional spanking when I deserved it.

Yes, I�ve had things happen in my life that hurt. I was not a pretty child, nor popular. Have you heard the news stories recently about the girls that got nominated for homecoming court as a joke? That happened to me, too, but 20+ years ago it was not �news.� That was just the culmination of teasing and ridicule that started in junior high. I was date raped in college. I would do anything for attention and �love� from the guys I dated, and had sex with too many of them and way too early in the relationships because I wanted them to �love� me. I wouldn�t even count some as �relationships� because once they got what they wanted from me, they moved on.

My self-esteem sucks. Did low self-esteem cause me to cheat? No. I can see where it made me vulnerable to false admiration, but I should have KNOWN this and erected boundaries to prevent LB$ deposits from men who were not my husband. I am not a stupid woman. On a good day, I actually consider myself fairly intelligent. All I would have had to do was look at my horrible history with boys/men all through HS and college to have seen how I contributed to that history. It�s plain for me to see now that I had no boundaries to speak of. Even the date rape happened because I put myself in a situation that I should not have.

OK, so let�s flip all this around. If you can blame your adultery on a new, trendy �mental illness,� then what about those of us who have ACCEPTED PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY and cannot blame our adultery on anything other than:
- Selfishness
- Poor boundaries
- Allowing LB$ deposits from someone not our spouse

What else can we add to the list? If we can't blame anything other than ourselves for what we did, then are we bad people? Are we fundamentally evil? Many � my STBXBH for sure � would agree with that assessment. But I don�t agree. Now, if you choose NOT to change, not to accept responsibility for your actions and continue blissfully down the path of least resistance, blaming others for your actions, then I�d say that�s a pretty bad � maybe even evil � thing to do. Why? Because you will continue to hurt others. That�s wrong, no matter how you slice it. No matter what faith you are I don�t believe you can argue with the Golden Rule: �Do unto others as you would have done unto you.� As adulterers, we broke that rule, and it is our responsibility to be accountable to that, do all we can to offer compensation and, if possible, try to heal the relationship.

Otherwise, continue to look elsewhere for answers, and wait for armchair psychologists to create new and trendy �mental illnesses� for us to suffer from. Hey, L. Ron Hubbard manufactured an entire belief system. Go for it.

Does this include women experiencing menopause?

So I went to Wikipedia to get a definition of limerence. There were a lot of technical terms, but it sounds like it basically boils down to the feeling of romantic love.

So, does the feeling of romantic love have anything to do with affairs? Yes, absolutely. That's the whole premise of this site. Has anyone here ever had that feeling? Yes, absolutely, the whole point of this site is to teach people how to have that feeling permanently with their spouse.

All of this is explained in the basic concept on the Love Bank.

So the real question, goldilocks, is, are you and your husband following the plan to create the feeling of romantic love in your marriage? I strongly encourage you to get back to your thread and post.

Whether you call it infatuation, limerence, or romantic love, having that feeling with your spouse is the goal of Marriage Builders.

If it sounds like a new revelation to you, if it sounds like a new concept that hasn't previously been addressed, I'd suggest you go reread the basic concepts and keep reading Dr. Harley's material until you can create this in your marriage.

Creating and sustaining romantic love in a marriage is easy when both husband and wife participate and when the relationship is logical.

I really don't like the implication that only people who experienced childhood trauma experience infatuation and romantic love. Romantic love is totally normal, is desirable, is a good thing, is good for your health, and is good for your life -- if it's with your spouse! Dr. Harley strongly advocates that all marriages should have it, and says that if you do, you will make better decisions in life. He also warns that if you are married but have that feeling with someone else, it will cause you to make self destructive decisions.

People fall in love every day. Do the right things with the right person, you fall in love. It's as simple as that. It's not a failing of the brain, or a disease, or evidence of childhood trauma. It can, however, be the worst thing to ever happen to you if you are married to someone else, which is why the sane thing to do is to not do those things with anybody but your spouse!

Many people, including marriage counselors, want to run down infatuation as if it were something immature. These are usually people who don't understand that the feeling of romantic love (infatuation) can be sustained for life, in marriage.

Here is what Dr. Harley says:

http://www.marriagebuilders.com/radio_program/play_segment.cfm?sid=68


I understand the idea of distinguishing between "limerence" and "love," because the word love is ambiguous. Dr. Harley did it long before that word was coined (1977), by distinguishing between "romantic love" (the feeling) and "caring love" (actions). It makes sense to have a separate word for communication, but it does not make sense to act like it's a disease or to blame it on childhood trauma.

Goldilocks, have you read the Basic Concepts on this site?

What scares me is the whole idea of classifying love as a mental illness.

Of course she had an affair because she was in love. Everybody would do that. According to Dr. Harley, we would all have an affair under certain conditions. It doesn't excuse anything, and it's not even a new piece of information. We could have all told her what she felt (even if we didn't know the word "limerence") before she even posted.

"I was speaking to someone last week who suggested the feeling of romantic love in connection with infidelity."

I believe the proper response would be: DUH.


Why in the world would romantic love be a battle? Only if you are married to someone and feeling it with someone else.


No, romantic love stems from doing certain things with a person. It's all explained in Dr. Harley's Basic Concepts, which some people never read.


Yes, Dr. Harley and his wife Joyce have been in love for fifty years.

Are you familiar with the Love Bank? Are you familiar with the romantic love threshold?

Romantic Love: Is it a Realistic Goal for Marriage Therapy? by Dr. Jennifer Harley Chalmers, PhD

(Yes, that's Dr. Harley's daughter.)

Has anyone else noticed that Goldilocks has 'left the stadium' on this thread? Obviously she didn't have the facts to defend her two posts on this thread, and hopefully she has learned from the posters who have posted to her.

I saw someone using the word "limerence" on the board a couple of weeks ago, and I wanted to bump this thread because I think we posted a lot of great responses here. Some psychologists seem to think it's abnormal or "obsessive" to want to continue romantic love, but Dr. Harley and Joyce have done it in marriage for 50 years, and his principles can show any married couple how to create romantic love. Nobody has ever worked his plan together and failed.

Right...I left the thread because I haven't been back here until now.
You can think whatever you like lol