12 Things You Must Consider When Rebuilding After Infidelity

Limerence or romantic love grows in stages. First the betrayer is content to see the affair partner now and then. But as the addiction escalates, they need more and more of their “drug.” As the addiction grows, they feel the need to be with their affair partner more and more until it develops into a craving and eventually they feel like they can’t not live without their affair partner.  

If the betrayer is uncertain if they want to give the marriage a second chance or be with the affair partner, they need to follow the advice given below.  As limerence, this addictive romantic feeling grows the betrayer is more likely to want to leave the marriage and have a much greater potential for having a “relapse” much like a drug addict would. So how does a betrayer end their feelings of limerence?

These things I’ve written below are not suggestions, if you are serious about rebuilding the marriage you need to follow what I am laying out. Remember this addiction can be ended, it just takes determination and time. 

1. Remove all evidence of the affair partner, throw out cards, letters and delete them off of all social networking websites i.e. Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. 
2. Don’t call or write under any circumstance. If you see them at work or on the street you need to depart immediately. I’ve worked with couples where the briefest contact with the affair partner can fire up the brain chemicals associated with romantic love and you’ll be very close to having a relapse. 
3. You need to have a note card that you carry with you that has written down the negative traits of the affair partner. When you find yourself thinking of that person pull out the note card with their negative traits, this will help you overcome the romantic attraction and feelings you have of that person. 
4. Next you need to spend regular time fantasizing about walking arm in arm with your spouse. 
5. Stay busy. Keep your mind on other things. Reinvest yourself back into the marriage. Stay busy rebuilding the marriage. 
6. Distract yourself from the affair partner. Call friends, go back to church, get involved in hobbies, etc. But don’t ignore your spouse while rebuilding the marriage. 
7. Start exercising. Any kind of physical exercise will make you feel better. Physically strenuous exercise is known to drive up levels of serotonin, endorphin and dopamine in the brain giving you a feelings of euphoria and calmness. 
8. Have a proper diet. Avoid foods that you know will harm your body, especially avoid sweets. 
9. Stay out of the places you and the affair partner went. Go to new and different places. Don’t listen to the same songs. In a word, avoid the people, places and things that can trigger a desire to be with the affair partner. 
10. If for whatever reason you are very tempted to contact the affair partner you need to think it through. What will happen if you contact this person? What will happen to your family? What impact will this have on your spouse as you two are rebuilding the marriage?
11. Antidepressants. Commonly people who are have recently ended an affair have difficulty remembering events or duties, obsessive thinking about their problems and their pain. Their mood is altered, struggling with despair, anxiety, fear, anger and maybe other disabling mood states. Also, problems in the body can arise, and depressed people can have trouble eating, sleeping, or engaging in sex. Many contemplate suicide. What people find themselves experiencing on antidepressants is they are able to sleep through the night, eat, and go about life in a more timely and effective manner. Eventually you become less impulsively drawn to contact the affair partner. Medications do have side effects and they are not a magic bullet, but remember what they promise is better than going back to the affair partner or contemplating suicide. 
12. Nothing beats your the romantic feelings you had with your affair partner like creating that kind of romantic love with your spouse. 

Love Addiction Is Killing Your Intimacy

For a description of the term, "Limerence" read the earlier blog post called "Madly In Love With The Affair Partner?" dedicated to understanding what it is. This type of affair is one of two ways it may be experienced for those having an affair. Not every affair has limerence as a component. 

This type of limerent affair is really about the experience of “love addiction.” Those experiencing this type of affair have a repetitive pattern of moving from one relationship to the next, because the love they are looking for doesn’t last. This type of affair isn’t necessarily about sex. It is about finding the one right person who can make them happy, unfortunately they never find them, so they continue searching. Because the betrayer is on a never-ending search for the“right one,” it prevents them from making a full commitment to the marriage. 

The person experiencing this type of affair may be uncertain if they want to continue in their marriage.  After having been with their spouse for only a few years they can decide their mate isn’t “Mr. or Mrs. Right” they continue their search for the “One.”

The experience of falling in love isn’t really true love at all. True love is a choice that is made long after the feelings have faded. Those feelings we experience when falling in love eventually fade, and their supposed too. Because true love is experienced when you don’t feel like it. 

This type of affair occurs with both males and females. 

The betrayer tends to only see the positive qualities of the affair partner, they are infatuated with. At this point they are incapable of judging their negative characteristics. While they may see the defects, they won’t give these defects consideration.

At times this occurs even when there may not be an actual relationship with the person they are “infatuated” with. It can be more like an obsession about another person.  

Those experiencing this type of affair may complain about the lack of romantic love in the marital relationship.  

Madly In Love With The Affair Partner?

This type of affair is one of two ways it may be experienced for those having an affair. Not every affair has limerence as a component. 

This type of limerent affair is characterized by the betrayer believing they are "madly in love" with the affair partner, and they are willing to risk everything to be with their affair partner. With this type, betrayers feel love sickness when they are not with their affair partner and feel powerless to stop this love addiction to them. (Read earlier blog posts of limerence for a complete description of what they are experiencing.)  

It is not uncommon for them to feel guilty about what they are doing, but at the same time, they feel they are no longer in love with their spouse and know that they will never be happy unless they are with their lover.

This limerent affair is not necessarily based on sex, but on the powerful emotions they experience with this person. In this type of affair, betrayers have most likely made the decision to leave their marriage. They believe that they can never be happy unless they get to be with the one they love.

Many times there is a pattern of the betrayer swinging back and forth between their marriage and their affair partner. When they are at home, trying to do what is right, they are miserable and feel they will never be happy. When they are with their affair partner, they are ecstatic, but may be feeling so guilty that they can't stand it, so they move back home only to feel miserable and to realize once again that they can never be happy unless they go back to the affair partner. The betrayer's in and out stance can continue for years. Betrayers often seem incapable of making a decision about what they are going to do. Even though they don’t want to be in the marriage. 

This situation is not hopeless, even though you probably have been told numerous times it is by your spouse. While this description may cause you to believe your situation is hopeless, please know that it is not. 

Often times with this type of affair, the betrayer has a very difficult time completely cutting of the affair partner even after the affair is "over." This may also be because the affair partner is also experiencing limerence. 

Part of the process of working through this type of affair is the betrayer needs to understand what they are experiencing. They may continue to believe the affair partner is their soul mate, until they understand what limerence really is and how to get out of it. Until that is done this dance of insanity will probably continue for a long time. 

The Moment The Love Sick Fall In Love

As we already discussed in a previous blog post, limerence is the name given to the condition people experience when they experience lovesickness, infatuation, obsessive love and addictive love. 

What a typical limerence experience looks like as described by Dorothy Tennov. Each step listed below builds on top of the other:

• The experience of limerence begins at a specific recallable point. Typically the moment is when eye contact is made with the “love object.” The “love object” is someone the limerence experiencer is physically attracted too or the limerence experiencer feels like this person is interested in them that is enough to induce limerence.  
• Thinking about the “love object” becomes pleasurable, with a feeling of freeness and focus on the positive attributes of the “love object.” At this stage it is possible to have more than one potential “love object,” because it is the beginning of the relationship, and limerence hasn’t hit its full peak yet. 
• Potential reciprocation from the “love object” can be euphoric, there is a persistent review of “love objects” positive qualities, replaying interactions and increased focus of one’s own relevant attributes. 
• Romantic love or love addiction increases where obstacles exist or when the person experiencing limerence doubts their “love object” feels the same way about them. It is important to recognize that eventually even when the person experiencing limerence does notice the possibility of negative attributes about their “love object” the feelings of “love” do not slow down for them. During this stage attempts are made to improve physical appearance and/or any status in order to increase desirability and there is an increasing fear of rejection. 
• With doubt and hope about having their love returned, thinking about the “love object” can reach 100% of their time for the person experiencing limerence. This can lead to feelings of euphoria or despair/depression. This deep thinking about the “love object” can be interrupted by activities that helps the person experiencing limerence feel like they are more desirable to their “love object.”
• When and if the “love object” loves back the feelings of lovesickness stabilizes until the next period of uncertainty. Intensity can increase again once adversity is perceived by the person experiencing limerence. 

Limerent episodes on average have a minimum duration of 1-3 years to 7 years, with a few dissipating within 6 months and some lasting decades. 

Understanding The Mind of The Love Sick

Not every affair has the characteristics of limerence, but many do. And those affairs that do have characteristics of limerence they do not necessarily last for many years or go through all the steps listed below. The limerent affairs that last for years are those where limerence has reached its full peak. Understanding limerence may be important to understanding who your spouse was during their affair. 

Limerence is commonly known as infatuation, lovesickness, romantic love, love addiction, or obsessive love. More clinically, by Wakin and Vo (2008) limerence has been defined as “an involuntary interpersonal state that involves intrusive, obsessive, and compulsive thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that are contingent on perceived emotional reciprocation from the object of interest.” Limerence is what many people experience when they “fall in love” or have a “romantic relationship” with someone. 

Limerence researcher, Dorothy Tennov suggests that limerence is a “certain state that some people were in much of the time, others in some of the time, but still others never in, or at least not yet.” 

Dorothy Tennov also describes the following signs of what a person is experiencing with limerence. 

1. Intrusive thinking about “love object.”
2. A longing for reciprocation from the “love object.”
3. Based on how the limerence experiencer interprets or perceives the “love objects” behaviors it will significantly alter the limerence experiencers mood for good or bad. 
4. Limerence experiencers will only have one person they have a love addiction too unless it is in the early days of limerence or it is an experience of fading limerence. 
5. Daydreaming about the “love object” returning your “love and affection” can cause you to feel relief from the “pains” of this limerent experience. 
6. People who experience lovesickness or limerence tend to be shy around their “love object” and fear the “love objects” rejection. 
7. Adversity can intensify the limerence i.e. being broken up by the “love object,” them telling you they don’t like you, finding being with them a challenge can intensify the feelings. 
8. Individuals stuck in lovesickness find themselves preoccupied with looking for signs that their love is returned, wether those signs are realistic or not. 
9. When you are experiencing limerence their is tremendous heartache when you feel uncertain about the future with your “love object.” And when you are uncertain if they like you or love you back. 
10. When an individual does feel like their “love object” likes or loves them back they have a feeling of walking on air. 
11. When an individual experiences obsessive love, other concerns in life are placed in the background. 
12. Individuals experiencing infatuation, they emphasize the attractive positive qualities (and even the average qualities) while largely ignoring the negative qualities of their “love object.”

First Steps to Healing When You Discover They’ve Cheated

Great advise that will change your life if you have been cheated on!  If you have just found out that your spouse has cheated on you this is what you need to do:

Realize that the roller coaster your about to ride is quite a ride of emotions that thousands of people board every day.Unfortunately, you are not alone.

The choices you make in the moment of discovery will impact what your road to recovery will look like, so choose wisely.

Try to remain calm.Try not to say or do something you could later regret. But when you do have times where your feelings are mismanaged don’t beat yourself up. You are very normal.

When one minute you feel sad, the next you feel rage, and the next you feel numb you are not going crazy you are experiencing symptoms of trauma.  You will likely discover a host of different feelings all at once and at different times, again this is normal.

Avoid the sexual details about the affair, if there are any, discovering this information will be re-traumatizing.  

You also do not want to read e-mails, love letters, or other correspondence for the same reason.

This is NOT your fault they cheated. 

Realize that the affair partner DOES deserve blame for the affair.  It takes two to tango.  But bashing their face in will only get you time in prison - so don't do it. 

That leads me to this:give yourself 6-12 weeks before you make any major life decisions like leaving because you need closure and healing and if your spouse is willing to stay and work things out you could really be able to come away a fully healed person, so try to be brave, you can do it...and you owe it to yourself. 

Seek support from a same-sex friend or family member who has been supportive of your marriage all along.This person should be a sounding board but should not take the place of your spouse because ultimately your spouse needs to be the healer.

Realize that the first 90 days are the hardest.

It is important to note that by talking about forgiveness in the next few points we are NOT telling you that you should just forgive, forget, and never talk about the affair or address concerns that you have.  We are simply just giving you information so that you will know what forgiveness looks like and how it helps you.  Forgiveness may come tomorrow and may not come for years and years if ever.  So just take it as useful information.

Forgiveness is a process not an event. It isnotthe shallow“oh I forgive you....but I will never live free of anger, resentment, hard feelings, or rage towards you.”  While all of those feelings rightfully happen they don’t free you from the pain of the trauma.  

Forgiveness is for YOU.Hanging on to bitterness and anger is life threatening.  You have a right to be furious...but healing and forgiveness comes when you can work through the pain and find meaning.

The moment you decide to seek understanding of what happened you are beginning the forgiveness process. For your sake we hope you see it through to the point where you can say “I trust you again.”  

Think of that great day when you can wake up in the morning and be free of the pain and worry of infidelity.Healing can happen even if your spouse has left you for the other person. Counseling can help you achieve that.

One last tidbit to make you feel good,the relationship your spouse strikes up with the affair partner is built on lies.  More often then not they never work.Don’t take bitterness and resentment into the next relationship or into the new future with your spouse. You owe it to your family, your kids, your spouse, and to yourself to fully recover and heal.

NEXT WEEK: 

So You Have Cheated on Your Spouse, Now What?

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“Brad Robinson is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist and an expert in infidelity recovery in Tulsa, OK. Together with his wife Morgan Robinson they teach people about how to understand and overcome infidelity and how to make their marriage thrive even after betrayal. You can learn more about their work by visiting www.familyandlifesolutions.com”