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Over and over I read that the feelings in an affair cannot be love. Sexual attraction, friendship, caring, all fall under the category of 'foggy' thinking. It is all just about getting a 'fix', merely a chemical reaction that has nothing to do with 'love'.

Yet, what does this say about all relationships and how they start? Isn't this the way we each find a person we want to spend much more time with, perhaps marry? So, are we all just 'foggy' when we get married? If so, how can anyone be expected to honour vows that they made when they were 'foggy', when they could not think straight, but only wanted a 'fix' from the object of their addiction?

If all that is not love, and love is only an action, a partnership between two people, a contract for life, then why do we bother waiting for the 'right' one to marry? Why do we date until we feel an intense emotional connection with someone, if this feeling is just about fantasy and foggy thinking?

How can everyone believe that this feeling is 'real' when you are single and available but not 'real' when you are not.

.. that the feelings in an affair cannot be love.....what does this say about all relationships and how they start

healthy relationships don't start based on lies. with love, there are no lies.

So, are we all just 'foggy' when we get married

some people are. some actually are experiencing real healthy love.

when they could not think straight, but only wanted a 'fix' from the object of their addiction

that's not love, that's self serving. love is not self serving, but putting someone else in equal regards to yourself.

it's so important to know yourself, have emotional maturity and have a realistic view of what love really is.

difference between this foggy love (call it what you will) and healthy real love is that real love is not selfish. foggy love "happens" real love takes work.

I love this topic. The responses are always so interesting. I'm taking a developmental psych course and this was discussed in depth. We were discussing the Triangular Love Theory. I'll bump the thread.

Read the Five Love Languages. What you're describing is the obsessive part of love, the hormones, the endorphins, etc. It's addictive, it's intoxicating. It's not real love.

healthy relationships don't start based on lies. with love, there are no lies.

OK. My relationship with OM did not start based on any lies. We knew each other for many years and stepped over no boundaries for many years. We respected each other very much and our affection grew.

it's so important to know yourself, have emotional maturity and have a realistic view of what love really is.

And, how many people have achieved this emotional maturity and know themselves before marriage? Most marriages start out when people are young and have very little world experience. How many have a realistic idea of what love is at that point?

What you're describing is the obsessive part of love, the hormones, the endorphins, etc. It's addictive, it's intoxicating. It's not real love.

What exactly am I describing? So, the feelings you have for another person, intimacy, attraction, connection, have nothing to do with love? Then what is this 'real love' you refer to. And what makes it real?

We were discussing the Triangular Love

Thanks for this. This seems more concrete. So, does having all three of these makes up 'real love' in your opinion, or does real love have to stand the test of time, and if you can maintain all three forever, then you can consider it real?

Read the Five Love Languages.

Well, I have read this and I don't really see what this has to do with 'real love'. This is just about how to show love to keep another person happy and content, and also to recognize what you need in a relationship to feel loved.

So, does having all three of these makes up 'real love' in your opinion, or does real love have to stand the test of time, and if you can maintain all three forever, then you can consider it real?

You're asking some great questions. I love it!

I believe that all three of these need to be present for what is called "consumate" love and no I don't think it has to last forever to be real love.

People change and cicumstances change but that doesn't change moments of our past that resonate with us for the rest of our lives and the people that inhabit those moments with us.

I believe all marriages start with faith. A simple precept that has an almost unbearable burden associated with it. You have two people, most don't really know each other very well pledging that no matter what happens they will weather the storms and calms together for the rest of their lives.

No one believes it's not "real". As those very real circumstances start hitting we're shaken. We may reach for the other and find them not there. We flounder. We struggle. All our wonderful baggage is bumping up against us and our partners.

Really, it's a miracle how anyone makes it. But they do...despite poverty, illness, loss, infidelity, betrayal, massive hurt. We see examples of that here on this site. I believe that somewhere along the way we learn (hopefully) how to be intimate and vulnerable, to celebrate our passion and never loose that, and build a strong unbreakable commitment. Does it always happen? Nope, but that doesn't invalidate the journey or the people that engaged in it and found their paths truly didn't end up together.

Just how I view it right now

[This message edited by uncertainone at 6:22 PM, September 7th (Tuesday)]

We knew each other for many years and stepped over no boundaries for many years.

You get no credit for this.

I have no doubt you loved MOM. I do think many As are about love but what kind of love? Could you scream your love for him those years without shame? Could you introduce MOM as your true love to your children, relatives, friends without a sense of guilt?

You had to hide it, you had to lie.

That love was founded in lies and deceive to many people, FOR YEARS. That love destroyed your moral compass.

And you gave yourself physically for months putting at risk other peoples lives.

Can "real love" be so ugly?

Actually I think so but it doesn't make it OK.

I think you better stop romanticizing this love, demystify it ASAP instead wondering about if it was real love. It was. Real and ugly.

BTW, think about your own role as thief of emotional energy from you marriage and how this could contribute to the dynamic.

I don't agree. I think there is a purity to real love that is incorruptible. Love can never be ugly. Ever.

The problem is not the love. It is how it is manifested.

I also think there are women who need to love someone like other people need air. The survival of the species depends on our capacity, ability and need to devote our lives to loving and caring for others. The survival of the species does not depend on men to do the same. Don't blame me. Blame Darwin.

A wife who needs to love someone and is continuously frustrated in her efforts to love her H, for whatever reason, will find someone else to love. It may be Brad Pitt, or The Bachelor or one of those characters from the Twilight series (sorry, haven't read them), but she is loving someone. The only question is who. If OM he comes along at the right time and in the right context, she loves him.

The need to give love can be as compelling as the need to receive it.

That may not always be the case with every WW but I guarantee you that it is sometimes the case with some WW's.

So all you BH's out there with a WW like me -- are you doing your part to let your WW love you? Are you making it safe for her to express her feelings and fears? Are you thinking about your part in the collective train wreck?

Or are you shutting her down because, hey, now you are entitled to do what you have been doing all along which is shutting her out because of your own fears and feelings, and whew! now I have a gold plated excuse to not look at myself and my own behavior and lots and lots of people to tell me how very right I am and if I run out of people I actually know, I can come here to feel better about my CHOICE to shut my wife out.

This post won't resonate for everyone by any means. Doesn't make it less true for the few.

Love can never be ugly. Ever.

Really ugly people can love, though. People that are damaged, broken, warped, skewed. You and I both know this based on posts regarding some FOO issues that have been discussed here.

I do think many As are about love but what kind of love?

So true, Lost68! Unfortunately, not just limited to affairs. I drove in an ambulance a month ago with a women whose jaw was broken and had three cracked ribs. Her husband was sobbing because he loved her so much. He had also just beat the shit out of her.

That's why I think these posts are so great. People asking hard questions and taking long looks and themselves and what they felt was "true love".

A few weeks ago some very brave BS's posted about how horribly they treated their WS prior to d day pretty much throughout their whole marraige. They were taking a hard look at their actions not to rug sweep the devastation of the affair and the horrible choice their spouse made in perpetrating that infidelity, but because they wanted to be better people.

That's what it's all about right? Long hard looks at ourselves no matter what letter goes before the S.

[This message edited by uncertainone at 8:15 PM, September 7th (Tuesday)]

Thanks for posting this. I have asked myself this question in this context many times over, but have always been too chicken shit frankly to post anything about it. I am reading the responses here and will also spend more time with the Five Love Languages book and read the thread in this forum.

I think limerence is not a dirty word - it is the way many true and lasting loves begin. It is also the way deceitful, ugly relationships can begin (or never progress from) as well, but the fact that someone feels "limerence" to me does not invalidate any future love the develops from it.

The following are thoughts in progress, and I am not sure I will ultimately agree with myself as I spend more time turning these matters over in my head over time. But I think that the betrayal of infidelity is so huge - so impossible to wrap one's mind around - that some simplification is needed for the BS's survival.

I think one of those things is that all "love" born of an A cannot be "real" love. I agree that the vast majority of "love" arising out of an A is really lurrrve - and it evaporates in the cold light of reality. But I don't think that is true of all As. I think that there is true, enduring love that has come out of an A - even though that is exceedingly rare.

That is not to say that there is any excuse for the A. But it is too simple to say that because a love came from inexcusable betrayal, it cannot be love at all under any circumstances.

I get what you are saying. I read the "elements" of love - friendship, respect, humor, sexual attraction, warmth, etc. and think "okay, check, check, check, check, check." I had those things with the xOM. I think what I did was morally bankrupt, callous and cruel and I know that I will never make decisions like that again through the agonizing work I have done. But that does not mean I don't think I loved the xOM. I am nine months from the end of the A. I have been divorced for some time, I am living half a world away from xOM, I have come here regularly, been in intensive IC twice a week. The "fog" - if such a thing exists - is not in play here. I loved xOM. I do not believe I will ever feel otherwise.

Although I ended the A myself, I think there are relationships that began as As that last a lifetime. The love shared there is not invalidated by the origins of it in betrayal. On the flip side, I think there are marriages that last a lifetime without infidelity that are not love. "Always" and "never" make things so much easier to process when we are overwhelmed with pain. But there are always exceptions.

This is such an interesting topic, and one that is often on my mind. Thanks for posting and for the thought-provoking responses as well.

I think real love is the kind you feel for your child or your dog. Love can certainly be with a spouse too but I'm just using kids and the dog as a way to isolate the concept of love from sex and external validation. Love isn't about "getting or receiving" something from the other person even when you've "given" love freely. It may hurt when you don't feel loved back but true love doesn't rely on the "return on your investment". Somewhere in the context of "needing to give love because of needing to receive love" is a self serving interest that may even be manipulative.

Responsibility. Love is responsibility. This was given to me a long time ago and way before I was exposed to Mr.LL's affair. This resonates even more deeply and seems even truer now.

Great question.

I believe that both quote-unquote "real love" and the type of extramarital affair you're talking about begin exactly. the. same. way. Without question. Those "limerance" feelings we feel at the beginning of a legitimate relationship are, in my opinion, absolutely no different from those felt at the beginning of my affair, for example, or the affairs that many of us here have had.

The difference as I see it is that the love relationship is able to flourish, if in fact it does, under healthy conditions. The affair relationship---only in my opinion---cannot. During the affair it's obviously secretive and torrid in most cases with an undeniable element of wrongdoing. And if the affair relationship continues after divorce or exposure, I honestly don't understand (again---only MY opinion ) how it can possibly continue and grow without feelings of crushing guilt and remorse over what was sacrificed and the people who were hurt.

This is one of the best posts I have read in a long time. Thanks for having the courage to post this OS. Everybodies responses are great. All of them.

Really ugly people can love, though. People that are damaged, broken, warped, skewed.

I question whether that is love. It's something, for sure, but giving it the label love gives it undeserved power.

"Love" that takes and doesn't give isn't love." "Love" that demands that it's object conform to receive it isn't love. "Love" that sacrifices it's object in favor of the well being of the giver isn't love.

At least, I don't think so. I'm still struggling for a working definition.

I love my children. Every single value I have is instantly disposal for them in the the right -- or seriously wrong -- context. I will lie, cheat, steal, placate, mollify, prostrate myself, beg, plead, fight like a demon from hell, abandon my ego, my friends and any semblance of a normal life, cheerfully offer my very soul in return for their safety. And I know that because I did it for my daughter in a "Ripley's Believe It or Not" context. No self doubt, no looking back, no regrets. I'd do it again, and more.

Part of my problem with recovery is that my A looks like a big old nothing compared to what we went through with her. And the one time I asked him he laughed at the notion that this was worse.

End t/j

What does love look like between a man and a woman? Haven't a clue. But it has to have some common elements with what I feel for my kids because that -- not what I learned from my mother -- is my starting definition.

Love this thread by the way -- I'm trying to figure out the answer to this question so I can articulate the goal.

[This message edited by Where did I go at 9:43 PM, September 21st (Tuesday)]

Hi there,

Very interesting post. BTW, I am posting as a WS here, just so you know...

How can everyone believe that this feeling is 'real' when you are single and available but not 'real' when you are not.

OK, this is where I have an issue. The feeling can be very real when you are not single, and it should be with your BS, the one you promised to be faithful to. This idea that you can just fall in love with someone else is complete bullshit...sorry. When you get to the point when you develop feelings with someone outside your M, you have crossed so many lines, it's not even funny.

The question is not whether we can develop feelings for another person, obviously, we know that can happen. If you spend enough time with someone, share things, intimate things, discuss what your favorite things are, etc. then of course you will develop feelings. How true those feelings are, however, is a different story. The question is: when you are married, what the hell are you doing getting so close to someone outside your marriage?? I think of it as a set of multiple doors. Someone starts flirting innocently with you, bam! there's the first door. You can either keep it closed and change the subject, walk away, or whatever, or, you engage...it's your choice. Then, the conversation/flirting progresses, and other doors open, and more choices.... you make the wrong choices, then you find yourself cheating.

Feeling love has nothing to do with Fog. When my A was found out, in was in the fog for a couple days, thinking that things were a certain way, but you know, I was just fooling myself. In the end, I acted in a terribly selfish way, and spent a couple of days (fog) thinking that I was not selfish, and things "just happened"...

What a sham! I acted selfishly, turned my back on the love of my life, my children, and everything that was important to me... Period.

Yet, what does this say about all relationships and how they start? Isn't this the way we each find a person we want to spend much more time with, perhaps marry? So, are we all just 'foggy' when we get married?

I did not feel the same when I married as when we started the relationship. When we started going out I was infatuated, not in love. Love developed with time as I felt safer and safer to open up to him all my "ugly" side and vice versa (or rather I thought vice versa).

Why do we date until we feel an intense emotional connection with someone, if this feeling is just about fantasy and foggy feeling?

I didn't marry him because I had intense emotional connection. My decision to marry him was as much as an intellectual choice as an emotional one. Intense emotional connection sounds like something out of a fairy tell, along with love ar first sight and soulmates. I married him because I thought we were compatible, we felt safe with each other, and I thought we loved each other. I truly believe that I could have found just about anyone else who I was compatible to, attracted to, felt safe with, and fall in love with him enough to marry. It just happened that I met, dated, became infatuated with, and subsequently loved WH.

To me love is not just feelings. If it stops there I feel it is kinda empty. It starts from an intellectual choice, a conscience effort, (we have the same goals, same ideals, I'm treated with respect, etc) as much as an emotional one (I'm attracted to him, I feel safe, I feel the need to be with him, etc).

I won't say the there is no real love between APs. There could be, idk. But I could not say that love is *just* an intense emotional connection. That just falls short of what I believe love is.

ETA: FG illustrates what I was trying to say by intellectual choice. Someone starts flirting with you. You choose to either reciprocate or shut in down. That's choice #1. Then maybe you go out to lunch with him. Choice #2. Then you share some intimate details. Choice #3. And so on until you've allowed yourself to develop feelings for the other person - infatuation. Those feelings later develop into love. You get the picture. That's why boundaries are so important. So that you don't make all those small choices.

[This message edited by icbtih8 at 3:46 AM, September 8th (Wednesday)]