The intensity that you are describing sounds like limerance.
People confuse Limerance with infatuation or early stages of love, and it’s something much darker than that. There is a fair amount of bad and good info out there.
Liberace is more of an addiction that is caused by getting addicted to dopamine/endorphins/adrenaline that flood your brain due to risky behaviors.
Gambling addiction is a good example of this. Them rough the highs of wining and the uncertainty a cycle develops in which people become addicted to the adrenaline.
Now, I can’t say that is what happened to your husband, but I did experience this and it made me highly unpredictable, and caused me to have intrusive thoughts for a long time. I eventually was treated like an OCD patient.
And despite the good qualities you may be able to see in this woman it doesn’t make her a good person or mean she isn’t soul-less. So it doesn’t mean he didn’t affair down. Men (and women) tend to value loyalty and when faced with an actual relationship with the person knows the other one is unstable or unloyal based on how it all started. Plus she had no issue participating in ruining the lives of two spouses and their children.
The reason I suspect Limerence is because of the immediate intensity. They may have past shared experiences but 25 years later they were strangers again. That’s a lot of life lived and changes that may not have been for the better.
For me, I knew the person very distantly for a few years and when I was mentally in a bad place, I sought mental escapism by inventing these narratives in my head that were not rational, logical or even true. We were texting all day long every single day and saying Inlove you after a month or so. That didn’t feel like it was true but the narratives made it feel like maybe it was possible. Like it never felt real somehow it’s hard to explain. It’s like I knew we were both lying but I needed it to be true.
Limerwnce is common in people who are having some sort of existential crisis, and they are seeking extreme validation. If you look up the Wikipedia page on it I think it explains it well. Dr. Frank Pittman wrote articles on romantic infidelity that to me describes limerqnce as well.
The truth of the matter is that it doesn’t mean you need to excuse the behavior or be weary of his stability. I believe that when the effects of limerance wear off (either by winning the true affection of the other person, or by going through the withdrawal from the flooding endorphins it’s almost like you have woken up from a bad dream.
Like any addiction it still starts with willful decisions and a complete lack of respect for your spouse, and really yourself for that matter. But once it takes hold nothing is logical or rational and it does take a concerted effort to recover. If I had won the true affection and my so, and he had left his wife, then likely the doses of reality would have caused the flood c to stop and withdrawal to happen and then reality take hold. Instead he was caught, and the withdrawal was forced that way and I had a hard time understanding the depths in which I had found myself.
Explaining all this does not excuse it, and I have done a lot of work on myself not to be susceptible to such things in the future. Your instincts are right not to just go back to trusting him. If you are interested in reconciliation, there need to be a lot of therapy to reach the deep levels of self awareness that I think one needs in order tone some of those repairs, and there needs to be a deeper relationship built with his integrity and values.
I am sure this has done a number on you, and you need to consider the best way to position yourself in providing your own safety and security. I would propose in addition to his therapy, that arrangements are made for your financial security to be in place. Money in an account built up, certain things put in your name, etc.
