Relationship Radio: Marriage, Sex, Limerence & Avoiding Divorce
Relationship Radio: Marriage, Sex, Limerence & Avoiding Divorce
Can You Truly Love 2 People at Once?
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Is it possible to be in love with two people at once? đ¤ Itâs a question many wrestle with, and the answer might surprise you. In this eye-opening episode of Relationship Radio, Dr. Joe Beam and Ren Bester tackle this complex topic with honesty, empathy, and a bit of humor. đĄ
We dive deep into:
â˘The psychology behind different types of love đ
â˘The role of limerence and emotional needs in relationships đ§
â˘Why love for multiple people isnât âequalâ and how it evolves đ
â˘Real-life stories of heartbreak, hope, and healing â¨
Whether youâre struggling with conflicting emotions or just curious about the nature of love, this discussion sheds light on a subject rarely talked about. Youâll also hear powerful insights on how to restore a marriage, even in the toughest situations. đŞ
đ Donât give up! Discover how becoming a âsafe placeâ emotionally and working on yourself can transform your relationshipâand your life.
đ Listen now to learn how you can navigate love, loyalty, and choicesâand find clarity in the chaos.
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Sometimes people ask the question. It's not common, but we get it. I'm in love with this person. I'm also in love with that person. Is it possible to be in love with two people at the same time? Now, that's an interesting question we're going to be talking about today on Relationship Radio. Hi, I'm Dr Joe Beam, welcome, and our special guest today is Ren Bester, but I'd like to pronounce Bestiaire.
Speaker 2:I love that I will speak in a French accent for this episode.
Speaker 1:I would love to hear you speak in a French accent I'm terrible at that, I will not do that. And we are here with Marriage Helper and we'll be talking about today various kinds of love. So to begin with, let me just say this in answer to that Can a person be in love with two people at the same time? The answer is yes, although the love probably is going to be at least slightly different for each person. So let's start by talking about children Now, because it's a different thing and we can understand this principle here.
Speaker 1:If you have more than one job, then in all likelihood you love all of your children. Child, then in all likelihood you love all of your children. But it's likely that you love your children slightly differently based on which gender they are and how you relate to that gender, what age they are. So, for example, if you have a seven-year-old and a baby in arms, you love them both, but the love toward the seven-year-old is a little bit different than the love you hold toward that baby in arms because of the fact that he or she is just brand new and is all anticipatory. You know, he or she is part of us, came out of our bodies and therefore we love and we want everything good for this. But for the seven-year-old, you already have a personality. You have things that sometimes they do that just charm you, and things sometimes they do that you take after the other parent it's definitely not me because of the fact that everybody, even seven-year-olds, are flawed.
Speaker 1:Now it doesn't mean you love them any less, it just means that the love slightly changes based on who the person is, what the person does, age, gender, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Now I'm not talking about conditional love, Like I only love those people who meet this condition, that condition, that condition, that condition. If you have conditional love, then in reality you probably don't love anybody because of the fact that your criteria actually has a lot more to do with you satisfying you than you caring about them. But now I'm not talking about children anymore, but talking about marriage, because that's what we do here. So let's suppose that I'm in love with my wife, yet At the same time I'm developing a love for a lover. How similar and dissimilar are those, based on your experience?
Speaker 2:Yes, certainly at the beginning of an affair you are able to. I was able to hold a type of love for both people. Now, the excitement that I felt for the two people were decidedly different. My wife, it was deep and meaningful and we've been with each other for years and it's different to somebody new and exciting, and the excitement of potentially someone finding you attractive and the allure of the secrecy you know, all of that adds to the excitement of it all. As terrible as it is. I'm not trying to make it sound great in any way, shape or form, it's just the emotion that it evokes. So, yes, absolutely. I believe that you can have a sense of love for two different people, but they are certainly different.
Speaker 1:It's not exactly the same. So I would imagine even back in the days of the Old Testament, when they would have lots of wives like David. No, it was Solomon. Solomon had 700 wives and 300 concubines, which were basically wives, but not with the exact same legal status. So a thousand different women. Now, I doubt he felt the exact same for all 1,000 of those people. As a matter of fact, my guess is he didn't know the names of some of those people. I mean, I don't know that I could remember 1,000 names Shirley Sally, you know that kind of thing.
Speaker 1:But he didn't marry for love. We look back in the Old Testament. What he did was he married for political gain, like if I marry that king's daughter, then we won't go to war, If I married that king's daughter, we won't go to war. And so a lot of his wives he probably didn't love at all. Yet he did love one very specifically among writing the song called A Song of Songs, which is in the Old Testament, or Song of Solomon, as some call it, which is an extremely romantic letter. Actually, it's a poem, an extremely beautiful poem, about what he felt for her and she felt for him. So what I hear you saying is I'm probably not going to be madly in love with two different people at the same time, but I can be in love where that each one has a degree of strength, where that, at least at the outset, I might consider them almost even, even though they're different. Am I interpreting incorrectly what you said?
Speaker 2:I think you're interpreting it correctly. I will say that, because of my great brokenness, there were often more than two people involved and there was a sense of people involved and there was a sense of love or affection towards everybody who was involved. Now I say that with great shame, but I think it's important for people to know that, even if it gets as crazy as it did in my story, that there's still hope. That's what I hope to bring across by sharing that part. But yes, certainly you can feel different kinds of affection towards different people, even though it's wrong, morally wrong.
Speaker 1:I was teaching a group of counselors once. I guess there were 30 or 40 of them and I was teaching them about limerence. It's still amazing to me that in this day and time I still will find groups of counselors. Now these 30 or so counselors were from different practices. They had all come together as an association and none of them had ever heard of Limerence, even though they had master's degrees in counseling and therapy and psychology and those kinds of things. On other occasions I will go speak for a particular group of counselors, like they all work for this center, but they still come from different schools.
Speaker 1:This one got his or her master's there, that one got his or her master's over there and most of them have never heard of limerence, even though there's great documentation, plenty of research, and we know it exists, which has made us over the last 30 years one of the thought leaders internationally about limerence, because we've started studying it and teaching it early on. But one thing that blew their minds was I said OK, a person can be in limerence, or one. So let's say it's Joe and Joe's married to Alice, and at this point Joe still feels love for Alice. But it's not this intense romantic love, it's more of a friendship kind of love, but he still feels it toward her. And then Joe has Sally Sue over here that he feels this limerent love for, which is just extremely overwhelming. But let's suppose that Joe has no access to Sally Sue, the lover, because of the fact that either she's pulling away from me or she could even be gone on a three-month trip or whatever. But I don't have access to her. And this is what blew their minds, I said. Then Joe might wind up sleeping with that woman and that woman and that woman and that woman, while he's still madly in love with this woman. And it's not that this woman has no value or meaning, although that's possible, it can be. Like you said, I still feel affection and compassion for this person. This person, this person Now for me most, when I was in the limerick thing and no longer had access to Sally Sue because of the fact that she was at that point pulling away from me, I did sleep with several different women, some of whom I felt nothing for.
Speaker 1:But that was because of how we met and how it ended. I mean, like a bar one night, didn't see each other the next night, I didn't feel anything toward those people and I know, you know it's godless, it's terrible, it's using somebody. I admit those were all bad things, but some of the people I actually developed friendships with and so in the process of sleeping with them I did care about them, which is a kind of love, and so that's what blew these counselors' minds. They said, no, I tell my clients, if you're really in love with this one, how can you be sleeping with those? And I said, because of the way this thing works, absolutely, absolutely. It is so intensely emotional that if you can't fulfill yourself with this person, you don't just stop. Can you speak more to that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely, I agree with you. And it seems sick, right? Well, in a sense it is. Yes, I'll rephrase that it is sick, in a sense, it absolutely is. That doesn't make it any less true. I think the, for me, the what you want to get to the bottom of is why, now the liberance is absolutely can drive that, that you no longer have access to that person, and so you need some sort of outworking of that emotion. Um, in my case, what I've deduced is, uh, that there was a deep, deep need for affirmation. I did not like myself and I needed other people to tell me that I was okay, and that meant pursuing women almost like it was a drug. And it's not necessarily that I needed to end up in bed with a woman, I just needed to know that I could.
Speaker 1:Now, that is an extremely important point, because people said oh, you became a sex addict. No, no, similar to you. I needed affirmation. If Sally Sue is not with me, if she's pulling away, I need some woman to indicate that she finds me lovely and lovable. If we wind up in bed with each other, that's just a consequence of where everything went, but it wasn't my goal. My goal was affirmation Absolutely, absolutely.
Speaker 2:And then, if you think about limerence, you get your loving, both for your wife and the person you're in limerence with, and then it gets to a point where your conscience gets the best, the better of you, and then vilification kicks in. In order for me to justify the love that I feel for this person, I need to start vilifying my wife, and I feel terrible about it, as I feel terrible as a human being and therefore I need more affirmation. At least the people I'm seeking affirmation from are telling me that I'm okay. They don't know who I really am. I'm projecting what I want them to see. I understand that.
Speaker 1:So it's kind of interesting, because if I'm working with a couple which is pretty rare for me to work with a couple one-on-one you do that, many others in our organization do. But if they say to me well, my husband is seeing this other woman and he's really enamored of her, but he still sleeps with me and meaning sexual, then I tell him that's a good sign. Not that he's cheating on you, that's a bad sign. But the fact that he's still sleeping with you indicates there's still connection and emotion with you. And, as we would talk about it in one of our workshops, that means he's most likely still in phase one of limerence, or possibly in phase three, but he's certainly not in phase two. Ok. And so we look at that and go.
Speaker 1:Phase two, by the way, is the most intense phase of the limerence situation. And so I say if he or she's still sleeping with you, as long as you don't take hope from that, that that means he's done with her, because it doesn't. But you're still married, so you're legal, and spiritually legal even. And if he's fulfilling you, okay. And then when they say, well, should I sleep with him or her, my response is that's your choice, but if you're doing it, thinking I'm going to trap him into coming back, you're going to be very disappointed. Or if you're doing it thinking this is the sign that he's definitely coming back, you're going to be grossly disappointed. But if you want to make love to them in that situation, then you can. But if you put too much hope into it, it's going to destroy it, because at least now there's still some kind of connection to you. Okay, now, that may be too confusing. Did that make sense to you? It made sense to me, but you've been there. How do we make it make sense to somebody who hasn't been there?
Speaker 2:And there is a. Having been there myself, I tried to avoid sleeping with my wife during the time that we were separated because, a I didn't want to give her hope. B I felt guilty for what I was doing and there was something in me. Even though I was vilifying her and she was the worst human in the world ever, she was still the mother of my children and I didn't want to purposefully hurt her. Now it's an interesting thing to say, because I think we go a little bit crazy in limerence. I certainly did want to hurt her enough that she would divorce me that I didn't have to feel so bad about what I was doing.
Speaker 1:That happens so often, same with me. If I can get her to divorce me, I'm not quite so guilty.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, absolutely. But yeah, there certainly were moments. Now, here's the thing, the interesting thing, the reason why it was even on the cards to sleep with my wife was because of the work that she was putting in. Instead of being angry and vengeful and judgmental, she was kind and accepting of my emotions and what we refer to at Marriage Helper. She became a safe place for me emotionally. In fact, it was so intoxicating that there were times where I would stay for coffee when I dropped my kids. When I didn't want to, I would tell myself on the way to her house, to our house, I'm not staying for coffee. And she was just so lovely, I couldn't help myself. Isn't that great.
Speaker 1:By the way, his wife is blonde, blue eyes, beautiful.
Speaker 2:She is beautiful. She is beautiful and the amazing thing was the way she made me feel, because there was so much tension and turmoil in our first marriage. So it is our bad marriage.
Speaker 2:uh, yes, she was always beautiful to look at, but you can make someone ugly to yourself oh sure you know you can the picture I painted in my mind about her made me unattracted to her, no matter how beautiful she was, but but she, she, uh, the the things that she did escalated the cognitive dissonance in my mind. I'm trying to hate you, but you're becoming amazing.
Speaker 1:So frustrating.
Speaker 2:But it worked. My goodness did it work.
Speaker 1:Okay, so let's just talk about it more in that light and we'll come to some other things. But in there, so you lost love for Adele as you intensified limerence towards someone else, but at some point the love for Adele started building again. Now, did that happen after limerence ended or while you were still in the tail end of limerence?
Speaker 2:Very, very good question and I in our situation. We reconciled while I was still in limerence, very much in limerence. I don't want to get into all the details, I think it'll make the episode too long, but there was a moment that Adele created where I was able to confess everything that I'd done, and I made a decision in that moment to follow my beliefs and values, which was to recommit to my family. But I was still madly in love with the person that I was in limerence with, so the decision didn't instantly change the emotions. Oh, it took six months for me to start feeling like a human being.
Speaker 1:I need people to understand that it doesn't instantly change the emotions.
Speaker 2:No, no. And it was six months of hell, I think, for both of us. My wife was an absolute champion at being a safe place for me, so I'd have a bad day and she'd ask what's wrong and I'd say I'd never want to lie to you again, but I don't want to hurt you. I'm going to tell you I miss her, and her response would be thank you so much for telling me. I'm so glad that you feel free and safe enough to tell me. She said that every single time.
Speaker 1:Wow, that is amazing. It is amazing, it is. Yes, that's as powerful as it can be. Yeah, I've watched that happen a few times with couples where that, well, mostly it has been with a wife. So the wife and the husband have been in limericks with somebody else and when that limerick relationship began to end, either because he chose to or because the other person ended it, then this husband most of the time that I've seen the husband then would make his wife basically his therapist, in the sense that he didn't talk about the other woman all the time but he could say I miss her or I felt that or whatever, and watch these wives like Adele, just buck up and be strong and say I hear you, I understand you, but these women were able to understand. You've made a choice and emotions follow choices. So that emotion will eventually fade and the emotions for me will grow. And every time she was the safe place for you, probably the emotions you felt for her increased a little.
Speaker 2:Yes, absolutely. Now it was interesting in the moment I felt enormous guilt Because I was hurting my wife, but yes, it's certainly every time. She was a safe place. It softened my heart towards her and made me realize what an incredible woman I married. I'm speechless. I try to be eloquent with how incredible she was and how she stood for our marriage and created a safe place and really laid the foundation for us to be able to not only reconcile but to fall in love with each other again and to be able to be here. For me, this is a miracle, dr Beam. I might look cool, calm and collected, but it's been five years of us having a relationship, with marriage help, and we haven't been able to come to America. And here I am and I'm sitting across from my hero and Adele's hero.
Speaker 1:See, we had to bring people from South Africa to say that.
Speaker 2:There's so many who are so grateful for what you did, but the impact that what we teach here can have this is our story is a miracle. It's a miracle it is, but it's not. It doesn't have to be only our miracle. That's exactly right. My wife was a normal, broken human being who got smashed by her husband's terrible behavior and all she did was focus on herself. Listen to what Marriage Helper teaches.
Speaker 2:Focusing on becoming the best she could be. Yes, 100%, and there's nothing special about us. There's no. The calling from above is on our life. We are normal human beings, broken human beings, and one of us decided to save a marriage which is just, it's miraculous. It really is, and I hope people hear from these conversations that we have that there is hope. I, you, know people, I coach people and their stories look, or their situations look completely hopeless and I know I can say with conviction not because of something that I studied or because marriage helper told me to tick the box, and say it with conviction, because I live inside of the miracle. I know that there is always hope, even if there's these things where you're in love with two people at the same time, or if you have to be safe for your spouse who's going through terrible mourning because their lover has left them and it looks like all hell is broken loose and there's no hope. I'm convinced that there is hope.
Speaker 1:Me too. Me too, absolutely so. If you're a person who is in a situation where that you're married and you feel love still toward your spouse, whoever he or she is, and you feel love towards some other person that you have developed a relationship with and right now you're saying, well, I love them both, we say yes, that's possible. But based on the experience we've had with thousands and thousands and thousands of couples, that's not going to remain dormant. It's going to change its dynamic. You're going to continue to increase in your emotional connection to one of those people more than with the other. Now, at some point, you will make a choice. We sometimes talk about a thing called the valley and people say, what is that? Well, that's when they're moving toward the spouse but also moving toward the lover. That's the valley. They're very indecisive in the valley and people say, well, how long do I? Let them stay in the valley. We recommend it's always your choice, but we recommend you let them stay in the valley as long as they're still making progress toward you. But the other night he spent the night with her. That's a bad thing. We hope it didn't happen. But is he still making progress toward you? Now you can pull the plug anytime you want. In the words of the great philosopher Ray Charles, you can say hit the road, jack, and don't you come back. No more, no more, no more, no more. Or you can continue this for a while. It's painful, but you can continue.
Speaker 1:If they're making moves towards you, people say well, if I'm the one over here and my spouse is the one in that dichotomy, then is there a clue as to when I should stop? I always say if it starts damaging you I don't mean just hurting, of course it hurts, but I mean damaging you or your children physically, intellectually, emotionally and spiritually then it's time to pull the plug. I'm getting sick because my immune system's falling apart because of all the stress. Then end the stress. Don't let yourself physically wither and die because of this. Intellectually, I can't even hold a job anymore. It's like my brain is jelly. Well, you've got to get back with life. That's a sign to pull the plug. Emotionally, I find myself in extreme depression all the time where I can't do anything and I'm on so many different medicines, pharmaceuticals to help me deal with that, but I can't function in life anymore. It's time to pull the plug. Spiritually, this is negatively affecting my relationship with God to the point where that my extreme anger at God or my lack of belief that God can do anything is destroying my spiritual life, then it's time to pull the plug.
Speaker 1:But we recommend again your choice that as long as that person's still making movement towards you and you or your children are not being damaged, then maybe tolerate that for a while. But wait a minute. Dr Beam, you just said that one of those is going to grow more than the others. If you just heard what Wren said, if you practice the pies, become the best you can physically, intellectually, emotionally, spiritually and become the safe space. Now we've got videos all over the Internet about that, all over our website here about that. We also can teach you more about that if you become a member in our group, our membership group. We've got a lot of things to offer there. But when you learn how to be the safe place even though this might be the most intense at this point, like with Wren, he's still in limerence. When he goes back to Adele, starts moving back in Because she was such a safe place, he could be so open and transparent Then this person begins to lose.
Speaker 1:He said but it took six months. It's not typically like that. One time in all these years I saw it end overnight Once. Every other time it fades away. You say why? Because you become the most attractive source here. Now here's a question. I know what the answer is for me. With Sally Sue, the person I left Alice for not her real name you said you felt guilty when you were open up and transparent to Adele. Could you have been that open and transparent with the other person? Could you have said I really want to go back to my wife. I feel that I'm growing in love with her. Now realize you were not still in contact, but if you were still in contact with her, what would have happened if you were that open and transparent with that lady?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it certainly would not have been met with the same amount of acceptance.
Speaker 2:I think it was an interesting story with us because both myself and the limerent person were Christians, so there was an element of what we're doing is wrong not justifying it in any way, of course, but certainly I don't think there's anyone on earth who would have been able to maybe that's a bit extreme, but very on earth who would have been able to.
Speaker 2:Maybe that's a bit extreme, but very few people who would have been able to do what my wife did, and it took concerted effort for five out of the six months that we were separated. This didn't just happen. She had to make conscious decisions every day, whether to act on her emotion, stay in bed, live in unforgiveness, breed resentment or write down goals physically, intellectually, emotionally, spiritually. Say the words out loud. I forgive Wren and be a safe place for me when her world was falling apart, when I would leave. She would be wonderful when I was at home and she will tell you in the beginning of that journey, when I'd get in my car and leave, she'd get in the bed and cry herself to sleep. But you didn't see that.
Speaker 1:I didn't see that she showed you strength, absolutely. She is an amazing woman and we're using that word not lightly there In the sense of what we were just talking about. One of the things that drives this intense emotion for an affair partner or a limerick partner is fear fear that you won't wind up together. Now, of course, I'm sure that Adele was experiencing fear as well. He's made a move back toward me, but what if he falls away? What if he goes back? You know recidivism, all that kind of stuff. And she controlled her fear and did the right things.
Speaker 1:But since fear is so prevalent in limerence, I could have never told Sally Sue I think I should go back to my wife, because that would have shot her fear through the roof and the reaction would have been intense. It might have been yelling and screaming or it might have been a cold shoulder, it could have been any number of things, but there definitely would have been an intense reaction because fear is so powerful over here. Interestingly, while in limerence with her, I would have done the same thing if she had said that to me. I think this is wrong. I think we need to end this. Then I would have had some kind of strong emotional reaction, because fear drives this so much.
Speaker 1:So sometimes you need to understand. It's still not apples to apples and you say but what are the same things happening over there? It's not. What's happening over there is different than what's happening with the spouse. Those are different things. You say, well, then I should be trying to do what. No, no, no, you don't want to do what the limerick person is doing. Yes, it involves intense emotions. They're powerful, they're overwhelming. They're powerful, they're overwhelming, they're amazing in the sense that they feel like a, almost like a high of cocaine although I've never used cocaine, and in that you don't want. That Over here is steady, solid, and so if sometimes you see a quick emotional reaction toward the other person, don't panic. Those emotions can do that, but that's going to fade pretty quickly and so while they're still quote in love with the other person, at least in a sense, if they're deepening and developing more and more love for you, this will eventually be eliminated. You concur?
Speaker 2:yes, I do concur, indeed, and I've experienced it more than once and, of course, with the hundreds of couples and solo people that I've coached over and over and over again. Again, we don't have to make it up. It's not only the research which is really important, it's we. Live this right. We live it. We see it every day. Every day, if you can hang in there and work on yourself, focus on yourself and become the best version of you and outlast limerence what you fight for.
Speaker 2:If you're the standing spouse, I want to look into the camera because it's so important. Is that okay? Good, please. Yeah, if you are the standing spouse and you're at the end of your rope and you think it's all over, he or she is never coming back. I implore you to not give up. I am so grateful that somebody my amazing wife did not give up on me. She fought for us, she fought for her. She fought for me, she fought for our children and for legacy and for generations to come. The thing that you're doing by watching this video and refusing to give up is enormously powerful and it will, to quote the gladiator echo, into eternity. Please, don't give up.
Speaker 1:And to the person who is not the sending spouse, the other spouse, the person who is involved with somebody else, either beginning to develop love for somebody else or mentally in love with somebody else, or beginning to have the deterioration of the love you've had for somebody else. Understand that you're going through a process that we can show you. If we sit down together, we can actually draw it out on paper for you and say did you experience this, this? And you'll go how did you know? We've been there, and not only have we been there. Thousands and thousands of people that we've helped have been there, and not only have we been there. Thousands and thousands of people that we've helped have been there.
Speaker 1:You see, what we're most interested in is your true, genuine happiness for a lifetime. Really, I know sometimes we come across as you guys are just trying to save our marriage. Well, that's definitely our mission. We're trying to save your marriage, but ultimately we want you to be truly happy inside for a lifetime, and the way to do that is to live up to your integrity, to live up to your beliefs and values, to not let your emotions overpower you, to lead you into making decisions that hurt other people and hurt you. Now can you get over those things and have a life? We've helped people in their second marriages absolutely, but understand this. Wouldn't it be better if, at the very outset, you could fix this now? And we're willing to help you fix that?
Speaker 2:Just contact us Absolutely, and we do that by working on ourselves becoming the best version of ourselves. And yes, I agree with you. Click the link below wherever you find a link on this video. Join our membership. We can teach you exactly how to do that, step-by-step.
Speaker 1:But we can't instantly change your emotions. We can teach you what to do, but it's your choice to make that. Now some of you guys are looking at me saying but what if, even though we're on the tail end of that limerence thing over there or something, what about guilt and shame and that kind of stuff or maybe it's not even limerence I'm married to one person and having an affair with the other person, that's not necessarily limerence, it's primarily sexual or something. How do you deal with the guilt? How do you get over the shame? We need to talk about that. Let's do that in the next session. Thank you for watching Relationship Radio and we will see you on the next episode of Relationship Radio.
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