Why Your Confrontation Is Pushing Your Spouse Away

Why Confronting Your Spouse's Limerence Always Backfires (And What to Do Instead)
If you’ve discovered your spouse is in an affair, your first instinct is likely to confront them, expose the truth, and demand they "wake up." But as many heartbroken spouses discover, this almost always pushes them further away. Why?

In today’s video, Dr. Kimberly Beam Holmes and Dr. Joe Beam explain the psychological "brain takeover" known as Limerence. When a spouse is in this state, they aren't just making a bad choice—they are experiencing a chemical addiction similar to OCD.

Learn why your efforts to "fix" them are failing and how to shift your strategy to actually save your marriage.

🔍 In this video, we cover:
The Limerence Trap: Why your spouse seems like a completely different person.

The Confrontation Backfire: Why attacking the "Affair Partner" makes your spouse defend them even more.

The Science of Limerence: How dopamine and "Affair Fog" create a fantasy world that logic cannot break.

The 3 Things You Must Stop Doing: If you want any hope of reconciliation, you must stop these three specific behaviors immediately.

The Path to Reconciliation: How to focus on what YOU can control to become the person your spouse eventually wants to come back to.

What is Limerence?
Limerence is a state of mind which results from romantic feelings for another person and typically includes obsessive thoughts and fantasies and a desire to form or maintain a relationship with the object of love and have one's feelings reciprocated. In a marriage, this often looks like "Affair Fog," where the spouse becomes erratic, re-writes marital history, and seeks a "dopamine high" from a new partner.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Marcos’ Wake-Up Call
• 3:13 Why Confrontation Backfires
• 4:21 Defining Emotional Affairs
• 5:43 Limerence Explained
• 8:13 Why Logic And Shame Fail
• 10:23 What You Can Control Now
• 13:58 Three Things To Stop Doing

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 1:28

If you're here because your spouse isn't an affair and you feel you're the only one trying, this is for you. I was a guy everyone thought was a problem. And to be honest with you, they were not wrong. My wife wasn't an affair. But I focused on telling her why she was wrong. I focused on controlling the outcome so much until one day she told me, I'd rather be dead than stay married to you. I wasn't failing because I didn't care. I did. I didn't care. Quite a lot. I was failing because I was trying to force her to change instead of changing what I could. When I stopped pushing, manipulating, trying to make everybody, including my wife, see it my way. Nothing immediately changed. Nothing magically fixes itself. Not at first, not for quite a bit. But at some point the dynamics shift. And all of a sudden, reconciliation became possible. What you're about to hear is not about fixing yourself. It's about understanding what creates change in your relationship when there is an affair. Dr. Joe and Dr. Kimberly, I'm about to break down now what I wish I knew about eight years ago. This is not about tactics. It is about how to see the situation with more clarity.

SPEAKER_00: 3:02

Today, the primary focus of this show is focusing on thinking about helping you better understand what needs to change, what you need to do differently if your spouse is involved in an affair. You just heard from Marcos, and Marcos explained how in his situation he did all of the wrong things. Now he didn't go into detail about all the wrong things he did, but what we typically see when people realize that their spouse is in an affair is that they start to confront. They try and break into their spouse's phone, they try and find emails, incriminating text messages. And once they do, they feel empowered, armed with the information they need in order to confront their spouse so that their spouse will feel that they have been exposed, so that they will have no choice but to end the affair and to try and put the marriage back together. But you see, all of those things and many more are actually making the situation worse. Trying to confront your spouse actually ends up backfiring. And it ends up in a lot of ways getting your spouse to dig their heels in even deeper and pushing them into the arms of the lover that you are so desperately trying to get them to come back to you from. My name is Dr. Kimberly Beam Holmes. I am joined today by Dr. Joe Beam. And we have been, I mean, me for 14 years and Joe for over 30 years, working with couples in situations just like the one that we're explaining here, just like the one that Marcos was in, just like the one that maybe many of you are into. And it's important to understand what you're doing that's making the situation worse versus what you need to do that can make it better. Now we don't have time in this program today to go into all of the specific plan step by step, do this, do that. And a lot of that is because some things shift based on your unique situation. And we we deal with those inside of our program. But in today's, in inside of our program, like our workshop program, our coaching or things like that. But in today's show, we're gonna be prioritizing live callers that have situations dealing with affairs and really wanting to help you understand the mindset shifts that you should begin engaging in if you want to save your marriage from an affair. But maybe the place that we should first start is understanding what's going on in the mindset of your spouse.

SPEAKER_02: 5:34

To do that, we must first divide affairs into two broad categories: the affairs that involve emotional connection and the affairs that are primarily sexual. If the affair is primarily sexual, the things we talk about today will help you understand, but not to the degree if the affair is an emotional connection as well. Sometimes, as a matter of fact, people even refer to that. It's an emotional affair. And what they mean by that is, as far as I know, it's a strong emotional connection between the two of them, but so far it hasn't turned sexual. But whether it's turned sexual or not, the kind of affair we're talking about today is one that does involve the emotions. And there's a phrase for that, and the phrase for that we call limerence.

SPEAKER_00: 6:20

Limerence at its core is when someone has fallen madly in love with someone else. Now, there's a lot going on and being talked about in regards to limerence out there now. But when we started talking about it, I mean, probably 15 to 20 years ago, it was a brand new term. No one was really talking about it as much. But we've had years, decades of understanding limerence, how it manifests in relationships, what's going on when a person inside of a marriage is in limerence with someone else, and more importantly, how you can still save your marriage, even when that's the situation. So, what is limerence? It's when a person has fallen madly in love with someone else, and this becomes a problem when you are married, but madly in love with another person who isn't your spouse. A general high-level way to think about it is when someone is in limerence, there's been a takeover of their brain of sorts. It's similar in many ways to an addiction. Someone is chasing a high. They are chasing that dopamine high, if you want to think of it that way, where they are wanting to seek pleasure. And that seeking of pleasure is the main thing on their mind. And the thing that's bringing them pleasure is being in relationship with this other person. It's all they can think about, it's all they want to do. They want to be with this person. They spend 85% or more of their time thinking about how they can be with this other person. And the thought of not being with this other person is enough to drive them insane. This, of course, begins to change the way that they act. They become more erratic in their behavior. They start to change how they think about the past in order to justify the feelings that they're feeling now. All of these things show up when there is someone in limerence. So if this sounds like something that your spouse is currently doing, then it's helpful to understand this is a brain state that they are in. And the thing that gives the most hopeful lining to all of it is that limerence cannot last forever. It biologically cannot last forever. Your brain can't live in that state for longer than three, maybe four years maximum. Therefore, limerence always ends. The question becomes: if we know that limerence always ends, then should you do something to try and speed it up? How do you react when your spouse is still in limerence, but you're wanting it to end because you want to save the marriage?

SPEAKER_02: 8:48

The first person to start talking about this was Dr. Dorothy Tunnoff back in the 1970s. I started teaching about it in the mid-1990s. So I've been talking about it for about 30 years now. And in this state, as Kimberly's already mentioned, when you look at the research about it, and the research has become much more bountiful in the last 10, 15 years, because when I started talking about it 30 years ago, nobody was. Well, of course, she had. She had written the book back in the mid-70s, but unfortunately, people didn't take it to heart. As a matter of fact, they dismissed it, saying it doesn't really exist. And now we know that it does. It's not the same as romantic love, although the person in limerids thinks it is. And the research indicates now that it does have an addictive property to it. There's no doubt about that. But at the same time, it also is very similar to obsessive-compulsive disorder. Because you see, it really has to do not with accepting and loving the person as he or she is, even though the limerant believes that's what they're doing. I'm in love with you because of who and what you are. But really, if you get down to the core of it, it's really more about I need you to love me. I need to feel love, that you care about me as deeply as you possibly can. Understand that this is not a choice. Limerence is not something that one day somebody wakes up and says, you know, I think I'm going to go over there and start a relationship with that person or that relationship with that person over there. If it indeed is limerence, it evolved. It developed.

SPEAKER_00: 10:24

And it evolved because there was someone who was listening to them, who began to form a friendship with them, who made them ultimately over time feel loved, accepted, heard, and seen.

SPEAKER_02: 10:36

And once it develops, it is powerfully strong. We talk about it having three phases. The first phase we call infatuation, all the way to the last phase we call deterioration. But through those phases, particularly in the middle of it, is it so unbelievably strong that the person who is in it will say things like, I can't control my emotions. I can't control what I feel. And that's true. And so therefore, when you start confronting them, you're basically telling them that they need to do something that for them, because of the chemicals in their brain, because of what's happening in this process, that they can't do. Stop loving him, stop loving her, straighten up, do what's right. You know what's right. Because, well, as one guy once told me, Kimberly, he said, if I have to go to hell to have her, I'll pay that price.

SPEAKER_00: 11:26

It's hard. It's hard when you're married to someone who's in this state because what you want to do is control the outcome. You want to try and set up the situation, set up your home, set up the environment to where your spouse will stay, where they will want to stay. But in trying to do that, they feel like you're trying to force them to stay. And it's pushing them away even more.

SPEAKER_02: 11:47

Well, because of the fact that they're not in control of their emotions. Not even in control of their emotions about what they feel about themselves, much less what they feel about the other person. And therefore, if you confront them, don't you know she's terrible? Don't you know she's had four husbands? Don't you know he's a player that's done this, that, or the other, they don't believe you. They can't because the chemicals in their brain are so creating a situation where they idealize the other person in a fantasy way, so that they believe it's very real and very true, but they don't see this person as having those flaws. As a matter of fact, they see them as being nearly perfect. And the more you attack that person, the more they blend in with that person, the more they cling to that person, and the more you attack them for violating their previous belief hell uh beliefs and values that you're not the man you used to be, you're not the woman you used to be, the more that they turn from you, because what they're searching for and what they're getting from that limerate object, that other person right now, is a feeling of complete acceptance. And when you start convincing them or trying to convince them that they're doing something wrong, they're gonna flee from you because they want to go to where they feel accepted as they are.

SPEAKER_00: 13:01

It might sound hopeless. You're thinking, well, if I can't control them, then what can I do to try and bring them back and to get the marriage saved, to have my marriage be happy and fulfilling and satisfying again? Is it just that they need to end this affair? Is it even more? Here's the key that you need to understand for today without overthinking things, without trying to fix it all at once. You can begin doing the things now to save your marriage. It's not gonna bring your spouse back immediately. It's not gonna happen like a magic wand. But here's what we know that one person can begin doing the things to save the marriage. And since we know that you can't control your spouse, the only person that you can control is you. Now there's several ways in which you can begin controlling yourself that give you the best outcome in order for when this affair ends your spouse to want to come back to you and to want to choose you again. But it starts with you beginning to do the work now, not just complaining, not just venting, not just demonizing your spouse for all the things they should be doing wrong or they should be doing, but they're not doing, and not just trying to control your spouse. Begin actually doing the things that will make you the person that your spouse wants to come back to. That's the key shift that you need to have in your mindset now.

SPEAKER_02: 14:25

And so it starts with not doing these three things anymore. Number one, attacking your spouse. It's not gonna help. Number two, attacking the person that your spouse is involved with because they're gonna defend them. Number three, attacking yourself. Because you're gonna be thinking, this is my fault. What am I lacking? How does this other person somehow supersede me? It's not about you. It's not about you being great, it's not about you being terrible. And so stop doing those three things. Don't attack your spouse, don't attack your spouse's lover, even though you want to, and don't attack you.