How To Identify A Limerent Affair

You're convinced nobody has ever felt what you're feeling right now.

I understand why. But I've sat with hundreds of people who felt the exact same thing.

The obsessive pull toward someone who isn't your spouse.
 The daydreaming that swallows most of your day.
 The spiral when they don't text back fast enough.
 The certainty that this one person is the only thing standing between you and a happy life.

It has a name. Limerence.

It feels like the deepest love you've ever known. It isn't. It's a spike. A chemical high wrapped around a fantasy you've built in your mind, one where you can't see their flaws and they can't see yours.

And here's what nobody in the middle of it wants to hear: it ends. Every time.

In this video, you'll hear the story of a man who was sure he was the exception. He walked away from his marriage, his family, all of it, because being with her felt like the only thing that mattered. Three years later he was back, trying to rebuild the life he'd torn apart.

Limerence draws people together. It was never built to keep them together. That takes a different kind of love entirely.

If you're in the early stages, deep in the thick of it, or trying to pick up the pieces after it, this one is worth your time.

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Transcript

A Marriage Quietly Drifts Apart

SPEAKER_00 0:00

He said, You don't know how I feel. I said, Well, let's talk about it. Maybe I'll know more than you think I know. He was about thirty-five. He'd been married for seven years, and as is typical with a marriage, it's gone on just for a few years. Things weren't quite as exciting as they used to be. He'd gotten busy with his career, his wife had gotten busy with hers. They didn't have time to talk to each other like they used to. And somehow the intimacy, not just the sex part, but the openness, the transparency, the sharing life with each other, had kind of faded because they were so busy doing other things.

The Emotional Affair Takes Root

SPEAKER_00 0:35

But he met this other woman. She actually was at church, believe it or not. They got into the same small group there. And sometimes after the class was over, they'd stand outside in the parking lot and just talk. Well, you know what happens. People begin to open up about themselves. Here's where I'm from, here's what I do for a living. And finally he gets to the point of here is what I've wanted all my life, and I still don't have, and here's what I feel about what I do have. And the next thing you know, even though it didn't happen overnight, they wound up having strong emotions for each other, and they fought them for a while because we met at church. This is wrong, let's still do this. And then they wound up in bed with each other. At the end of the first encounter, they actually got on their knees and prayed, Oh God forgive us for what we did. Please help us never to do it again. But it happened again. And after a while it was no more praying, it was just planning and plotting. How can we be with each other until finally he told his wife, because of the fact that he knew he was about to be caught, I'm having an affair, and I'm in love with the other woman, and I'm gonna leave you for her. I'm going to divorce you. And that's when he came to see me, not because he wanted to save the marriage, but because of the fact that he felt a little guilty about what he was doing to his marriage. And he said, So see, you don't understand that. You have no idea what I'm describing, because I don't think anybody else on the planet has ever felt the way I do right now. To which I replied, I did. Back when I was about your age, as a matter of fact, in a very similar story to yours, interestingly.

Obsession Disguised As Soulmate Love

SPEAKER_00 2:14

Let me see if I can describe for you what you're feeling. First of all, you have this almost obsessive need for her, your lover, to feel as deeply about you as you feel about her, and for her to crave being with you for the rest of her life as much as you crave being with her. And I'm not saying it's just a desire, I'm saying it's an overwhelming desire. It's a compulsive thing that's going on. And it eats at you all day long because your fear is that perhaps, just perhaps, we won't wind up together. Maybe somehow something will stop it. Either she'll find somebody else or she'll realize they shouldn't even be involved with me, or my wife will do something that'll intervene, and so you live in kind of a fear. But when you're with her, it's ecstasy. I mean, when she lets you know that she loves you, when she caresses your cheek, when you're about to go to bed with each other, you feel an ecstasy you think nobody's ever felt this way, because you see, it's not just about sex. That's what you're thinking. It's not just about sex, and I agree. It's not. It's about the closeness, about the bonding that's taking place between the two of you, where that it seems that she can read your thoughts and you can read hers. But rather than having this complete peace that you would have, oh, with romantic love if the two of you were single, you still have this little fear factor of, what if? What if something stops us? And therefore you start to overimagine. You become hyperskeptical in the sense of if you send her a text and she doesn't reply right away, you begin to think, what's going on? If it's a half hour, maybe you can handle it. But if it's two hours, it's like, why? Has she finally realized that she doesn't want to be with me? Is there someone else? If you're supposed to meet someplace and for some reason she doesn't show up, you're not thinking about, oh my, this thing happened or that thing happened, and she's taking care of some business and she'll be here eventually. You're thinking, is it over? Is she not going to be with me forever? Because you see, you're obsessed by this need for oneness with her.

Naming It Limerence And Why

SPEAKER_00 4:20

We call that limerence. Dr. Dorothy Tenhoff wrote about it back in the 1970s, and many psychologists and counselors and therapists back then said, no, no, you're just describing a kind of romantic love. We already know what that is, but no, we know better than that. For the last 30-something years, I've been working with couples who've been through this because many years ago, back in the mid-1980s, I felt all those same things myself for another woman and divorced my wife. So I could be with the other woman, thinking that she is perfect. Now, realizing intellectually that nobody is perfect, but I had this positive sentiment override. That's what we call it in the business. In other words, because I felt so positively about her, I interpreted everything as being positive about her. And even if somebody tried to point out her flaws to me, at first I'd say, you don't understand, you don't know her like I do. Or if I had to actually see a flaw, I would diminish it. Oh, yeah, but that's that's not the big deal you think it is, because up to 85% of my waking hours were spent daydreaming. Some of that was remembering places we'd been together and things we had done. Some of that was daydreaming about the future and how wonderful life was going to be when we finally got together. But because I had this halo effect, this positive sentiment override about her and couldn't see her flaws, it was reciprocal. She felt the same way about me. But you know, after a while, that begins to wear off this limeritz thing, and right now you think, no, no, no, no, this is gonna last forever. I'm gonna feel like this for the rest of my life. When intellectually you know that emotions always change. A person who holds their newborn baby has one set of emotions, but when that child finally is six years old, there's still deep love, but actually a different set of emotions. And when the child's 16, even a different set, and when the child's 26, even a different set than that. You say, What do you mean? I mean that emotions always evolve and change, and thinking you're gonna feel this ecstasy that you feel right now for the rest of your life because you're with this person is a practical impossibility. Because probably already you've noticed a decrease in your productivity, and she in hers. And all you can think about is I will be happy, and she will be too. If we can just have each other, life's gonna be wonderful ever after. That's uh a wrong focus. That's when you think that this one thing or this one person will make me happy, and that's never true about anything. We're far too complex. And what I'm telling you is this

The High Fades And Regret Hits

SPEAKER_00 7:00

it's going to end. I know you don't want to hear that. I know you don't want to believe me. If it were just I that went through that, then we'd say, well, no, Joe, that was just you, we're not like you. But in the last 30-something years, I have dealt with so many people in this very same situation, and every single one of them, that emotion, that intensity, finally went away. And that's when you don't have that positive sentiment override anymore. That's when you can finally start seeing the flaws in the other person, and they're there. And the brilliance of the idea you have built up in your mind about how wonderful life is going to be doesn't come to fruition. It can't. It was, I know you're not going to like this word, but it was a fantasy. Oh, a good one. One that was enjoyable to feel, to dream, to think about, but it'll go away. You see, the love that lasts a lifetime isn't limerence. Limerence is a spike. It's what draws people together. It was never intended to keep them together. You have to have a different kind of love for that. And if you give up things that are important to you because of this person you're in limerence with, like your marriage, your family, your belief system, your job, whatever it might be, you don't care right now because just being with her is the most important thing in your life. But after a while, you'll begin to resent the fact that you hurt other people. Resent the fact that you've given up so much. Regret the fact that you let yourself follow this path. That's what I told him. He didn't believe me. No, Dr. Beam, you just don't understand. That's not the way it's going to be. We're different. Which is what I've heard from every limit I've ever worked with in the last 30-something years. We're different. I'm different. It's not the same as what you're describing.

Picking Up The Pieces Afterward

SPEAKER_00 9:13

And yet, within three years, he was back to see me again. I have uh messed up a lot of lives, including my own, and that of my wife, and we had a couple of kids, and they've paid for it too. And why don't you just slap me? I don't do that. But I did try to warn you. Well, she's gone. It's over. And I don't know how to put my life back together. Well, we can help. Now your wife's got to make some decisions just as you do. Actually, ex-wife at this point has to make some decisions just as you do, but we can help you. And by the grace of God, we helped them put it back together, and now they are happily married to each other. Happily married to each other. It's not the excitement, the thrill of limerence, but that doesn't last anyway. It's deep. It has roots. So if I've been describing you and you have enough confidence to believe that I know what I'm talking about, because I've described things that really are what you feel are what you're going through, let me

How Marriage Helper Can Help

SPEAKER_00 10:23

know. I'm Dr. Joe Beamett, Marriage Helper. We can help. Even if you're in the midst of limerence, we can help now. If you're over limerence and trying to put your life back together, we can help with that as well. Or if you're in the early stages of limerence and all this is just beginning to happen, now is definitely the time to call us before it takes root and becomes too strong. I hope we hear from you.