There are three types of affairs, sexual, allowed, and limerent. In the first two types of affairs the person having the affair in not typically emotionally attached to the affair partner, and in large part their ability to step away from the affair is a simple act of choice. In limerent affairs exercising choice is not an easy task, freedom of choice is heavily mitigated by a type of addictive dopaminergic response by the body. To understand a limerent affair, one has to appreciate the involuntary nature of neurobiological feelings that influence choice.
Our "feelings" are generated by organs, or "processors", in the mammalian brain that influence our choices. It is important to understand that these processors are responsible for both helping you avoid pain or danger and drawing you toward safety or pleasure. There is also the state in between pleasure and pain, a state of neutrality, that you will not leave unless acted upon by either pain or pleasure, and for the most part these processors do a pretty good job of keeping us safe.
There are certain conditions however that can result in feelings that draw us away from safety and toward pleasure that are largely predicated on the lessons learned from adverse childhood experiences and are confounded by current stressful events. These adverse experiences from childhood create a sensitivity in our processors resulting in a hypersensitivity to certain types of stimulation. It is this hypersensitivity that makes us susceptible to limerence, a type of affair that feels euphoric in its experience while inhibiting our rational capacity to function, often wreaking havoc in the rest of our lives. When a limerent affair happens our focus on the affair partner increases dramatically, productivity decreases, our perception of the affair partner is clouded by a halo effect (that is they look perfect to us), when we are out of contact with the affair partner, we experience a significant distress and an increase in dopamine that drives us to contact them. When people experience a limerent response to another person they often describe the affair partner as someone they cannot live without. This perceptual effect is a significant reason why it can be so hard to leave a person people have become limerent too.
If you would like to learn more about limerence and receive help dealing with a limerent situation, whether you are the person in limerence or the spouse of a person who is, let me know, I would be happy to help you. Timothy
