Tag: infidelity

"Help! What’s gone wrong with my marriage? We used to be so passionate! The sex was hot and heavy. Now, our sex life is almost non-existent. If it goes on like this any longer, I don’t know what I’ll do." When words of this sort pour from a client’s lips, I know there’s a lot of work ahead. As I think of the standard solutions to this difficult and complex issue, I know there is no quick fix.

The standard advice reads: "Have more fun." "Take off the pressure." "Make romance happen!" "Wear sexy lingerie." "Have a date night!" "Cuddle with each other."

One of you has had an affair. Or you know someone in the throes of uncovering one or is dealing with the confusion of the aftermath. What do we really know now about what drives affairs and what is needed to repair? What do we now know about affair-proofing your marriage? This may be surprising—what do we know about how your marriage can actually get better post-affair? Read the fine print: if you take certain clear steps.

What's really going on when you're attracted to someone? The infatuation phase is when you see only one side of a person: the positive traits, the potential for a happily ever after. You don't even notice that her feet stink or that he scratches his butt. No, she's Cinderella and he's Prince Charming—for now.

Your body chemistry only heightens the whole lopsided process, giving you regular doses of dopamine (a hormone that mimics the effects of cocaine), resulting in phenomena such as energy boosts, appetite suppression, heart palpitations, accelerated breathing, hyperactivity, and insomnia.

The sense of betrayal is a powerful emotion to experience in a marriage. When we commit to someone, we expect that this will be reciprocal. We don't only think of relationship loyalty in terms of sexual loyalty, but we expect that our loved one will basically have our back. We want someone who will look out for us, support our efforts, give loving but constructive feedback and commit to standing by our side through thick and thin.

What happens, however, when our spouse does what we perceive to be unforgivable?

A colleague and I were discussing the concept of "flame addiction," a term used to describe the behavioral and psychological changes associated with infidelity. The syndrome includes typical addictive behavior such as obsession with and dependency on the affair mate, as well as the secondary consequences of addiction, such as being secretive and taking depleting resources from work, friends, and family.

After decades studying human behavior, I had a revelation that has since colored my perception of infidelity: Almost everything that happens to an addict happens to someone who has an affair.

  Think about drug and alcohol abuse for a moment: Not only does the syndrome result in abuse of substances, but it includes hiding behaviors from others, lying about activities, investing time and money seeking a chemical high, and changing just about every aspect of one’s life. Moreover, most of these individuals have wished to break away from their substances of abuse, but doing so has proved very difficult. Doesn’t that sound an awful lot like what happens when someone has an affair?

In Part I of this series, I end by asking the question: If people having affairs are like people who have addiction, but they don’t have a sex addiction, what kind of addiction is it?  My answer: Infidelity is a flame addiction.

What is a flame addiction?

The noun "flame" isn’t used much these days when people talk about relationships. A flame is an object of romantic attraction as in, "Taylor Swift is my flame." Flame also describes an internal state of the person who feels the attraction as in, "I have a flame for Taylor Swift."