For those married folks struggling with limerence, I’m a big advocate of disclosure to your spouse as a powerful tactic for recovery. I’ve talked about the benefits before, but as with all high-stakes decisions and actions, there are consequences too.
The most obvious one is that it will inflict emotional pain on your spouse. Depending on how advanced your limerence “affair” is, this could be a moot point. If you’re deep in an emotional or physical affair then the pain is already there as a primed bomb waiting to go off. It’s largely a question of how and when the pain is delivered, and honest personal disclosure is probably the least worst option.
If the limerence is only at the level of a internal mental tangle, then there is some scope for deprogramming yourself without disclosure; but that’s likely the only scenario where you can sidestep the pain for your spouse that is inherent in the “limerent while married” trap.
Given that, what can be done to lessen the harm and deal with the consequences of admitting to your spouse that you are infatuated with someone else? Although the act of genuine disclosure (i.e. before you are caught or suspected or reported) does mitigate the damage to trust, it is inevitable that your spouse’s confidence will be shaken hard. They will doubt you, doubt your commitment, doubt your honesty, fear for their own security, and the stability of your marriage. And they will certainly trust you less.
One way that this is likely to manifest is insecurity about new friends (or old friends) that you have: Why are you friends with them? Are they an LO too? Where are you going with them and why?
These are all legitimate questions, and should be answered honestly and patiently. But it’s also good to think about ways that you can help to rebuild trust with your spouse. What can you do to reduce their pain and anxiety?
1) Be trustworthy
This seems a trite observation, but actually it is non-trivial. Most limerents know that the euphoric thrill they get from being around LO is a transgression of sorts – that it’s incompatible with monogamous commitment. That’s why it comes tainted with guilt during the comedowns. As a result, most limerents keep their delirious thrills secret. They kid themselves they can handle it, and they won’t cross any red lines, but this is a rationalisation that may later be put to the test.
So even if the limerence has not been “externalised”, most limerents have fallen into the habit of being at least a little dishonest about their behaviour and conduct. Regular readers will know I am not an absolutist here – we have complete freedom in our own internal world and thoughtcrime is a poisonous concept. But to be properly trustworthy, we have to recognise that a habit of keeping secrets from your spouse degrades your relationship. Trust requires emotional closeness, belief that you are cared for, and evidence of honest behaviour.
So, cultivate the habit of being open and honest with your spouse, and recognise that this may meet psychological resistance if you have been guarded and evasive for too long. We can unthinkingly weaken the chance of rebuilding trust if we persist in old habits of defensiveness.
Oh, and although it shouldn’t need stating: stay away from LOs, obviously
2) Share your new knowledge (sensitively)
Disclosure usually happens after the limerent realises they are in deep emotional trouble, and have started trying to dig themselves out. For most of us, this involves discovering the concept of limerence, what can be done to combat it, and what we can learn about ourselves as a consequence.
One way to help build trust is to share this knowledge in a sensitive way. Talk to your spouse about habit reinforcement, person addiction, the glimmer, and the neuroscience of infatuation. I would recommend keeping this at a general level – i.e. do not rhapsodise about your LO, but do talk about why you think you were vulnerable to the cues they were giving out. Talk about the fact that daydreams have turned into intrusive thoughts that you are struggling to manage, but don’t gratuitously share the details of sexual fantasies.
This can also help you to clarify who is a risk to the partnership and who is a neutral friend. Sense the glimmer, and back off. Build trust by acknowledging that you have been careless and selfish in the past, and that you now understand what to do in the future to avoid those risks.
Openly seek advice about what you should do, and what would help your spouse to trust you more. Listen carefully. And then do it.
3) Try not to backslide
Finally, it is important to use your new-found knowledge wisely. There can be many reasons why married people succumb to limerence, but fundamentally there must have been a vulnerability that was being overlooked. Maybe you had become complacent about your relationship, and didn’t notice the slow slide into sedate cohabitation. Maybe a predatory LO found your points of weakness. Maybe a life upheaval sent your emotions into a spin. There could be any number of reasons, but the basic fact is that your old way of behaving, your old way of interacting with your spouse, left you vulnerable. There is therefore a danger that relaxing back into that old way of living will lead to the same outcome.
This risk – of backsliding into old habits – is particularly serious if you had started to devalue your spouse as part of the limerence experience. Clearly, you do not want to drift back to that mindset if you want your marriage to survive.
Our brains are awfully lazy. The path of least resistance is their favourite road, and that is usually the “do the same thing again because it’s safe and familiar” subroutine. It’s important to resist this until the point where the new routine of “be trustworthy, open and honest with my spouse” is the familiar and easy path.
It’s possible to use disclosure as a foundation for a new era of communication and communion with your spouse, but you need to be purposeful about sticking to the task.
Succeed, and it’s a better way to live.
With thanks to Landry for topic idea
“The path of least resistance”.
I had a Geography lesson once, in which the teacher was talking about rivers, flood zones and erosion. One of the points was that water takes the path of least resistance, and creates a new route, which is what puts flood zones in danger of flooding.
So I guess you could think of limerence as a river you can control: Fantasising and being around LO is like eroding another path through the ground, that’s easier to do but puts people and households in danger. Meanwhile, staying loyal to SO is like going down the current path, but the rocks might take a little longer to get through.
Notice the difference in how many people are endangered and then you’ll know which one to choose; don’t let the forces of nature carry you away and make you regret ruining a bunch of lives. Try altering your course instead.
Good analogy…but if you don’t have a SO and LO doesn’t have a SO, it’s hard to visualize the ‘people endangered’, although truth be told, limerence and damage do seem to go hand in hand – in one form or another. Even if no one else is directly involved we damage ourselves, we develop future trust issues, we waste enormous amounts of time, accomplishments we were working toward are derailed, and we are left with the certain melancholy and ennui that unrequited love leaves in it’s wake. Controlling the water flow is indeed the wisest choice.
Well, either my LO (I think) nor I have an SO, we are both 14 years old. But the analogy definitely works for those people it concerns; otherwise there isn’t that much damage, relatively.
Au contraire AL!
I believe there is plenty of damage, ever for ones where is there is no SO in the equation.
Limerence causes us to develop unhealthy ways of finding comfort and ‘happiness’ and those pathways can become deep and ingrained and resurface again and again, for many years to come. This is an addiction, after all.
Limerence sets us up to have trust issues with others when often we realize the one we ‘love so much’ has possibly toyed with us, given us false hope, or at the very least has not helped us to hasten the demise of our LE when compassion would dictate they should.
Limerence sets us up to have trust issues with ourselves…if our heart has led us into this pit of unrequited love, how can we ever trust it again?
Limerence can cause us to be moody and snippy with our dear REAL friends and family, either because they try to redirect our firestorm of emotions, or just because the limerence itself has put us in a foul mood.
The high of limerence makes real future romantic relationships pale in comparison. The authentic and healthy kind, begotten by transparency and vulnerability and strengthened by loyalty and love.
I could go on and on…but you see my point…
Yes, this is all true, but you have to think relatively: In an LE where you have an SO, not only does limerence cause all of this, but it can end up in destroying an otherwise happy relationship. And then the person you actually love has been ruined by you.
Say you’re married. Limerence causes separation and not only do you not trust yourself when it’s over, leading to trust issues down the line, your SO (who thought they’d finally found true love) has just had their beloved torn away from them suddenly and unexpectedly. This will lead to trust issues from them to other people and themselves.
In that situation, you can destroy yourself, your friends and your family too. What may also happen is you lose the love of your life, and destroy any chance of their finding happiness again. I’d say that’s worse…
Yes, agreed AL, definitely worse. It’s a higher way to live- to be thinking of avoiding the suffering of others (which could be a significant motivation to end limerence if one has a SO), but just wanted to emphasize the point that those of us without SO’s are still damaged by it, and are worthy of self protection, defense, and healing. We are on the same page. 🙂
Thank you, Jaideux and AL, for this insightful conversation.
I think of experience as a briefly exciting diversion that quickly grows like thorny kudzu into a horrible demonic spawn that hijacks my brain. Somehow, it speaks in my own thoughts and voice! If it were a physical opponent, I’d poison it, stab it, shoot it, burn it with fire, and remorselessly hold it’s repulsive head under water until it gasped its last foul, fetid gasp.
Unfortunately, it’s a totally virtual enemy. I’m reduced to ‘trying to go limited contact’ or ‘no contact’ and I literally wear a little rubber string which I snap against my wrist with gritted teeth. Humiliating.
Does anybody else out there have a black sense of humor? Does anybody else sense the cosmic ridiculousness?
I’d like to remind everyone that my limerent brain is an idiot.
Yes, I am with you on this, MLBI! Well-put. Cosmic ridiculousness, and the laughter is rather bitter for me. The kicker is that whether things go ‘well’ or ‘badly’ with LO, it’s debilitating either way. A cruel joke. Let’s keep on distancing ourselves from it.
Yes, because sometimes your sense of humor helps your sanity!
So one thing that is a little more effective than snapping the rubber band on the wrist technique is Dr. L’s Emergency Deprogramming Course: https://courses.livingwithlimerence.com/courses/emergency-deprogramming-course. It is really good and well worth the modest investment! As well as providing deeper insights into the whole limerence process, it provides tools and action steps to help us get out of the “pit”. It really does help ease the suffering and accelerate the recovery time. I really appreciate the thoughtful, compassionate and humorous style. Highly recommended! I know that Dr. L added it as a link to the Resources list, but I’m hoping to nudge him a little to display it more prominently on the homepage so more people can benefit from it.
Thanks for the endorsement Berty! Really glad the course has helped.
I have considered putting it on the homepage, but that seems a bit “in your face” for my tastes. Possibly being oversensitive, but I think the people who will benefit most are those that find the site, read around a bit and connect with the ideas, and then decide they are ready to take action.
I really appreciate your comment – it’s genuine recommendations like yours that make me stick with it!
You could put it down at the bottom. So that way it’s visible but it’s not jumping up and down and screaming, “Look at me! Buy me!”
Remember that many in the fog of limerence (or anger or whatever) may be feeling desperate and need to find what they need NOW. Consider it a kindness, not a hard sell.
I agree with Lee. In these times of influencers, branding for everyone and everything and relentless marketing, your approach about your own work is very refreshing, Dr. L. But perhaps you are overcompensating? Just a tad bit of discreet marketing for a useful tool (placing a notice where people can actually find it), would probably be well appreciated.
“Busy, busy, busy, is what we Bokonists whisper whenever we think of how complicated and unpredictable the machinery of life really is.
But all I could say as a Christian then was, “Life is sure funny sometimes.”
“And sometimes it isn’t,” said Marvin Breed.”
― Kurt Vonnegut – “Cat’s Cradle”
This is such an important post.
I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means for people trying to heal their long-term relationships and recover from limerence–without admitting to their spouses what was going on for them. I wonder if you *can* have true trust and emotional intimacy when a secret of this magnitude hangs between you. I think this would be especially true if you’d confided the secret in someone else–e.g. an LO.
In my case, as the quasi-unsuspecting spouse (I kind of suspected but didn’t want to believe it because it seemed so out of character for me husband), I assumed that all of our marital problems came down to my own inadequacies, and that any joint attempts at improving our marriage (e.g. couples counseling) were going to revolve around how I needed to change/be better to deserve my perfect spouse. I was terrified of hearing my worst fears (that I was unlovable and inadequate) confirmed, so I avoided him and dodged the idea of counseling the one time he brought it up.
His disclosure to me was a lightbulb moment. Of course it was excruciatingly painful–but it leveled the playing field. I realized that we were pulling each other in a downward spiral, hiding what we most needed to share, and turning outward or inward instead of towards each other. Suddenly nothing in life felt more important than working to save our marriage. And the effort that I put into our marriage made him feel better about letting go of LO, just as the effort that he put in made me feel valued and safe. I have no idea how we’d have managed to fix this without facing the truth together.