Real love doesn’t care about the legitimacy or duration of the relationship. Even the shortest of love stories can be life changing. The love experienced in a clandestine affair can be the best thing you have ever known. Secret affairs exist for a reason. What is the reason that could find you embarking on an affair?
Why are secret affairs so common in relationships where both partners insist that everything is fine. Neither has broached the subject of breaking up and rather uses those communicative resources to say sweet nothing to a lover? If you are in a long-term relationship and your love is strong and healthy, why would you need another lover to spruce things up?
If we want to think we are in an honest relationship but feel it needs revitalisation, wouldn’t it be better to have an open relationship rather than cheat in secret?
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What kind of relationship is it, if it needs to be propped up by cheating. Even if technically speaking, the dopamine boost that the excitement of an affair gives a feeling of happiness?
An illicit secret affair is sex plus excitement: the extra dopamine boost makes your life better for a moment.
Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that is responsible, for, example, for keeping us motivated. The lack of dopamine can lead to depression and apathy. If you need to spice up your boring life and long relationship, an exciting affair or one-night stand may well give you the relief you need. But do secret affairs and one-night stands keep your relationship alive? If so, for how long?
Dopamine is the driving force behind gaming and social medial addictions. They offer the “reward” that you were looking for when playing or staring and scrolling up and down your phone screen. Dopamine is the drug that creates an addiction, like a junkie who is hooked on cocaine. It is the fuel of the “reward centre” in our brain. It’s what keeps us hankering for the energy that comes from excitement, such as a secret affair.
CHEATING: One night stand. Secret affair. The other woman.
In this blog on cheating you will get tips and peer support for moving towards a permanently better life when you have been or are cheating.
Seeing the person you are lusting after in person or on social media gives your brain an injection of dopamine. The sense of pleasure that makes us obsess about the object of our desires. You see everything through rose tinted glasses. It is like in the early stage of falling in love. We also experience a similar chemical process in the early days of a long-term relationship.
Living in a long relationship does not make us immune to the attraction of new dopamine boosts. But we can look after our wellbeing in a more holistic manner so that we don’t feel a compelling need to resort to affairs – unless that’s what we really want.
Are you a dopamine junkie for love?
Like your long-term relationship, the new addictive secret affair is also triggered by a dopamine spike.
We typically associate “dopamine junkies” with bungy jumping and extreme sports, which provide a sense of high from exertion or living on the edge similar to falling in love. Those who live in a relationship that is headed for the rocks, or where they suffer from a lack of sex, are known to turn to sports or addictive substances – not always sex and love – for their dopamine fix.
Deprived of love we act like the famous Pavlov’s dog: we unconsciously condition ourselves to the reward that we know we can get.
INFIDELITY and the collected excuses: The good reasons for cheating
CHEATING: What is a good reason to cheat? What do the cheated partner, “the other woman/man” or the cheater choose to believe in?
Many of those who have settled for a bad relationship look for their ration of dopamine from one-night stands and long-term affairs. Having an affair feels dangerously elating like bungy jumping or parachuting. The guaranteed dopamine injection offered by an affair helps us forget our bad marriages. And the partner who is also looking for their dopamine fix wherever they can find it.
On/off affairs and withdrawal symptoms
If you are not getting enough dopamine in your relationship or because you can’t see your lover often enough but have developed a habit, you will suffer similar withdrawal symptoms as addicts go through. People often try to end secret affairs “because it’s the sensible thing to do”, but often the biological need supersedes the best of intentions.
On/off relationships are like a closed loop in which you know that the affair can’t last. But when you try and break free from it the desire is too strong. Unless you replace the reward mechanism with another one, such as sport or treating yourself with something else you love. Such as being intimate with your own partner.
What if my secret affair leads to a break up and a rebound relationship…
In the throes of passion and illicit sex, we dope ourselves silly not only with dopamine but also serotonin and cortisol. We are high on love. And physiologically speaking we actually are. However, despite the bliss, our bodies are in severe physical stress. Which means that our bodies, in a full state of alarm, cause our field of vision to narrow down, and all we see is the straightest way to the arms of our lover. Our relationship, perhaps even our job and other interests fade into the background.
CHEATING: At what stage of evolution is your relationship?
How common is cheating in relationships? Is cheating the cause or the consequence of relationship problems and can it be stopped by love?
We are more likely to take risks. We might walk out of our marriage and burn all our bridges.
But what feels good isn’t necessarily good for us at all.
The secret affair may feel better than anything you have experienced before. And sometimes what begins as an illicit affair turns into a lasting, deeply loving relationship. A secret affair can be a much truer love story than your long-lasting but deflated relationship ever.
But a secret affair will never reach its full potential if it stays secret year after year. That’s why an affair can’t become a real relationship just like that. The person who is in a relationship must first end the previous commitment. Give the new relationship a fair chance and time to evolve into a real relationship.
A mere dopamine boost is not a solid foundation on which to build your life. Dopamine junkies can get their fix from a number of sources, it does not have to be an affair.
What is the love that you feel in a secret affair like?
You may feel that your love for your lover is deep, real and the strongest you have felt for anyone. But as long as it has to stay hidden, it will also cause you tremendous pain. Perhaps the worst pain you have known. Those entangled in an affair feel not only deep love but also deep sadness when their loved one leaves their bed to be with their legitimate partner. The lover may also be afraid that the love will one day end. And the relationship will never become a proper relationship.
JEALOUS PARTNER: Does your partner’s jealousy drive you mad?
When your partner’s jealousy is getting too much, what could help? What to do when a jealous partner takes the joy out of your relationship?
Sometimes people feel the need to leave the person they love in order to feel a decent person who does right by others. The book (R)evolution for Love talks about situations where people leave a relationship although they are still madly in love with their lover. But feel they must let go because the other one was never going to be able to divorce their partner.
So which is the more correct thing to do from the perspective of love? To stay in a marriage with someone you love mainly as a parent of your children. Or to set your spouse free to meet another, more suitable partner and also allow yourself to listen to your heart?
If you choose to spice up your relationship with a secret affair, what does it really say about your commitment and relationship skills from anyone’s perspective?
I am certain that secret affairs exist for a reason. They are a sign of a longing for something better out there. If you can’t identify your needs and hopes and are unable to express them in your existing relationship, why would you be any better at it when having a secret affair? If your affair is really with someone you truly love and is based on openness and the freedom of being just the person you are, why does it have to be a secret?
What is more valuable: keeping up appearances or love?
Many people choose the former.
How about you?
Motivating You to mindshifting in many ways,
Your Coach Kati Niemi
Clinical Hypnotherapist, NLP Trainer, M.Sc.
[email protected]
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FREE EBOOK ‘I love you but…’ – To Break Up or Not to Break Up?
Refocus your energy now to improve your love life! This FREE ebook ‘I love you but…’ will help you move towards a better relationship or
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