for married AP's in love: relationship beginnings

[norudder]

For APs who are married, whatever your reason for being in/staying in A, whatever the current satisfaction level is in your M, can you objectively compare the feelings from the beginning of your M and your A without a rewrite?

 

I feel comfortable saying I am out of the fog. I loved the infatuation/limerence stage the affair seemed to create in perpetuity. I honestly didn't have that in the beginning of my R with my exH. There wasn't an original 'spark' to get back. If I wanted to reconcile now I could with no residual pining for exmm getting in the way but he wouldn't be able to woo me again because he never did. It would be going back out of convenience with a passive aggressive man. I wouldnt cheat again but would be miserable so know I can't do it.

 

A lot of advice given here to ow is that we will feel the same again with another eventually. I'm telling myself this blindly because the affair was the first time I'd felt it and I don't want my expectations to be unreasonable if what I felt only exists in the heightened state of an A.

 

Does the affair for the most part just give you back the same feelings you once had for your spouse before it grew more substansial or is it entirely different?

[lemondrop21]

I'm not a married OW but I do have a comment. You mention the level of infatuation/limerence that you felt in the affair, and how this was your first time experiencing it.

 

For me, the A was my third time experiencing it. The first two times were when I was younger, age 15 and 20 (embarrassing to say I was 15, but honestly, don't those feelings make you feel like a lovesick teen again??).

 

In both of those situations, the limerence started when I was chasing a guy who already had a girlfriend. The highest high I experienced was when each of these guys left their current girlfriend to be with me. It then didn't take more then a few months for the "high" to wear off and for the reality to set in; in both relationships, I was dating emotionally unavailable men (quite young men, yes, but with issues stemming from childhood that made them emotionally unavailable, even in very young relationships).

 

It has made me sad to think that a real, healthy relationship may not be able to provide that "high," even at the beginning (maybe it can, but I haven't experienced it yet). But a real, healthy relationship also won't cause the level of "lows" that an unhealthy relationship causes. At least that's what I'm telling myself.

[usernametaken]

For APs who are married, whatever your reason for being in/staying in A, whatever the current satisfaction level is in your M, can you objectively compare the feelings from the beginning of your M and your A without a rewrite?

 

I feel comfortable saying I am out of the fog. I loved the infatuation/limerence stage the affair seemed to create in perpetuity. I honestly didn't have that in the beginning of my R with my exH. There wasn't an original 'spark' to get back. If I wanted to reconcile now I could with no residual pining for exmm getting in the way but he wouldn't be able to woo me again because he never did. It would be going back out of convenience with a passive aggressive man. I wouldnt cheat again but would be miserable so know I can't do it.

 

A lot of advice given here to ow is that we will feel the same again with another eventually. I'm telling myself this blindly because the affair was the first time I'd felt it and I don't want my expectations to be unreasonable if what I felt only exists in the heightened state of an A.

 

Does the affair for the most part just give you back the same feelings you once had for your spouse before it grew more substansial or is it entirely different?

 

There were no serious sparks when I first met my now exH. We just grew to like each other more over time, and one thing lead to another.

 

With my fMM, it was electric. It still is, many years and a few divorces later. That attraction hasn't gone away.

 

I had only felt that once before - in a relationship during college. For me, that level of attraction is important; even if my relationship with my fMM falls apart, I won't enter into another one that lacks that spark.