SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Heard this line on a show I was watching, and it triggered me. I think it's a load of nonsense.

"Love at first sight" is not love, it's attraction. Maybe you can't control attraction, but falling in love? That takes time and getting to know someone, and if your feelings are one-sided, then it's infatuation - again, not love.

I would agree to the statement that you can't force yourself to fall in love with someone, but I think you have the ability to prevent yourself from falling in love with someone, and you can open up to loving someone. My attitude comes from my parents being of Indian culture with arranged marriages as the norm. Their entire generation and all the ones before them weren't raised with the notion of falling in love as a prerequisite to a loving marriage. Love was expected to come *after* marriage, as long as both of you were decent people. Historically, I think this was the norm in other parts of the world too.

I realize that "love" is a complicated word with different meanings and layers of complexity, but I'm curious what you all think about this: do you believe that you can't control who you fall in love with?

Spot on. I hear this misconception from lots of college students.

Arranged marriages are a great example of developing love. The opposite, a vow of celibacy, is a very different example of refusing to develop romantic love.

We aren't little babies in our cribs who cannot control our desires.

I completely agree that you can stop yourself from falling in love, and I have a personal story that outlines this. It's about a choice I made when the feeling of "love at first sight" was at its peak.

I was single and in a heavy dating phase when I met her right before Christmas. We were at a pub, and she came over asking for the pile of board games on our table. The chemistry was instantaneous and undeniable. My friends were adamant that I should have asked her out there and then, noting the spark. She was with her dad, it would have just felt awkward, so I just left with a few of her details. After my friend's dedicated social media search failed, I actually forgot about the whole thing.

Then, a few weeks later, in a post Christmas haze of too much cheese and booze. I loaded up Tinder. Guess who was the first profile I saw? I was completely floored. Long story short... We matched, and our first date was an all-night whirlwind—literally ending with us impulsively booking a holiday to Poland. It was insane, beautiful, and utterly romantic. Even a logically minded realist was thinking somehow fate had pulled this thing together. What were the odds she literally was the first profile I'd see on tinder after that meeting? I thought, this is it. This is love.

At this point, I’d like to introduce the concept of the Maniac Pixie Dream Girl (MPDG). In fiction, this character is a beautiful, quirky, and volatile woman whose entire purpose is to inject excitement and meaning into a man's life (think Clementine from Eternal Sunshine). For me, she was the real-life embodiment of this trope. Our dates involved late-night salsa lessons, backstage gigs with a local band, and experiences that felt lifted straight from a movie script.

But after half a dozen of these intense, high-octane dates, a pattern began to emerge. The "quirky" became flaky. The "expressive" became hot and cold. The intense passion was quickly followed by unnerving ambivalence. The long and short of it was that she exhibited textbook signs of BPD, or Borderline Personality Disorder. She actually later confirmed this.

That was the line in the sand. I knew the emotional toll of a relationship defined by that kind of instability. I had read the horror stories. My heart was already moving fast, but my mind, seeing the clear outline of a painful future, slammed on the brakes. I was still recovering from infidelity, I knew I didn't have it in me to deal with this. I recognized the thrill, the attraction, and the overwhelming temptation to dive into that beautiful chaos. But I made a cold, rational calculation: I chose self-preservation over the possibility of a volatile, all-consuming love.

I detached before the fall became irreversible. I was still attracted, still deeply intrigued, but I refused to commit to the emotional rollercoaster. It was a conscious choice to prioritize my peace and stability, proving that attraction is just chemistry, but falling in love is a decision you can ultimately rescind.

I chose not to fall in love for my own well being... why can't others do this for the well being of their husband/wife? Well they can but chose not to. They are too selfish to.

DRSOOLERS, sorry, but I can’t help but thinking after reading your story… You’ll always have Poland.

I’ll show myself out.

If HOP can make a Casablanc-ish reference (Nice one, btw.) then I am going with Anchors Aweigh, another classic from the 40’s, where Sinatra’s character sings, I Fall in Love too Easily. The second line of that song says, "I fall in love too fast." Round up the usual suspects. I’m one of them and I suspect many others on this site are too.

@HouseOfPlane

Love it.

Just to make this story even more movie like, not long after making my choice not to go further with the relationship, she ended up moving to New Zealand on a whim. That's BPD for you.

Many years passed and I was going to a comedy gig with my now Fiancé. There she was, back in town, she was taking ticket stubs at the door. She was very awkward but didn't acknowledge anything - nor did I.

As we took our seats my Fiancé asked, isn't that the girl you used to date? I responded, I thought so but wasn't sure. She said the palpable awkwardness make it clear it was her.

Roll credits...

*Play as time goes by*

Many more funny story about that person including a relatively funny sexual encounter but that would be wildly off topic.

Back on topic: It is a choice. In previously relationships I've fell out of love and committed to saying around and found myself falling back in love. Its mailable. The only constant is integrity.

[This message edited by DRSOOLERS at 12:58 PM, Thursday, October 16th]

The thread title could be interpreted more charitably; this could happen over time instead of all at once. And with a person that isn't good for you. So it kind of makes sense to me. But that does not mean that a person already in a committed relationship can't use good boundaries and put an end to the feelings so early on that it does not happen.

As far as love at first sight, yes of course that isn't actual love. But, playing devil's advocate, I fell in love with both my kids at first sight!

None of you understand limerence? Check it out. It's a recognized phenomenon. It's been studied and confirmed. Some people cannot control who becomes their limerent object. I surely couldn't, as much as I wanted to. I surely know it's difficult to distinguish between limerence and love - see Tanov's Love and Limerence.

It looks like not everybody is subject to limerence, and I guess the responders above aren't.

Just remember that different people experience life in different ways.

*****

Having said that, I agree that one can choose one's response to limerence. Sometimes, finding out who the limerent object really is does the trick. Sometimes NC is the cure. Sometimes self-talk is all that's necessary.

But limerence is not logical in any way.

I know the effects of limerence can be awful for all concerned, and I know it can be triggering in a big way. But it's real, and it masquerades as love. If one's WS is truly limerent over their ap, limerence has to be taken into account.

[This message edited by SI Staff at 4:47 PM, Thursday, October 16th]

Sisoon,

Some people have obsessive-compulsive tendencies, which can manifest as unhealthy fixations on people (who may or may not reciprocate the attention).

But those cases are outliers, not the norm.

Most affairs start the way relationships start up... with attraction that, with time and emotional investment, can become infatuation and perhaps, eventually, love.

There's a tendency lately, particularly among modern psychologists, to turn every normal human experience into a pathology. Whatever pays the bills, I guess.

[This message edited by BluerThanBlue at 7:22 PM, Thursday, October 16th]

I guess it depends on how you define "love."

For me, I wouldn’t call it love unless I had been dating a person for a long time— probably at least 6 months of frequent dates— and felt that I knew quite a lot about them (including their flaws) and still wanted to be together for a long time…

There’s also liking a person quite a lot, the initial infatuation stage, and limerence, as others have mentioned.

I don’t think you can control whether you feel a certain type of way about a person, but you can control how much you interact with them. Often times putting distance between a person you like/are infatuated with/are experiencing limerance for can reduce or eliminate those feelings over time. Trying to see the worst in them can help too, though there’s no guarantee that the person won’t still remain in your mind.

I weirdly agree with the sentiment, but it doesn't justify lying to or cheating on the person you already love first.

Cheating isn't generally about *love* and if it was *love* it wouldn't need to be hidden.

If we can't control ourselves when we meet someone -- is civilization over?

Limerence or similar powerful feelings when you meet someone and you 'click' with, it happens a lot for me -- smart, funny and kind people get my attention all the time.

Beautiful people get strong reactions to them all the time.

But it ain't love.

Limerence, powerful vibes, being taken 'aback' by someone, smitten, flirty -- that stuff is human, and it can lead to love, but it isn't love yet.

I have had ample opportunities throughout my existence to follow up with some fascinating, very attractive people, and yet, there is a non-mystical, very not magical thing I like to call boundaries.

I think I've even utilized the phrase, "in another life, this would be fun to follow up on."

But I have agency.

I have power over my feelings.

I have choices.

I'm in a relationship already, adding someone else to it is always a bad idea, no matter how strong a reaction I have to someone -- I get to choose space and distance.

I can still be friendly and all, but I have managed to manage my responses with other humans.

[This message edited by Oldwounds at 12:32 AM, Friday, October 17th]

I know what you are saying old wounds but limerence is not what you are describing. I would call that infatuation. Limerence is much darker and more like OCD sort of like blue was alluding to.

Let me say though it can be avoided. And I agree it’s not love. You can stop it way before it’s a problem. Just like if you don’t take drugs, you won’t get addicted. If you don’t allow yourself to go down the slippery slope then limerence is highly unlikely to develop.It’s completely controllable until it’s not. If you are not having an inappropriate relationship with the other person or seeking things in them that you shouldn’t, you won’t experience limerance.

I have done a fair amount of education and had treatment for mine. It was a pattern with me before I was married too. I wouldn’t say it’s rare, but it’s not all affairs, I wouldn’t say it’s probably even 50 percent of affairs.

So often it’s with someone who is not available to you or someone you don’t feel safe and stable with. It’s created by the highs of the limited attention and the lows of seeing the clues the person really doesn’t care about you.

It mostly happens to people who were emotionally neglected as a child because they are good at trying to stretch interactions into seeing being loved. It’s almost a fetish of your own abandonment issues.

It becomes performative. If I say or do the right things then I can win their love. It’s little to do with seeing who they are or being attracted to their great qualities, it’s about chasing their love and affection. The highs are very high when you think you see that and it creates a similar pattern of addiction that gambling, shopping, or overeating uses. Different than an addiction to a foreign chemical, you get addicted to chemicals that are in unnatural quantities in the body.

Even if you read a bit of a Wikipedia on it or some of Frank Pittman’s work can show there are predictable psychological reactions and indicators of limerence. It’s not casual and difficult to overcome.

It’s not a pleasant process for most of it and I would rather stick a fork in my eye to ever be that sick again. I honestly would be somewhat afraid to date if something happened to my husband. I feel like I have done a lot of healing but I would be nervous to test that out. I haven’t had that with all my relationships but it’s happened a few times and it was very rejection driven or at times unrequited.

[This message edited by hikingout at 1:45 AM, Friday, October 17th]

Call me weird, but I don’t actually care whether or not a person can control who they fall in love with. I’m a very cautious, slow person when it comes to romantic relationships. I don’t do the caution to the wind, no holds barred, head over heels thing. But I’ve met a lot of people who aren’t like me. Who fall in love in a way that feels uncontrollable. That seems to have been the case with my husband and his affair partner.

The question for me is more, "ok, so then what?" You uncontrollably fall in love with this new person while you’re committed to someone else. What do you do at that point? What are your values and character? I mean, first of all it’s possible to recognize red flag feelings very early on and turn yourself in another direction. But even if we take into account completely magical love at first sight, you still decide what you’re going to do with it. Do you turn away from your new love and reaffirm your previous commitment? Or do you go with the new love and be open and honest about that with your former love? Or do you lie and sneak and hide and betray and try to have your cake and eat it too? There’s a spectrum of possible responses to catching feelings when you’re already in a relationship. I don’t actually blame my husband for falling in love with someone else. He wasn’t out looking for an affair. It’s what he did with it that was so destructive.

I feel like people are falling into two modes of thought:
1) you might not be able to avoid feeling a certain way about someone, but you can still control your subsequent actions
or
2) you might not be able to avoid feeling a certain way about someone, and some people can't control their subsequent actions

The discussions about limerence, OCD, and addiction fall into #2.

I looked into limerence a bunch in the early weeks after dday1 because WS had self-diagnosed himself as being limerent during his affair and told me so. What I learned then (nearly 3 years ago) was that it's not a widely accepted phenomenon, though some psychologists see evidence to support it as a distinct state of mind. It's not always seen as pathological either. People often describe the early weeks of a relationship as limerent (whether it's above board or secretive).

I feel like group 1 above is the people answering 'no' to my question (do you believe that you can't control who you fall in love with?), and the people in group 2 are answering 'yes'. In both cases there are people speaking from experience, so maybe we have a population that lands on a spectrum of behavior (which wouldn't be surprising) and/or maybe it depends on circumstance whether you're in control of feelings or not?

If there is any truth to #2, then love affairs are basically tragedies, like a car wreck, because the WS and AP couldn't help it but also the damage done to their partners and families is very real. I think that aligns with hikingout's statement that what she went through was a sickness. And I swear, I'm not looking for ways to let the WS and AP off the hook - again, the damage done is real and devastating, and divorce will often be the consequence of that - and also I fall into group 1, but I'm willing to consider that I'm wrong and that 2 is real.

Hmmm. I believe that limerance is a condition, but I do not believe I am saying there is no controlling who you fall in love with.

1. I believe like any addictive state, there are decisions made that create the conditioning of that addiction. I knew I was crossing lines and had no strong feelings immediately other than enjoying the attention.

2. I do not believe limerance has anything to do with love. I see it as a desperate need to win someone’s affections that you are unlikely to ever get.

I could never call my affair a romantic tragedy where I did not win some big love of my life. I would call it a dark obsession that made me brittle and reliant on next flicker of attention- which was likely a text he was sending me from his toilet. Each high felt higher and the lows were lows and longer. It was a lot of intrusive thoughts and a war with my own chemistry and mind. It was hell. None of it had a thing to do with the man, he was 20 years older than me and looked probably more like 30 years, he didn’t really treat me that well.

do you believe that you can't control who you fall in love with?

IMHO it doesn't matter because you sure as Hell CAN control what you do about said feeling(s).

This "logic" of us not being able to control some naturalistic impulses is also used as an excuse by many WS for why they "had to" have an affair. I personally think it lowers our humanity – even emotions and events that might be seen as "positive". Nothing much negative about falling in love, but to insist it’s something you can’t help also implies it’s something you can’t avoid or prevent.

I can get infatuation. I personally experienced this first time I saw my wife. Met her in passing at a coffee-shop, had a five-word small-talk chat and was instantly intrigued by her. It made me frequent that shop for lunch over the next weeks until I saw her again and asked her out. But frankly – in it’s base-terms that’s a comparable reaction to when I might frequent a certain part of a river because I think there is a big brown trout there.

I even say that after the first formal date I was certain that this would be my wife. But it boils down to a decision to pursue that thread and to allow the emotions to develop. Had I realized on the third date that we weren’t compatible there wouldn’t have been a fourth.
Just like there wasn’t some non-controllable emotion that MADE me love her, then there wouldn’t have been some non-controllable emotion that MADE me not love her after realizing on a fourth date that she was boring or talked insistently or that we had nothing in common. Instead, it was an infatuation that developed into love, and that love has constantly changed over the years. It changes because it’s a decision and not a compulsion.

On a comparable track. I loved my fiancé. That’s why I asked her to marry me. That love developed over time. It didn’t stop the minute I caught her in bed with someone else, but I had the maturity to understand that we – AT THAT TIME and AT OUR AGE and WITH OUR COMMITMENTS – had no future. The "love" stopped because I stopped feeding it. Went through the pain of a broken heart, stopped briefly at the pointless plateau of hating her, and eventually moved on to where she was just a sad memory. Just like I didn’t just "fall in love" I couldn’t just fall "out of love" instantly.

Hey Hiking --

I know what you are saying old wounds but limerence is not what you are describing. I would call that infatuation. Limerence is much darker and more like OCD sort of like blue was alluding to.

I did it wrong if I came across as trying to define any particular type of response to meeting someone, I was really trying to counter the idea we can't control our feelings.

I was just lumping limerence in with other involuntary reactions when one human finds another human attractive or potentially attractive.

I keep thinking I will age out of someone being able to make me react at all (involuntarily or otherwise) but I still meet women who make my heart race a bit faster -- yet, I am still able to enforce my own boundaries.

My point more was about our own agency and power to choose our path through any new person situation.

[This message edited by Oldwounds at 4:38 PM, Friday, October 17th]

Absolutely Oldwounds. I understood your post, and I agree with it.

I only talk about limerance so specifically because it was such a profound mental health issue that I experienced.

But I agree 100 percent, I took the drug willfully, just like any addict does when they start out. Limerance is the result of an affair sometimes but not the source of it.

And yes attraction is very natural. We are in control of who we fall in love with.

Limerance isn’t love, it’s a darker obsession fueled off of fear of rejection and abandonment. Often it results in bunny boilers and the like. Even in my pathetic state, I was able to control my behaviors, just not always the intrusive obsessive thoughts.

I love my husband for who he is. He is my best friend, my lover, my partner, and my constant companion. That’s love.

Limerance is more like a destructive chase of winning validation, and feeling you are nothing if you can’t get it. It has little to do with the other person, there is no authenticity or vulnerability. It’s nothing like healthy love.