Was It Love or Limerence? Unraveling Your Partner’s Affair and How to Heal
It’s the question that arrives long after the discovery, after the gut punch, after the tears and the text message sleuthing: What did they actually feel for them? Was it love? Was it lust? Was it something else entirely?
Here’s the strange thing about affairs: even the people having them often don’t know why they’re doing it. They talk in circles—about stress, or boredom, or how they hadn’t felt “seen” in years—but push a little deeper and you find something slipperier than desire or dissatisfaction. You find confusion. Maybe even delusion.
Which brings us to a word that sounds like a brand of luxury perfume but isn’t: limerence.
How Depression Fuels Affairs and How to Heal
In the wake of an affair, depression is everywhere. It’s in the betrayed spouse who can’t get out of bed. It’s in the unfaithful partner who can’t explain why they blew up their life. And it’s often in the space between them—thick, invisible, and unnamed.
Here’s the thing most people miss: depression isn’t always the result of betrayal. Sometimes, it’s the setup.
How to Survive the Mental Crash of an Affair: 3 Tools to Reclaim Your Mind and Heart
3 Reasons Why Married People Cheat
Infidelity isn’t always about sex. Marital infidelity isn’t always about falling in love with someone else. Sometimes it’s about escape. Sometimes it’s about belief. And sometimes, it’s about a system that broke down long before anyone noticed it was cracking.
In most cases, affairs fall into one of three buckets:
How to Talk About an Affair Without Destroying Your Relationship: 18 Expert Tips to Heal Trust
What most couples don’t realize is it’s not just what you say to each other that determines whether you heal from an affair. It’s how you say it. The tone. The timing. The way your voice either builds a bridge or burns one.
Because talking about an affair isn’t just difficult—it’s dangerous. Done the wrong way, it digs the trench deeper. But done right, it can be the exact moment everything begins to shift. That’s why you need structure—rules that hold both people in the conversation long enough for honesty to land.
How to End an Affair (The Right Way)
14 Shocking Reasons Unfaithful Spouses Fail to Heal After an Affair – And How to Fix It
So why do so many betrayers struggle to step into the role their relationship needs most? The answers aren’t always obvious, but they’re vital. Below are 14 of the most common reasons healing gets stuck—not because the betrayer doesn’t care, but because they’re caught in habits, fears, and beliefs that quietly sabotage the recovery process.