It's Been Two Months Today

[DifRent]

Read a great article this morning on "authentic love vs. affair love." I'd like to highlight some of the more affirming points for me. Thought it might be a good read for others dealing with unfaithful/departing spouses.

“Love” within the context of infidelity is an encounter between a person – the object of desire – and an experience – the passion of eros. It can leave one intoxicated with emotion that drives both decisions and behaviors in often inalterable ways. The result of this fusion is one of the most destructive mistakes a human can make. The fundamental error we make is that we confuse a romantic/friendship/erotic experience with a person who just happens to be a part of the encounter. You believe you MUST have that person in order to have that experience. Again, we are confusing how we feel about the person with exactly how they are making us feel about ourselves in the experience.

...You confuse a person for an experience and attempt valiantly to translate that experience into something real. It isn’t real. But so much depends upon our belief that the affair is “real”. The possibility of “true love”, the confirmation that “soul mates” exist, the justification for destroying families, leaving spouses, children, jobs and friends – all MUST be justified with legitimacy and purpose. Otherwise, those of us in affairs are nothing but hedonistic idiots. So we have a huge capacity to convince ourselves that it was real. If we didn’t, how could we live with ourselves?

The stage is set for grandiosity and narcissistic self-indulgence. On this platform, all manner of illogical and nonsensical choices are made. We are in pursuit of a valid human need – deep intimacy and belonging. Yet, we are moving toward our fated demise. Authentic love, based on friendship, history and seasoned emotionality, can never result from affair love, which is grounded in escape, deception and illicit illusions. Anything based upon deception is destined to fail. Period. Without integrity, life simply doesn’t work.

Affair love is rooted in the attempt to legitimize an illusion. In fact, that’s the source of its power since so much is at stake.

A real relationship cannot compete with an affair. The novelty, forbidden, and surrealistic nature of an affair relationship beats a real relationship any day with its sobering demands. Within its pursuit lies everything it means to be human.

Here’s the straight truth: an affair exploits the normal and natural right to human intimacy by selling a cheap version of temporary escape. It is a shallow relief that barely scratches the surface of authentic love, a commitment to a life partner who knows and loves you despite disappointments. Real relationships have a way of rubbing our noses in the slime of life. It is within the alchemy of that authenticity that true love can be encountered.

Affair love is an illusion, based on a lie, fueled by fantasy, protected by self-justification, insecurity and ego. It NEVER delivers on any expectations. Is it any wonder why real relationships, based on an affair, fail at a rate twice that of divorce?

Authentic love embraces contradiction that affair love cannot. The “contradiction” I speak of here is you. You are a contradiction. As a human being in a relationship, you are going to be inconsistent, hypocritical, have bad days and good, be at your best and often at your worst, and have phases of life where there may be little lovable about you. Authentic love, which I was surprised by, is a quality and intensity of love sustainable and real because it is NOT contingent upon the emotions or circumstances to be just right.

Contrast that with Affair love, where you are on a perpetual honeymoon and the emotional tone is always courtship behavior. You are insulated from reality because an affair never touches the light of day since it requires deception to sustain it. You always look good, sound good, smell good and think you’re good – just like reality… right? It’s a house of cards waiting to implode.

The result is a perfect storm of illusion and flight. The primary relationship doesn’t have a chance to survive because it cannot compete with a fantasy untested by the sobriety of reality. Your affair relationship thrives on the fantasy-based love of exhilaration and novelty.

Soul mates are created, NOT found. True love exists but not for the faint of heart or narcissistically challenged. Success has requirements. So does real love. It requires you to know yourself intimately, all of you – how you’ve been wounded by life and how to evolve as a person capable of loving another. It requires you to be transparent, authentically asking for what you want and being willing to enthusiastically give back. It requires you to grow up. Groveling when things go wrong is out. Keeping your integrity and standing firm on your commitment is in. It requires you to stand for what you know is possible, despite terrible circumstances, and demonstrate the courage of a warrior, even when you don’t feel like it, even when you’ve lost that loving feeling, even when you aren’t getting your needs met on a regular basis.