Limerence;
Noun;
the state of being obsessively infatuated with someone, usually accompanied by delusions of or a desire for an intense romantic relationship with that person:
Limerence is a state that can happen between two people in the early part of a romantic relationship. Dorothy Tennov coined the term "limerence" for her 1979 book, Love and Limerence. She studied hundreds of people and built on past research that shows this can play a big part in the early stages of a romantic relationship.
Perhaps through a release of different hormones, the person experiencing this intoxicating feeling will be experiencing obsessive thinking about their (new) partner, constantly daydream about being together, and will be experiencing a certain amount of bias thinking, so their partner will have no faults, no irritating habits, is a soulmate, understands them like no other person, and can do no wrong.
The feeling lasts with some people only a few months, but for many it can take 2 years to start lessening. This is why couples often say, “I wish we could be what we were before” or “he/she has changed so much.”
So understanding limerence, it’s easy to see how this plays a part in an affair. The person who is having the affair is now experiencing this wonderful feeling which is almost like a drug. The person they are having the affair with is so understanding, so much fun, makes them feel young and sexy and they talk for hours on end. No wonder the partner left at home is unable to live up to all this and supply the same feeling.
Of course, with the affair partner, limerence will eventually end and suddenly they won’t seem quite as sexy, fun and great to be around, and your feelings about them and yourself will return to more ‘normal’ levels. That is not to say the relationship with the affair partner can’t grow into a long-term and rewarding relationship, but many people have found that living with the affair person in a long-term relationship doesn’t work and the once wonderful relationship crumbles and fades in time.
In therapy, this is explored, to try and understand the true feelings of the person having/had the affair, and separate, if possible, the feelings of limerence so they have more sense of what relationship (and with whom) they want going forward.