Are You Just Chasing a High?
By pursuing your affair relationship.
Sometimes, folks who are considering leaving a committed relationship because they want to pursue a relationship with their affair partner ask me, “How do I know if I’m just chasing a high?”
Meaning… how do they know if their relationship with their affair partner is just a high? And how do they know if, by pursuing the relationship, they’re going after something that’s bound to fizzle out?
Or sometimes people say, “Well, this relationship with my affair partner is all just limerence. This relationship probably won’t be all that great after the limerence phase is over.”
Or perhaps, “Well, maybe once this relationship isn’t an affair relationship anymore, this person/this relationship won’t be all that exciting to me.”
Here’s the thing. It’s useful to be aware that limerence is a Thing. It’s wise to be aware that new relationship energy can be pretty intoxicating. It’s important to recognize that the highs of an affair relationship can be especially high.
But that doesn’t mean that your affair relationship is JUST a high. It could be. But it doesn’t have to be!
The fact that affairs CAN be especially intoxicating doesn’t mean that your enjoyment of your affair relationship isn’t legitimate, or durable, or grounded in something other than intoxication.
It’s important to be aware that new relationship energy CAN sweep us off our feet and take over our consciousness and cloud our judgment a little (or maybe more than a little).
But it’s equally important to be aware that the excitement of a new connection with someone isn’t inherently suspect.
So often, people use their awareness of the potential dangers — or “dangers” — of limerence against themselves. So often, people assume that the supposed limits of new relationship energy mean that their relationship is nothing more than a passing infatuation, or a temporary high.
If that’s your thinking, you run the risk of dismissing what you value in your affair relationship! You run the risk of minimizing the importance of what you’re enjoying in your affair relationship! You run the risk of talking yourself out of something great and robbing yourself of happiness!
Even if new relationship energy were bound to fade (which is debatable, but that’s another story), you can still have an AMAZING relationship with someone after any initial excitement dissipates.
Really enjoying someone at the beginning of a relationship can be leveraged into building a relationship with that person that you continue to enjoy for a long, long time. Sure, the delights of a longer-term connection may be different from the intensely good feelings that may come from a new connection. But the joy of a longer-term connection can be immensely enjoyable in its own ways.
So don’t dismiss your appreciation of and love for your affair partner just because it’s a new relationship and/or a relationship that started under especially exciting (and perhaps stressful) circumstances! You may have something GREAT on your hands, and you might want to seriously consider pursuing that something great!
At least give yourself the chance to do that. If you think you might want your relationship with your affair partner to be something other than an affair, don’t talk yourself out of what’s possible before you’ve allowed yourself to consider what you want.
Just to be clear: sometimes affair relationships fizzle out after the initial burst of excitement. Sometimes we DO chase limerence for its own sake — and we don’t really like what we get out of doing so. Sometimes we ARE so intoxicated by new relationship energy that we make decisions that seem crazy to us later. All of this does happen. (And it happens within the realm of non-affair relationships, too — which is an important bit of perspective.)
So, by all means, EXERCISE DISCRETION as you consider what you want to do about your relationship(s)! If you think you might, by pursuing your relationship with your affair partner, effectively just be chasing a high, it’s important to take a serious look at this. (And I can help you do that. Sometimes, it’s important to have someone be our thought partner as we use our discretion, and important to have someone help us “check our work.”)
But automatically writing off your enjoyment of your affair partner as just a high isn’t an exercise of discretion!
Finally, it’s worth noting that sometimes chasing a high feels pretty great, even if it is “just” a high! The point of this article is not that there’s never a time and place for high chasing! Rather, the point is that you don’t want to use the logic that you could just be chasing a high against yourself as you consider what you want to pursue in your romantic life/sex life/relationship life.
