A reader asked the question “Do they still have feelings for the lover?” When your spouse cheats it is natural to have questions.
Questions about the lover, the cheater and even yourself. These questions create deafening noise in your head. Like a car that loses its brakes while going downhill, once these questions start rattling in your head, they are hard to stop. This is one of those questions that can become tormenting and unrelenting.
Feelings are strange things. Although it seems that attraction related feelings can be easily aroused and turned on, the turning off of them does not happen so quickly with many people.
In most cases, the feelings will have to fade. Although the cheater may no longer be seeing the lover, the feelings are often still there.
The more reminders they have of the lover, including photos or mementos, the longer it will take. Those mementos often trigger the circuits in their brain that arouses the feelings all over again.
The strength of those circuits weakens over time assuming that you have removed all the potential triggers in their lives.
The cheater may sincerely want to turn off the feelings and renew their affectionate attachments to you. Sincerity has its place, yet when it comes to overcoming the feelings and the thinking associated with affairs, it is weak.
The sincerity may be part of the reason that you forgave them and are willing to try again with them. There is a place for it, yet when it comes to overcoming the feelings, you want something stronger.
My preference is for the cheater to modify their thinking in a major way. How you think influences how you feel. By changing your thinking, the subsequent emotions change.
In cases where the cheaters thinking changes in a radical way, the feelings they have toward the lover will diminish in a similar way.
It is not about what you do or don’t do, changing the feelings the cheater has for the lover is dependent on the degree to which they change their thinking.
Best Regards,
Jeff
