Heal from Infidelity: The Truth about Affairs: Relationship Healing, #2

By Dorothee L. Davis

In life we all yearn to find our soulmate; that one person who sticks to us like a magnet, that one person who knows you inside out, the person who you can share everything with, the one person who is a constant and stays with you through the happy and the sad, the summer and the winter of your life.

However, life is not a fairy tale. No matter how captivating your relationship with your soul mate is, sometimes these soulmates slip up too. After all, we are all humans; we are flawed in the best way; we all are bound to make mistakes. These mistakes can be as little as forgetting your anniversary to as serious and major as cheating, affairs, and infidelity. In this book Dorothee L. Davis will share her research about the last; the withering of a relationship, the most common cause of family breakups and divorces anywhere in the world.

Whether you are the one being cheated on or whether you are the one who cheated, this book will give you solace and a direction to recovering from infidelity.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dorothee L. Davis
• Release date: Dec 11, 2019
• ISBN: 9781393549796

Dorothee L. Davis

Dorothee L. Davis is a researcher with a passion for the dynamics at play within relationships and the power of personal transformation. Her books are always based on extensive scientific research with a touch of personal experience. This makes her writing easy to grasp and fun to read. 

Book preview

2 Defining Infidelity: Even happy people cheat

INFIDELITY LITERALLY means betrayal. Specifically, we are talking about betraying your spouse or any other person that you are committed to or have mutual feelings of love and affection with. This includes having a sexual affair, having a close emotional bond with another person, flirting or having casual flings.

The statistics about infidelity are clear. Depending on its definition, 25% and up to 50% of all couples cheat at least once in their relationship. The figures are probably a bit distorted because many people are ashamed to talk about their infidelity, but the general picture is clear; cheating happens in a lot of families. When we look at our biology this shouldn’t be so surprising.

The main task of any living species is procreation. The fact that people keep falling in and out of love is for a major part orchestrated by our hormones. Men are destined to find as many partners as possible to procreate in order to increase the population. Women on the other hand are biologically inclined to have sex with different partners to have a better and more diffuse gene pool. This is exactly why women have a higher chance of becoming pregnant while having an affair. This law of nature clarifies why people can date different potential partners at a time and why we can easily move on to another lover.

Another fact that can be (partly) explained by your biology is why people cheat more often when they have been together for a long time. In order to understand this, we need to take a closer look at the hormones that are responsible for your feelings of love and attachment.

I will limit myself to describing the different love stages briefly. If you are interested in finding out more, you can read my book ‘Heal Your Broken Heart’ where I go into more detail about the different hormonal systems.

Falling in love can be broken down into three phases: lust, romantic love and attachment. Lust describes the moment when you are looking for a partner but have not necessarily encountered this person just yet. The mere fact that you are out there and looking is sufficient. Your body and mind are screening the environment and are captivated by any interesting person.

When you find your person of interest and butterflies pop up, you enter the romantic love stage. Romantic love is the craving to be with one particular person. It is the cocktail of different feelings that you automatically link to being in love. You can’t focus on anything else than on the person of your interest. You may become wildly jealous and sexually possessive. Therefore, romantic love is also known as obsessive love or passionate love.

You lose your sense of self. In this phase, infidelity is very uncommon as you only have eyes for your lover.

Although they say that true love lasts forever, the romantic feelings of falling in love usually wear out after a year. Your love will move from romantic love to more ‘companionate’ love.

This stage is called Attachment. Your relationship becomes more solid and your body regains control over the crazy hormone surges.

Attachment love is the phase where relationships have the biggest chance to fall victim to infidelity. Attachment love is designed by the brain to keep couples long enough together to raise children. Pure attraction is no longer your brains main concern. This unfortunately may give room to develop lust or romantic love for another person while still being highly attached to your partner. While you still love your partner, you can at the same time develop feelings of intense passion for another individual. You are still very happy with your partner but your spark lies elsewhere.

Personal development can also create distance between couples. People evolve all the time. Our needs and wants evolve from our childhood to adult life and mature further until we grow old. It is perfectly possible to feel happy with a person in a certain stage of your life and then outgrow him or her. No one can be sure to stay committed to one person for the rest of their life. This is actually why a couple takes an oath on their wedding day to stay for better or worse, till death do them part. And while most couples do look forward to preserving the sanctity of this oath which serves as a testament for their love, infidelity might still pop up as an unwanted guest.

Biology and personal development clearly stand in the way of the romantic idea of finding ‘one soulmate’. A person you will spend the rest of your life with. A person you will stay madly in love with until you die. This beautiful but somehow naive view of love is probably one of the reasons why infidelity is such a difficult topic to discuss. It just doesn’t fit our romantic beliefs.

So, should we conclude that all relationships are doomed to succumb to infidelity? Are we thus obliged to turn a blind eye to affairs? By no means! There are many happy marriages that never had to deal with affairs, and there are also many ways to prevent infidelity.

According to research, the best way to prevent

Reviews for Heal from Infidelity

[Chloe Kim · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Golden rule of any successful relationship : communication is key!