Is it love - or are you just obsessed?

0:00Labor Day's savings are happening now at the Home Depot with select appliances starting at $399. Plus, save up to an extra $1000 and get free delivery on appliance purchases of $998 or more. Get a whirlpool laundry tower featuring industry first UV clean technology designed to reduce bacteria in the wash without fading fabrics. Plus, with great prices at the Home Depot, you can save on select appliances designed to make laundry day easier, shop Labor Day's savings at the Home Depot today. Offer valid august 27th through September 16th, you only see store online for details. Because sometimes we think we're craving another person when we're actually craving the version of ourselves we got to be around. And that's important because I think it's how you pop the fantasy, right? My name is John Kim. You're listening to The Ingrid Therapist podcast and on today's episode. I've lost desire for my husband and had an affair. Can we try to reconnect and get the desire back?

1:00Also, why do we get obsessed with people and how do we know if it's obsession or love? And finally, a bunch of, I think we fucked ourselves when, which has become a series of mine. All right, let's get to it right away. Let's get to the first question, which is, um, I've lost desire for my husband and had an affair. We're trying to reconnect. How do I get the desire back? This is actually a really common question. I think so many people and you know, I'm at that age. Uh, I'm probably older than you, my listener. I don't know what, what the average age is of my listener. I'm assuming like a millennial elder millennial. I'm a Jen ex. So, um, you weren't quite an idea when I was in high school. You were already born when I was, um, doing donuts in my truck that was partially lifted. Cause I thought it was cool with the stucy sticker in the bag and listen to social distortion.

2:03This is a ride, right around 1991. You were probably in middle school. Anyway, so your generation now married kids, uh, and in, and from any of you married for a long time. So yes, affairs and drift and people cheating like there's, um, a lot of that that has happened, I think. And then also a lot of people, um, getting divorced and also a lot of people deciding they want to try to rebuild, right? So I picked this question because, uh, I think many, many can relate. Okay. Yes. My answer, my answer is yes. Thank you. Next question. Your question is kind of get the desire back. And yes, my, my, my answer is yes. But I wouldn't make getting the desire back the goal. And I think this is the trap that many people fall into, right? Because you may be trying to resurrect a version of desire that belonged to an older version of you or older version of your marriage.

3:03And that marriage is gone. I would look at it like it has died, right? Uh, the goal is now to create something new instead of creating what was. And I think this is a really important because I think a lot of people try to fix something by creating what was, but both you and your partner were different people then. So instead of trying to create what was, you got to let that thing die and you got to start over, you know, you got to create new tracks. But real quick now about the affair, I got to say a quick note. And if they can make this even more confusing because affairs are almost chemically designed for desire, right? Secretly risk anticipation, novelty, distance, fantasy. You don't have to discuss who's unloading the dishwasher before you meet at a hotel room. Marriage has groceries. Affairs have countdowns. It's important to understand why comparing the desire you felt inside the affair to the desire you feel inside a marriage can be incredibly

4:06an unfair comparison, right? One of those largely out largely outside ordinary life. The other one has to survive inside it. So I wouldn't ask how do I want my husband the way I used to instead I'd ask who am I sexually now and can my husband and I meet each other there, right? And this is the space where you guys create something new, right? Lay new tracks. You don't need your old desire back because you're not who you were then. Either is your husband. And with this affair, there are things of course to process, right? You guys are both working through it, hopefully and hopefully taking ownership, you know, even the person who didn't cheat that person also has contributed to the dynamic of the relationship, right? And I think the thing about affairs and the fidelity is there's a lot of pointed fingers at one person and I get that one person, you know, went outside the marriage, of course, right? But also in order to build something new, you guys have to both take ownership

5:09for your parts, your piece, you know, you both need to eventually build a new desire in this case and you got to build it together. It's not like two people go off separately and come back. No, and you're doing this together. So there's communication, there's a dance, right? And you may step on toes in the beginning because you guys have drifted, you know, but you guys have to go through this evolving learning, growing process together. Part of that for you means getting curious about what the affair awakened in you without assuming the affair partner was the only person capable of awakening it. Does that make sense? Did you feel wanted, dangerous, unpredictable, seeing, free, wanted, sexual, instead of responsible? Like a woman instead of a wife, a mother employee, character, household manager, maybe that's what you felt because sometimes we think we're craving another person when we're actually craving the version of

6:09ourselves, we got to be around them. And that's important because I think it's how you pop the fantasy, right? Because the version of you doesn't necessarily belong to the affair partner. She belongs to you and it's your work to own that. This episode is sponsored by Vinted. Hey, listen, you don't need your house to burn down to start cleaning out your closet and also to start collecting some cool second hand clothes. Vinted is a second hand marketplace app with a mission that helps second hand your first choice. Vinted helps that their members find great deals and easily sell the clothes they know longer wear, giving quality items a second life again and again. I love what they're doing and they make it so easy. So whether you're cleaning out pieces, you know, longer wear or find the unique items and great places. Vinted makes it simple to refresh your wardrobe, earn extra cash and also give your clothes a second life plus with no seller fees.

7:11You can keep what you earn from every single sale. So if you're ready to clean out your closet, finally, it makes some extra money while doing so, download the Vinted app for free and start listing with no seller fees. You keep every dollar you earn. Give your clothes a second life. Download the Vinted app and see what your closet is worth. You know, a lot of times, or I would say most of the times, affairs don't work out because there's a difference between meeting someone, feeling the chemistry and feeling of you that you have been felt in a long time and that excitement turns into multiple hours in a hotel room, maybe routinely. And then you realize to get to know this person oh, I can't build a relationship with this person, this is just

8:11energy, go ahead and say. Maybe it's better for you to be able to crawls and leave your cheerful night and get your family out of your eye right away by standing in front of you if that people are with you on all campus, their environment, to have a love you have gotalis isea dancing, and my heart to love. And I tell you guys you're really not your easy leader looking at negotiation. So this is just a commercial, right? And so a lot of people leave their partners to pursue the person that I'm in the fair with and they realize, oh shit, this has no legs. This was just exciting because it awakened something in me, but it's not a relationship, you know? Anyway, she blogs to you, right? Now the word becomes bringing her home, not pretending the affair didn't happen, not manufacturing date nights and coping oysters, fix everything, now forcing yourself to have sex with your husband to prove the marriage is healing, but rebuilding honestly, safety, curiosity, also like a healthy, separateness, you know, building each other's own lives

9:14lives and then also coming together for play, erotic space, right? And probably having some uncomfortable conversations about what went missing long before someone else entered the picture because it doesn't happen overnight. There's always a drift, you know, you look back and you start connecting dots and you see, oh, I see why my partner cheated, not that it's your fault or I see why I cheated, you know? And whoever cheated, let's not make it about fault because if you just stay there, then there's blame and judgment and anger resentment and there is no space to meet anyone, you know, then there's just lots of closed hearts and wounds that just rarely heal. Your husband also gets to have his own experience of what happened, right? Desire has a hard time growing when one person is drowning and guilt and the other is drowning and hurts. Repair matters, but if you genuinely both want to build something new, I wouldn't try to

10:16go backwards. Don't we create the marriage you had before the affair? Being in that marriage already wasn't working. Build the marriage that could exist because you're finally willing to talk about what wasn't. And maybe that's the bigger question. Can you stop trying to get the old desire back long enough to discover what the two of you might desire now? Thank you for asking. Come again. Okay. Next question. I actually instead of a question, let's do a, um, I think we find out that we have a lot of things that we fucked ourselves when because this line's up with what we're talking about now, this topic, I think we fucked ourselves when we went, I think we fucked ourselves when we had an affair. Decided to repair but made the entire relationship about the affair. If you decide to stay after cheating, something strange can happen. You stay together, but the affair stays to and it moves into the house. Since the dinner, right, gets into bed with you.

11:17Sometimes on vacation shows up during sex. A late text becomes about the affair. A business trip becomes about the affair. The quiet mood becomes about the affair. A beautiful Sunday can suddenly become about the affair because somebody remembers something at 1137 in the morning. And I understand why betrayal makes the brain hungry for information, right? You're now running a black light. Who was it? Sometimes where, what did you say? What's the sex better? Did you orgasm or was a person bigger than me? We hear that stereotype a lot often. And that comes from, by the way, a man's own insecurity. Do you love them? Did you think about me afterwards? Tell me everything. I want to know. It's also like this, you don't have as a lot after a fair is people want to know exactly what happened and they feel like they have a right to know. And then once they know exactly what happened or how that experience was, you can't hold that. You can't handle it.

12:17You know, it's like a lot of people want, like when you're dating someone, you somehow feel like you have a right to their sexual history. And so you almost demand it. And then when you get that information, you can't handle it. And then there's jealousy and comparison and all this stuff. Anyway, tell me again, because I don't believe the version you told me on Tuesday, right? There's not, there trust is, is husband broken. And you look, some of those questions and answers, transparency matters, of course, accountability matters. The person you cheated doesn't get to decide when the other person should be finished hurting. But eventually, if you've decided to repair, there has to be a difficult transition from investigating what happened to creating what happens next. Otherwise you're technically together, but you're still living at the same scene of the crime. And sometimes we mistake surveillance for rebuilding trust. Bones checked, location sharing, passwords, constant resurance proving where you were approving, who you talked to, proving you're not doing it again.

13:20Some of that may be because they're in the beginning, but surveillance can tell you where your partner is. It can't tell you who they've become. That's the deeper work, right? Has the person who cheated actually changed? Do you understand what allowed them to cross that line? When they tolerate your pain without becoming defensive, are they behaving differently when nobody is watching? And can the betrayal person, can the betrayed person eventually allow new evidence to matter? Because that's the part of repairing nobody talks about. If every good thing your partner does is dismissed because of the worst thing they did, then there is no road back. There is only probation forever, right? And nobody can build intimacy from a courtroom. At some point you have to decide whether you're trying to repair the relationship or prosecute. That doesn't mean forgetting. It doesn't mean rushing forgiveness. That's all I'm saying. And it definitely doesn't mean pretending everything is okay. What it means is that eventually there has to be room for something besides what happened,

14:24right? New memories, new intimacy, new sex, new conversations, new honesty, new truth, new versions of both of you. Maybe even laughter without feeling guilt for laughing. Because if you choose to stay, the goal can't be spending the rest of your relationship making sure the affair never happened. It did. It did happen, right? That is truth. But the question becomes whether you're going to let the affair be something that happened inside your relationship or whether the affair gets to become the relationship. I gotta say, for most people, and this is why when there's infidelity, most people don't make it, it's because they let the affair become the relationship. Shops are growing your own business, can be intimidating, and lonely at times. Your to-do list may feel endless with new tasks, and lists can easily begin to overrun your life. So finding the right tool that not only helps you out, but simplifies everything as a built-in business partner can be a game changer. For millions of businesses, that tool is Shopify.

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16:28And maybe that's where we fucked ourselves. We thought, repairing after a betrayal meant staring backwards until we finally understood everything. And like I said, you know, even the person who did cheat, they don't understand why, you know. Sometimes repairs knowing enough about what happened to make sure you don't build the same relationship again and then having the courage to turn around because you can't rebuild the relationship while both of you are still facing the wreckage. Okay, next question. This question is about obsession. Why do we get obsessed with people and how do we know if it's love or obsession? And also like, how do we stop? I think one of the biggest mistakes we make is assuming that the intensity of a feeling tells us something about the importance of a person of the person. And I gotta say, I am, this might be a generalization, but I think this type is more in younger

17:29love, right? When you're in your 20s, maybe 30s, I mean, definitely high school. But it's not true. The intensity of the collision, the intensity of the relationship with someone, it doesn't always tell us the importance of the person and what the person's role is going to be in your life, right? Sometimes the person you can't stop thinking about isn't the love of your life. You're the person who created the most uncertainty in your life, right? Because brain loves an unfinished story. Think about what obsession usually feeds on. Waiting, wandering, wondering, mixed signals, incredible sex followed by distance, right? The high-level you get away. A beautiful weekend followed by silence. Someone telling you they're not ready while you're continuing, while they're continuing to sleep with you. Someone giving just enough to keep the possibility of life. It's almost like the person creates enough distance where we have to keep proving that we have worth.

18:29And of course, everyone, whether you're consciously doing it or not, you're proving that you have value every day. You're just trying to, right? And so when someone doesn't validate your value, you're constantly craving it in that friction, that chase, that energy creates chemistry, it's chemical, and it creates desire, and it creates, you know? And so, you know, the feeling of it is real, but is it coming from a place that is more approval seeking, right? And then also, just because you have that feeling, it doesn't mean that wherever you build with this person is going to have legs because we don't know if the earth first has capacity. We just know that it's hot, right? The feeling. That little word maybe can keep us wondering for years. And there's actually a reason intermittent reinforcement is so powerful. When rewards are unpredictable, we can become more persistent about pursuing them. It's one of those reasons, slot machines, they're compelling, right?

19:32Pull, nothing, pull, nothing, pull, then jackpot. Some relationships accidentally become emotional slot machines. It's nothing, then you text nothing, hard emoji, nothing, you know, then you get a text that says you up, and you're like, yes. And suddenly you're not building intimacy, you're waiting for another hit. And that's why I think obsession and love can feel incredibly similar in the body while producing completely different experiences in your life. Obsession tends to shrink your world, you check your phone, right? You're using anxiety, reread messages, you're analyzing punctuation, watch whether they're online, talk about them constantly, neglect things that normally make you feel like yourself. Their tension determines whether Tuesday is a good day. Love should eventually expand, but love should actually expand your world. And this is the difference between obsession and love. Love, on the other hand, creates room for them to be your friends, them and your work.

20:36They create room for them and your friends, right? That's what love does. Love doesn't constrict, love expands. And it creates room for your work, your passions, and it creates room for your interests, as well as dares, right? Also creates room for silence, like a healthy silence, like no one ignoring each other. We're just sometimes, science is good, right? Obsession asks, how do I get them? Love eventually asks, who are they? Right? And there's a huge difference because sometimes we're not obsessed with the actual person we're obsessed with, the version we've created from incomplete information. The unavailable person is perfect soil for fantasy because reality hasn't had enough time to ruin the story. You don't know how they handle money, how they fight after three years, right? Where they throw their socks, how they load the dishwasher. I'll kind of joke about those things. Whether they leave dishes in the sink, why are the dishes such a big problem in relationships?

21:40What they're like when they're sick, bored, disappointed, insecure, tired, I would even say broke, that's a good test, right? We're no longer trying to impress you. You have 20% of a human being and your imagination quietly manufactures the other 80. Then you fall in love with your own construction, right? So how do you stop? Well, how do you stop obsessing about it as well? I don't think you start by trying to stop thinking about them because every time you try to stop thinking about something, you actually think about the thing you're trying to stop thinking about more, right? That's like telling yourself to not think about a red elephant. Instead stop feeding the loop. You stop checking, stop rereading, stop creating accidental reasons to contact them, stop using them as social media as a surveillance camera. Stop asking mutual friends for updates and most importantly start separating what actually happened from what you imagined could happen.

22:41Okay? Here, do this exercise, write two columns if you need to. What did this person actually give me and what was I hoping they eventually would? That gap is truth, right? Can also, I think that this gap that you create can actually, can also set you free. Then rebuild the parts of your life that disappeared while you were sharing it, while you were staring at them. Friends, movement, work, creativity, dating, sleep, food, whatever reminds you that, whatever reminds you that your life existed before this person became the sun. And ask yourself the question underneath all of it. What does getting this person finally prove about, right? That I'm desirable, that I'm worthy, that I'm not abandoned, that I won, that this time someone unavailable finally chose me. Maybe that's it. Maybe that's what you're getting, right? Because sometimes we're not trying to get the person, we're trying to get a different

23:44ending to an old story, right? Again, trying to prove something. And that's, and at the end of the day, where we try to prove, it all comes back to yourself, your worth, right? That you're, that you better and that you're lovable. And that's why letting go can feel so much bigger than losing them. You're also surrendering the ending you were hoping they would give you. And maybe that's one of the cleanest differences between love and obsession. Love allows you to see someone as they are, obsession requires them to become who you need them to be. Can I say that one more time? Love allows you to see someone as they are, obsession requires them to become who you need them to be. Thank you for listening. Keep the questions coming. I'm doing a challenge. And it will probably be like halfway done, but it's okay because it's an ongoing challenge. I'm trying to answer 300 of your questions in 30 days. It's a challenge to myself, but here's the good news if you participate in this challenge.

24:46I'm going to answer your question. So you get to move to the front of the line. Anyway, the link on the bottom, on the bottom, the show notes to jump into the challenge. So this is entire month. I'm doing nothing but answering questions. That's 10 questions a day for 30 days. And if you want me to answer your question and join this challenge, all the details are in the show notes. Thank you for listening. Be well. Labor Day Savings are happening now at the Home Depot with Select Appliances starting at $399. Plus, save up to an extra $1,000 and get free delivery on appliance purchases of $998 or more. Get a whirlpool laundry tower featuring industry first UV clean technology designed to reduce bacteria in the wash without fading fabrics. Plus, with great prices at the Home Depot, you can save on Select Appliances designed to make laundry day easier. Shop Labor Day Savings at the Home Depot today. Offered by the August 27th through September 16th, we'll only see store online for details.