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Part of the difficulty of dealing with an affair is the "fantasy" kind of romantic love involved as compared to the deeper, more "real" love that comes from a life lived fully together. In defense of this deeper love, here's an excerpt from our book, "Making Love Stay:"

"Romantic love is just the first stage of love, and it either evolves into a deeper, richer love or it withers. It's necessary to move beyond the initial romantic stage of love to achieve the richness that's possible in a loving relationship. Lasting love is not a less desirable state; it's just different. It has its own unique form of intensity and excitement, both of which emerge from a deeper knowledge of yourself and your partner."

An issue that frequently arises between couples after the discovery of an affair is the impact on feelings of passion, interest in sex, and general "loving feelings." Sexual feelings flow best when people feel "safe" enough to allow their natural expression. Since an affair usually undermines feelings of safety, it also undermines sexual feelings and passion. This can affect either party. Neither the one who had the affair nor their partner feels "safe" anymore. The overall atmosphere is often one of anxiety, awkwardness, uneasiness—which isn't conducive to sexual or loving feelings.

It's normal for there to be problems like this. In a "new" relationship, the sheer excitement of it may give rise to sexual feelings. In a long-term relationship, sexual feelings are often an outgrowth of loving feelings. If someone doesn't have "loving feelings" at this point, they also may not feel like having sex; or if they do have sex, they may not be very passionate.

There are a couple of things that might help recover the loving feelings. (I don't think sexy tricks and gimmicks help at all.) But each person can try to be aware of any spontaneous positive feeling (however slight) toward each other, and act on it immediately. This doesn't mean jumping in bed or even being sexual. But even in the midst of such strain, there are moments when a little thing will trigger a positive feeling. If either of you just says something or does something or looks a certain way, or smells a certain way--or anything that triggers memories of more loving times, don't hold back. Let yourselves touch, or hug, or just say something nice.