In a post called You Never Really Fall In Love With Anybody, I pointed out again how attraction works.

It leads you to focus solely on the few things about your partner you really like.

Then you ignore the rest.

So when you fall in love with them?

You’re really only falling in love with a “positive illusion.”

Not the real person.

To do that you have to spend lots of time together.

Really getting to know each other.

“Warts and all.”

I still stand by that wisdom.

But today I want to suggest you do something even MORE radical.

If you really want to keep your love life strong?

You need to have an affair.

What??

That’s right.

If you make sure you regularly enjoy romantic liaisons outside your day to day relationship, it will keep your love life flourishing.

Especially if you live with your partner.

Because familiarity always breeds contempt.

Or at least disinterest and complacency.

When you think you “have” your partner?

That they are “yours?”

You begin to take them for granted and your love life fails.

An affair changes all this.

Suddenly you and your partner?

You don’t take each other for granted anymore.

You begin to value the time you spend together again.

An affair adds excitement to your life as well, that is totally lacking in your day to day domestic dull existence.

If you haven’t tried this yet?

You really need to.

I promise.

It will make things SO much better!

Are you still with me?

If you are I’m proud of you!

I know what I’ve suggested above probably triggered just a little bit of anxiety in you.

Especially if your preferred relationship style is monogamy.

If Romantic Friendships are your preferred love life style though?

You already know what I’ve said above is true.

You’ve built the benefits of having an affair right into your love life!

But for my more monogamous friends?

As I finish up here?

I want to sooth your nerves a bit.

Let me help you salvage some value from what has no doubt probably seemed like an attack on everything you hold sacred.

What inspired me to write this post?

It was a paragraph in this article here.

Specifically the part about maintaining “positive illusions” about your partner.

It is indeed important to love your partner.

“Warts and all” as I have said.

But it is equally important to stay in love with the positive illusion of your partner you fell in love with in the first place.

If you focus too much on the warts?

You’re going to get into trouble as well.

Because the negative things?

The things you have to “live with?”

They only make the living that much harder.

Day to day living can really get that way.

So you need to continue to have an affair with that other person you fell in love with.

They are not the real person that you’re in your relationship with.

They are the very BEST things about your partner instead.

The things that made you come to love them in the first place?

They are just an illusion.

To spend time with THAT person. you will have to have an affair.

You will need to regularly sneak away.

Rendezvous and spend time with them.

Leave the person you live with day to day behind, and go have an affair with their “positive illusion” instead.

Your love life has nothing to do with your normal life.

But your love life is the reason you are living.

It is the thing that will fuel you day to day.

So give it the priority it deserves.

Have an affair with that person you originally fell in love with.

I promise you with this kind of affair?

You will never have any regrets!

What do you think? Is it time to start sneaking around on the person you live with?