Affairs are emotionally devastating and cause significant harm to relationships. Many people wonder if an affair is indicative of a sexual addiction. In most cases, an extramarital affair is not an addiction. Let's explore ten key signs that can help distinguish between an addiction and an affair.
The Courage to Stay: How to Heal From an Affair and Save Your Marriage by Kathy Nickerson, Ph.D., is a detailed guide to helping couples heal from infidelity. She immediately dives into this painful process of healing from the very beginning to the end. She offers clear guidelines and questions to ask throughout the process, individually and together, to reach healing. It was so easy to follow for both partners, as she labeled it the straying partner and the hurt partner.
Limerence is an emotional state where a person experiences intense and often obsessive feelings of infatuation towards someone else. It's a romantic attraction that goes beyond typical, healthy attraction and often becomes obsessive and all-consuming. When someone is experiencing limerence, they may be more likely to act on their impulses and take risks, which can make them more vulnerable to an affair.

Dr. Kathy Nickerson
Dr. Kathy is a licensed clinical psychologist, author, and nationally recognized relationship expert who has helped thousands of couples. Over the past 20 years, Kathy has presented marriage and relationship advice at more than 70 conferences, while authoring more than 85 professional articles and books, with coverage in Good Housekeeping, Reader's Digest, CNBC, Bustle, Medium, UpJourney, Fatherly, The Zoe Report, CNN, Forbes, Glamour, Cosmopolitan, LA Times, Newsweek and many more.