Up and Running, I'm not sure which bit you're querying WRT my views, but I'm assuming it was my last post in reply to Rock's belief that if you truly love someone, you don't fall in love/lust with someone else. I disagree with this and in fact I think this line of thinking can be dangerous.
It is perfectly possible to love someone and fall in love/lust with someone else - I suspect a lot of people having affairs have this very conflict - it would be much easier emotionally if they had no feelings left whatsoever for the primary partner, in fact.
If people however believe that this is not possible, they can make some very poor decisions - rather like you said, downthread - they can confuse the feelings for the affair partner as "love", when actually they might just be lust or infatuation.
It takes a very cool head to work out that these feelings might pass and that they aren't necessarily going to threaten the primary relationship.
Traditionally, women have always had this difficulty, because they reason that they cannot love their partner if they are having an affair, whereas men have been able to separate more easily and reach very different conclusions. I do however think this is changing in gender terms and there are a frightening number of younger men having affairs and convincing themselves that this is "love" and that they are not "in love" with their wives any longer. And there are an increasing number of women engaging in "no strings, sex-only affairs".
Sadly, I know of lots of people in RL who made very poor decisions based on Rock's premise. They fell into the trap of thinking that their affair must mean something far more significant in terms of their love for their DH/DW and therefore convinced themselves that the marriage must end. Later on, with much sadness and untold hurt, they realised that they never in fact stopped loving their DW/DH, but now it is too late.
From personal experience, my H concludes that he was infatuated with OW, but that he never stopped loving me - and he never once viewed her as an alternative. Fairly quickly, the infatuation started to wear off too and he started to see her in a more objective light, especially in terms of her personality and values.
Thank goodness he didn't confuse infatuation with love, or delude himself that lusting after someone else meant he didn't love me - and thank goodness I didn't think that either, although I accept that this is a very common belief and is one I wrestled with for some time in our recovery. However, in retrospect, it wasn't the affair itself that caused me to doubt his feelings for me, but more the associated "affair behaviour" - he was very difficult to live with during his affair.
Of course I think it's possible for people to have affairs and not love their primary partner, but I've seen so many great relationships, that could have been rescued, ditched on the altar of this belief that an affair means more than it should.
My other very strong belief now is that infidelity is all about the person practising it. It's very often got nothing to do with the state of the primary relationship or partner. That's scary because I believe people invest a lot in the theory that they can control their partner's fidelity, by making sure the relationship and the partner are nurtured. They think "it could never happen to me, our marriage is happy, he loves me to bits etc." - and then comes the terrible fall.....
I do think a loving, happy marriage is going to be a better deterrent to infidelity than one that has gone off the boil, but the relationship is not as important as the individuals within it - how they will react to a cast-iron opportunity, their sense of entitlement, their narcissism, their selfishness etc.
This is why I was suggesting the women on this thread look inwards, as infidelity is actually a pretty extreme way of expressing dissatisfaction in a marriage and I don't think everyone being unfaithful has a crap relationship/primary partner. Similarly, there are people who are in unhappy marriages and might not even love their spouses, but they wouldn't be unfaithful. For those individuals, they might not be happy, but they have very strong values about deceit - their self-respect and scruples won't allow them to engage in a behaviour they believe to be wrong.
Infidelity is not an accurate barometer of a marriage. It happens in good, happy marriages. It often doesn't happen in unhappy marriages.
Therefore, it says much more about the infidel, than it says about their partner or indeed their relationship. For a couple recovering from the sheer devastation it causes, it is essential that the infidel works on him/herself. That must come first before the relationship can be restored.
The best deterrent to my H doing this again, was the work he did on himself. I cannot control what he does, no more than he can control me. We can only control ourselves - and become the sort of people who would never deceive others.