[Entropy3000]

How do you distinguish being truly "in love" versus being in "the fog"???

I say it is the same thing. Same brain chemicals.

Whether it is seen as infatuation or true love is very subjective.

The fact is that this is about brain chemicals oxytocin and dopamine.

I know a BS wants to look as this as being something else and that is all well and good but it is about feelings.

This is an addiction to a person. Folks are wired to bond and fall in love. Period.

Stepping back one can judge this if they like. But typically we bond in friendship which creates oxytocin in our brains. So we love the other person. But we also can love our brother and other folks. At some point when we start getting the dopamine rush of seeing someone this becomes more romantic in nature. This is the in love feeling. This is true whether you are married to someone or not. In fact to separate these is very dangerous becasue it minimizes what is going on. But moving forward, we can then make value judgements about why we love someone in a more rational way. Long term commitment and so on. This does matter of course. I am fine with calling this true love and the other a fog but to the person with the feelings it is the same. They are not thinking right.

Very often people fall in love and get married. One could call this an infatuation for sure. We could say this not true love until they have been happily married for number of years. But saying that people who are divorced after say ten years never were truly in love I say is disengenuous.

trying to determine true love from infatuation is very subjective. I get it. We can make that judgement from afar but I am not so sure how helpful it is. Maybe this can help people recover.

So in that light in my EA after I came out of withdrawal I saw it for what it was. So maybe this is the difference. You can withdraw and come out of the fog and work on the true love with your spouse. This is ok but realize that there is a reason that NC from an AP must be permanent. Ask yourself why that is?