I would often times be betrayed in my relationships. I wanted to know how I could be more aware of when someone has been unfaithful, so I looked at how the one who was unfaithful is effected. I have found this to be very common changes in people who have cheated on someone. I usually keep my nose out of it when I see this occur but it still hurts seeing it happen.
Those who have affairs will have increased dopamine at first. They will feel more attractive, more content and have a heightened sense of pleasure. They become more emotionally open increasing their feeling of well being. But when the guilt kicks in it changes their personality. When the affair first occurs they will have more confidence. This behavior can become addictive so they may start having multiple affairs.
These are the most common changes that occur in people when they have had an affair. The guilt and anxiety of the consequences cause the HPA to become upregulated. This effects their sleep, memory becomes poor, they will start having angry outburst and may become withdrawn from people. They start feeling incomplete or like something is missing and lose the knowledge of self identity. This causes them to seek their identity by imitating others.
When they first commit the act of infidelity they will become withdrawn and avoid the person they wronged. Later to justify in their minds the wrong doing they will start pointing out the person they wronged short comings.
In the later stages they become self involved believing everyone is beneath them. They also easily lie because the areas involved in moral values shut down. They become very defensive and will only see things from their perspective. They will get angry at others if they make them aware of a flaw they may have or if they are wrong about something and will lash out at them.
They will only make friendships with those they can control. They start viewing relationships as a means to accomplish things or get what they want so they will only associate with those they can control or manipulate.
They start to devalue others in order to try and reduce their feelings of guilt. They will lose the ability to see good in others for the most part and will only see their negative qualities in an effort to make themselves feel better by believing others are worse then they are. This also causes them to not accept the opinions or ideas of others and they will become angry at ones who do try to share an idea or opinion with them. They become very closed minded and pick and choose knowledge they accept if it supports them down playing their guilt.
Because the areas of the brain involved in feeling guilt shut down they also lose the ability to feel empathy for others.
Internally they will feel inadequate, but will overcompensate by being overly confident or will start basing things on appearances and their achievements but inside they have many fears. The fears for the most part is because these things cause them to lose their self identity they no longer know who they are. To farther add to the loss of identity they will hide who they really are from people and only display positive behavior to them.
Thet start rebuking others often and start believing the world is wrong and they are right. They will seek out information to support that belief and reject anything that exposes the reality of their thinking and will get angry and lash out at anyone who provides information that shows they are incorrect about something. This causes them to start being overly defensive if they are incorrect about other things or if they have made an error and it has been pointed out. This is in an effort to maintain their belief they are right and the world is wrong. What adds to this behavior and makes it is worse because they did something wrong they believe others are capable of wrong doing. They start only seeing others negative qualities this causes them to lose their ability to trust others. Areas of the brain involved morality are shut down from the guilt, this causes them to only be able to access memories of when they have made errors farther increasing their lack of trust in others because their brain can no longer access positive memories.
They lose their ability to feel satisfied after sex. They also have the reduced ability to feel love. This will cause them to seek the attention of others trying to compensate for it. But they may have episodes where they become withdrawn when this does not make them feel better.
Those who have had an affair often times lose their ability to set goals and quickly lose interest in things. This causes them to make many bad decisions because they start making decisions based on impulse.
They also will display excess anger partially because they are now unable to see the positive things in people and are mostly aware of their negative qualities. This is is a way to try and make themselves feel better about their guilt and make themselves feel better by convincing themselves others are worse then they are.
Their ability to make decision becomes impaired and they will make decisions based on impulse but because they no longer can access positive memories often times they will make errors in their decisions that effect their lives or others negatively.
If they are a spiritual person they will avoid any scriptures that may make them feel guilt or make them aware of their error and will choose to listen to scriptures that seem to support their behavior.
If a person admits their guilt, learns from it their brain can heal and they will learn from their error.
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