Q. I am having a affair with a married woman. She does not care about her husband at all. She comes to see me whenever I ask her out. Would her husband still not know about his wife's affair after such a long time? I actually want to stop seeing her but I cannot refuse when she calls me for a date. I guess this relationship must end sooner or later but things are not going as I wish. 

A. You are in relationship addiction, which is a psychological disorder. You can neither stop the distorted relationship nor treat relationship addiction with your conscious efforts without professional help. When a woman is in relationship addiction for a long enough time, she develop more and more advanced condition of relationship addiction, which causes her not to pay attention to her husband at all. Her husband may not pay attention to his wife either if he himself is also in infidelity with relationship addiction. 

The adulteress is in attention addiction, which makes her come to see you anytime she perceives that she can get attention from you. She may even neglect her children to see you. Attention addiction makes women focus on getting attention by all means. As time passes and her condition progresses, she displays hysteria losing her reason upon the slightest trigger of wounds. 

Her husband may or may not know about his wife's infidelity. However, it is certain that their marriage relationship is in a serious condition and they are just maintaining an empty shell marriage. Another possibility is that her husband is aware of his wife's infidelity but cannot do anything about it since he is extremely scared of her and the whole situation and does not know what to do. 

It is not important anymore whether her husband knows about infidelity or not. Their marriage and family are considered to have already collapsed. You are the one who has destroyed the adulteress, her husband, and her children. You have become a criminal who has destroyed a family in the condition of response addiction. Many people mistake attention addiction and response addiction for love. 

You and your adulteress are not capable of stopping seeing each other or stopping relationship addiction with conscious efforts no matter how hard you try. You cannot resist seeing each other when either of you contacts the other since both of you are in the pathological condition of addiction unless you are stopped by some external force. 

You say this relationship must end sooner or later but relationship addiction only gets aggravated unless properly treated until you destroy your life completely or you die. By definition, psychological disorders are caused by two of the three psychological components losing balance and the ability to recover.

When you develop relationship addiction on top of post traumatic stress due to spouse infidelity, all three psychological components are considered to have developed disorders. Then, you only seek fun and pleasure at the expense of all the relationships. 

Psychological disorders must be treated before it gets too aggravated. The longer you have psychological disorders, the longer time it takes to treat. In your case, whether the adulteress' husband is aware of your infidelity or not is of no importance at all. The only way you can get out of relationship addiction and restore healthy psychology and happy life is to treat relationship addiction with professional help. 

About KIP(Korea Institute of Psycho-education)