I did say face value is what matters. But you are taking that further than what I imagined it.
Look, I will do this one in reverse with my bs experience. At face value, my husband had a highly sexual affair in my home for 18 months. She was our employee so we knew each other and chatted regularly. In many ways it was a double betrayal.
But todays face value, I have a husband who would do anything to make me happy. I have a partner and a love that I can dream with. A lover who thrills me, and whom I trust as much as I would anyone I would ever have a romantic relationship with in the future.
So, my comments were about face value when you are in the thick of it. A bs who chooses to try to reconcile will eventually have a new picture of the ws if the ws is willing to be reliable and safe and whatever else needs to happen.
There is nothing wrong with a bs calling it and getting a divorce at any given time. They have to decide what that "face value is".
I think you are trying to read that it doesn’t matter about the evolution of the ws, the bs, or the marriage.
And of course face value means- the affair happened. Whether it was based on delusional thinking or not. I don’t think a single couple on this site who reconciled would tell you the affair is not real. Instead you would find two people to accepted the face value and built something from scratch. They both had to come to terms with why the ws did what they did. They both had to decide they were willing to work through it. Working through it means the ws has to change the characteristics within themselves and see the affair through the eyes of the bs as closely as that is possible. And through that discovery we unearth all sorts of around about mindset.
And that to me boils down to the AP and I used and objectified each other. Did that create giddy feelings? Yes, of course. But the difference for me between that and normal falling in love is that it’s a bastardizarion of a "relationship". It’s based on lies, betrayal, two people being their worst selves. Any love was that of an objectified nature. There is no beauty to be found in something like that.
The face value of the affair has to be dealt with and accepted. It happened. It’s reality. But as time moves on understanding that the ws’s decisions weren’t based on them, they were based on a very flawed ws who makes disastrous decisions often as part of avoidant behavior. That’s where it can have value rather than the bs carrying around the pain of they weren’t enough for someone. If the bs and we can understand each other, then they can begin to reconcile what’s happening moving forward.
You chose not to reconcile, I know this was the right decision for you. But maybe sit and think about what you want peace to look like? Do you plan to be a wronged man until you die and carry the wounds as if you deserve them? I don’t know that you see yourself this way but your readers here all acknowledge the pain they read in your words. Likely the trauma that your ws dealt you is tied to lots of other traumas and pains that you have experienced over the span of your life. A good therapist is great for helping to unwind those.
I wish you the best.
[This message edited by hikingout at 11:49 PM, Sunday, January 28th]