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If both people work on themselves, and create a new marriage, as long as the resentments have been dealt with, what is the importance of the pre A issues?

For me it was a question of whether it is even worth it to try at R. It's not a question of blame. If we fish the infidelity turd out of the cereal, is what's left in the bowl worth eating?

The pre-A issues don't just "go away" because you are working on a "new marriage". If that was true, everyone could just forgive and forget. Rugsweeping would be good advice! The A is in the past, what does it matter in the new M if WS is committed?

What needs to be there to have a good M that both partners want? I'm not shifting blame here. I'm trying to be very very clear about that. Let's say, for the sake of the argument, the healthy response to the pre-A problems was to file for D (we often say cheating is never the correct response). Tabling D-worthy problems to recover or attempt to reconcile after an A strikes me as an absolutely massive waste of time and effort.

I think most of the pre A problems in our M were caused directly by my WW's issues and immaturity. We've discussed that at great length and often with a therapist in the mix. I appreciate you saying what your particular issue was BSR. From my perspective, I was wondering what type of issue could exist pre A and post A and your example makes complete sense.

The other issue, the issue she zeroed in on as a why, was I was working too many hours trying to establish myself in a new career. This was a temporary situation, but it was an issue regardless. Most of her issues were manufactured as part of the rationalization for the choice to cheat, as you mention in the first post.

IMO, either the WS or the BS should feel comfortable airing any concerns or grievances after the immediate trauma of d day has passed and the BS is at least considering R. I think this type of honesty and openness is absolutely needed for R.

I think the dynamic you're talking about here is the person with the most "power" in the relationship is the one most willing to leave it. Whoever wants the M more is the one that will capitulate or they will be tossed to the curb. This can be the WS, but it's typically the BS post A. I also feel that this dynamic flip flopped after d day in my M.

For me it was a question of whether it is even worth it to try at R. It's not a question of blame. If we fish the infidelity turd out of the cereal, is what's left in the bowl worth eating?

The pre-A issues don't just "go away" because you are working on a "new marriage". If that was true, everyone could just forgive and forget. Rugsweeping would be good advice! The A is in the past, what does it matter in the new M if WS is committed?

I get what you are saying here. And, it depends on how big those issues were.

I definitely understand that it's used to assess whether the marriage is worth saving. And, as I mentioned I use it for clues of his waywardness. Only the wayward knows what's going on in their own head, so you have to weigh what they are saying a bit with what you know about them historically.

But, and this is the part that I think might be harder for you to see at the point you are at, the issues of the relationship is caused by the two people in it. If both people work on themselves, some of those issues just no longer exist.

I will give you an example. Communication.

If anything was wrong with our relationship prior to my affair it was communication. We didn't have those issues where we got overly emotional or couldn't talk to each other. In many ways, and I have said this countless times, we share similar sensibilities. So, we have a fundamental understanding of where the other person comes from on many things. Not everything but a lot.

Our communication issues were mostly surrounding not sharing our internal worlds. And, because I was so avoidant, and he is so unaware of his emotional world, a lot did not get translated in that way. If I had an issue, it was far easier for me to suppress it, or just deal with it rather than to discuss it.

I don't do that any more. I don't rugsweep anything. It may take me a day or two still because I sometimes need to pin point what it is I am bothered by or trying to say.

So poof! One person changes one bigger thing about themselves and the whole dynamic changes. Though, I will say it creates different issues sometimes but at least we look at them and know what the hell they are and where the other person is on it.

Now, he has to do his side of that.

So, I guess overall, when people decide to work on themselves the relationship evolves differently. There will always be problems but they may no longer be the same ones. If the effort is used to fix the people before the relationship, I think 9 times out of 10 you aren't looking at the same issues any more. And if you are, it's not the same way you once did.

Someone said something the other day that was an ah-ha for me. I think it was Old Wounds. They said that their partner pointed out that relationships should be work but not sooo much work.

For us, our relationship was no work. Not because we were just oh so compatible, but because we were enough compatible that we ignored the places we were not. We have basically had a long marriage of getting along, which sounds great but takes quite a bit of ignoring and avoiding. If we had relied on our compatibility to give us room to work on the things we weren't meeting well on, instead of relying on it to just carry us while we did nothing, we would be in a far different place.

It's still sometimes tempting to go with the flow. I love an easy going relationship. H and I are both easy going. I don't want to lose that aspect. But, at the same time I don't want to heavily rely on it all the time either.

To Poppy:

The flipside of this is that some BS are shitty spouses/partners/people, before and after their WS’s affair. Being Betrayed does not mean that by default that a person is good, it just means someone cheated on them. Cheating is not the only thing that makes a person crappy.

If this is the case, then why would the WS bother with reconciliation? Why save a bad marriage with a crappy BS that has just been made worse by cheating?

[This message edited by BluerThanBlue at 1:33 PM, March 17th (Wednesday)]

Bluerthanblue- i guess though this is the wayward forum and not the reconciliation board. This is where waywards get most of their info and I think we get some folks in here that benefit from hearing that. They arrive swimming in shame and lose track of whether or not they should stay as a result. In fact I know of many instances where it was an abusive situation but due to the fall out of the affair they keep believing everything is their fault. The affair always is, yes, but it doesn’t obligate the person to stay. Most of the situations I know about stayed like that for 2 to 3 years before the ws could grasp that not everything is their fault. They wouldn’t have seen it without the Work they did on themselves to break their codependency. I don’t think Poppy will mind me pointing out she was one of those members.

[This message edited by hikingout at 2:01 PM, March 17th (Wednesday)]

Bluerthanblue:

Waywards have poor boundaries. Obviously affairs are evidence of this. Pre-A , poor boundaries can manifest as allowing themselves to be treated poorly by their spouse. Post affair, poor boundaries can manifest as allowing abusive behavior because shame tells us we deserve to be treated badly.

Beyond boundaries, people choose to pursue Reconciliation for a myriad of reasons. Children, money, having invested their youth in their marriage, the desire for redemption, take your pick.

But, I’m still sticking to my initial statement. There’s shitty BS, in real life and on this board. People who already had a failed marriage and should’ve gotten counseling before entering the second. Mentally ill. Drug abusers. Alcoholics. Rapists. Guilty of domestic violence. Infidelity is terrible, but it’s not the only marital sin.

So before a wayward gets resentful or sullen about not being able to raise marriage issues, I think they need to think long and hard about what they can do to remedy the problem on their end first before making demands of their spouse.

I feel like my whole M was him making unreasonable demands that I could not live up to. I felt alone and abandoned since he was never home and I was solely raising the kids and working, cleaning, paying the bills. Sex waned but it didn't stop. He kept complaining about it and the more he would complain the more I would withdraw. He wasn't very affectionate with non-sexual intimacy and I think that played a big role for a loss of desire for him.

My trust for him was shaky because I felt like something was going on but didn't want to even think about it. My mind would block it out as I had to focus on raising the kids. I wasn't happy. He says he wasn't happy but was never there and didn't help with anything. He wasn't even making the kind of money I was at the time. I felt overwhelmed.

Any Pre-A issues that were brought up Post-A drove me insane. The 1st year post D-Day I blamed myself for his A, for not being able to make him happy and not desiring him sexually. I thought something had to be wrong with me. My CoD practically killed me.

I now realized I wasn't the problem. I wasn't the issue Pre-A and I wasn't the issue Post-A but it took me a loooong time in therapy with multiple therapists to see this.

I don’t mean to threadjack by harping on my experience, but I always feel like it’s important for all parties to recognize that at some point there has to at least be an attempt at balance. One person can’t be throwing dishes and hurling expletives while the other reads self help books five years down the road. And yes, there are unhealthy preA dynamics that don’t just disappear because the affair trumps all other problems, they must be addressed. Your marriage might be free of infidelity but it won’t be happy if BOTH parties aren’t actively putting in the work. And when we tell WSs that they are broken and BSs that they are prizes to be won, we are robbing both parties of the opportunity to be happy partners.

BSs that they are prizes to be won, we are robbing both parties of the opportunity to be happy partners.

Totally agree here. Oftentimes BSs are told “YOU are the prize, here” when literally ALL that is known about them is that they were cheated on.

The c hoice to have an affair is ALWAYS on the WS. No question. Pre-affair marital problems are never a valid reason to cheat. But to whitewash all pre-A problems in the wake of infidelity is to have the exact same problems except that the WS may no longer be cheating. JMHO.

BS here

About 10 months in to R I noticed my W was walking on eggshells, I was picking the restaurants, we did what I wanted to do, she never complained about anything. She was never really a complainer but if she tripped over my boots, or I left a mess, I heard about it. Not after Dday.

I hated the idea that R was looking like a dictatorship, I sought advice from SI and went to her. I told her not to lose herself in R, if I’m wrong, tell me, if we need to work on something, talk to me. Communication was a requirement for R.

This thread has caused a discussion between us, I asked if there are any pre A issues that are unresolved in the M. She told me nothing was bad enough to destroy the M over, things felt worse than they really were, she said she had to get worked up over little stuff to justify what she was doing.

Thank you for starting this thread, it has helped me.

We typically tell a BS they are they prize, when they are dealing with an unremorseful WS, and they are doing the pick me dance. It is almost always said in the JFO forum.

We have BS who come here, dealing with a WS who refuses to go NC, and they are trying to win their WS back. THAT is typically when we tell them they are the prize. That they don't need to stand on their head to win back an abuser.

The flipside of this is that some BS are shitty spouses/partners/people, before and after their WS’s affair. Being Betrayed does not mean that by default that a person is good, it just means someone cheated on them. Cheating is not the only thing that makes a person crappy.

I'll give my personal take on this, and other BSs may or may not agree.

For me, and from what I've read of many others, I shouldered blame(initially) for my WW's cheating. AND, in her early wayward mindset, she had NO PROBLEM airing her perceived 'issues' in our marriage. They ranged anywhere from my lack of being physically home and involved with the children down to our pet dog urinating in the house. And initially, I accepted each and every one of these accusations.

But although she was clearly thinking 'wayward' at that time, it does not mean that some of those issues were not legitimate MARRIAGE issues. So even though I was shellshocked by the discovery of infidelity, for the right or wrong reasons, I self-evaluated myself in the marriage. I saw some of my flaws, although they may have been exaggerated by BOTH parties in the early days of discovery. There were issues that I knew I was going to have to address. Not for my marriage, as I came to discover, but for myself. As my self-esteem started to return, I decided that I was going to address only my personal non-marital issues. There was NO WAY that I was going to put in any marital emphasis until I believed that I had a partner worth working with.

REMEMBER---the above mentioned efforts were decided upon AFTER my self-esteem returned. Right after D-day, I did the biggest 'pick me' dance that I could ever conjure up. So yes, I did make almost any and all changes immediately after D-day #1, but those changes stopped....then started to be slowly readdressed....down the road.

I'm not saying that I'm a crappy partner, but I would be surprised if a newly minted BS did NOT take a look at their shortcomings soon after discovery.

Pointing out that WS are often shitty spouses before infidelity isn't the same thing as saying all BS are perfect angels, nor did my statement imply that cheating is the only marital "crime" or form of betrayal. But more often than not, cheating doesn't happen in a vacuum. The attitudes and mindsets that result in cheating also manifest themselves in other shitty behaviors that damage the BS and the marriage as a whole.

Therefore, going forward, a WS should start to look inward more on how they might be contributing to the problem or if there is anything they can do to fix it. For example, I met a woman through a new moms group that was constantly complaining that her husband wasn't helpful with their child. I felt terrible for her until I went to her home and observed that she was constantly critiquing everything her husband did in relation to the child. It suddenly made sense why he just threw up his hands and avoided doing anything that might be wrong.

I think betrayed spouses could also benefit from this approach, too, but the reason I think it's particularly important for a WS in the wake of an affair is that it demonstrates to the BS that they are woking on getting out of the wayward mindset by proactively working on problems and taking responsibility for their end of shortcomings in the marriage, a part from simply not cheating.

And while I don't think it's fair or reasonable to expect a WS to put their needs secondary to the BS indefinitely, it's not fair or reasonable to do the emotional equivalent of burning down the entire house and then bitch to the BS about the leaky basement.

Lastly, just because a BS offers the gift of reconciliation doesn't mean the WS is obligated to accept or that they're not allowed to change their minds about it even if they did accept. I think staying in a marriage out of a sense of guilt or obligation is ultimately worse for everyone involved then calling it quits.

I do not disagree with the premise of what you are saying bluer than blue. I would say I have often given this advice to many a bs that they are the prize to be won as hellfire pointed out.

However, I see why Poppy pointed this out. We gave this advice to her. When she arrived here. We have done this to several ws actually. What it does in this forum is reinforces that the ws is always wrong. It reinforces the way they already see themselves. We have had several abused women here who have been given some really terrible advice because we often treat them one size fits all. Some are codependent that do not see a way out.

You are seemingly offended because of what poppy said, and I understand why. But genuinely we get women here that need this message in the midst of barrage of 2 by 4s that get served up here. We have given 2 by 4’s to abused women. While I can see they also need to work on themselves, that’s maybe not what’s best needed. I have disbelieved ws who have arrived here because we know ws rewrite history. Bit followers their paths for sometimes years only to find out what I was encouraging them to do was really detrimental to them and what they should do.

I think you feel defensive on this topic but I don’t think it was directed at you. It is just poppy knows some of the missteps we made with her and maybe she is also aware of others and her voicing that is for a reason and not to contradict you specifically.

At what point is it once again reasonable for a WS to express unhappiness with the marital dynamic and/or the actions of the BS?

If two people are aiming to make a better relationship -- then each should feel like they can share their concerns and voice their opinions.

I do know my wife put me first after her confession. I appreciated that, but like someone else mentioned, I didn't sign up for marriage so I could rule over them.

I married my wife because she is brilliant, strong and independent. I actually banked a little too hard on that strength, and that's where I learned to be a better spouse on my end.

We did it all backwards anyway.

My wife kept her A secret for over a decade, and we actually did MC a few years before she confessed. That's when she let go of the anger and resentments from the M -- however, it also busted a myth she held during her secret. She held on the idea only a bad marriage can cause infidelity. MC revealed that I wasn't perfect, and yet, I was also a far better partner, who had been demonized during those years I was in the dark.

Once she understood that the secret hurt our M as much as anything, she told me the truth.

She doubled down on the shame of her choices and keeping the secret.

So, getting us back to a balance was a big deal.

Back to the original point, I think if anyone, be it a BS or WS who believes they are perfect as they are and don't need any work -- those folks aren't healthy partners -- with or without infidelity.

I would say it took my wife over three years to feel comfortable sharing her current relationship concerns. She would share some along the way, just not enough to help her heal too. Yes, I know WS don't have as much healing to do, but there is some.

In year five of our recovery, she mentioned the other day she is grateful for how much better we communicate and even if we have a bad day, we don't take it out each other (like our pre-A M).

I’m not remotely pissed or defensive on this topic, hikingout... funny enough, that’s the impression I was getting from your response. I feel like you’re reading into things that aren’t there. If you recall, in a different thread, I told you that you didn’t have to tolerate any behavior from your husband that was humiliating or disrespectful. He’s chosen to stay with you and you with him, so you both get a voice in the marriage.

Back to the topic at hand....

For the purposes of providing practical, generally applicable advice to Wayward spouses— assuming that they want to repair marriages with flawed but fundamentally decent Betrayed spouses who love them— is that they need to take a new approach to dealing with problems in the marriage and how they vocalize those concerns. They need to explore how the shortcomings that led them to cheat may have also led to other problems in their lives and relationships.

The sad reality that a reconciling WS will need to learn to live with is that they don’t get the benefit of the doubt that they used to have before trust was broken. Instead of simply laying problems at the feet of the BS (who may or may not be able to handle it, depending on where they are in the heeling process) the WS should first explore what is within their power to change the situation from their end.

[This message edited by BluerThanBlue at 9:44 PM, March 17th (Wednesday)]

This post might be a bit scattered, sorry.

I feel like we are having the chicken/egg argument about what came first, and what needs priority: pre existing marital problems or infidelity.

Moving from Year Two to Year Three, I began to see the infidelity not as an aberration that happened in a weird circumstance long ago in a galaxy far far away.

I began to see it as part of a pattern of very pedestrian behaviors arising from both of us.

I am in no way saying that I am responsible for Husband's infidelity, and he has insisted from the beginning that it had nothing to do with me.

But it was a part of the whole of 'us,' and how our relationship worked, and how it didn't.

Years ago when this thing happened, Husband treated it like an anomaly that spontaneously and randomly occurred because of a weird confluence of events and circumstances that weren't likely to happen again. He swore it would never happen again and he put personal boundaries in place to insure that. He says that it's never happened again, and I believe him.

But here's the thing: the basic problem was not addressed.

The act of infidelity wasn't an aberration out in left field. It didn't happen because of a set of weird, exotic circumstances. It didn't happen because a woman was naked and available. It happened because Husband had shit for boundaries and impulse control. He was immature and had a very self-centered, naive, honestly arrogant definition of what it meant to be 'married.' These are his actual words with which he describes who he was in that moment and at that time.

He honestly believed that by taking a wife he'd simply added a cool new life feature- on demand sex! home cooked meals! help with the laundry! a second income! but otherwise, his life wouldn't materially change. I mean, he knew he had to stop dating, but that wasn't an issue, he was kind of over that anyway.

It honestly never even occurred to him that being legally, socially and financially tied to a spouse meant that he'd have to compromise on any of his own choices.*

That incident was completely predictable for Husband and for us. It was a 'No Different Than Last Tuesday' garden variety boundary incursion that just happened to get expressed sexually and in terms of infidelity because of that particular venue.

The fact that Husband was on that trip in the first place was an excellent example of how my boundaries got steam rolled on a routine basis, having absolutely nothing to do with sex or infidelity.

Our problem was that Husband was raised by narcissists who lack empathy. Every aspect of any relationship is a transactional zero sum game, and as a result, Husband has a detached avoidant relationship style. He is also reductionist in that every interaction becomes win/lose, and to lose is to completely lose face. To compromise is to admit defeat.

I am a codependent with an anxious attachment style, which is confusing, because my way of dealing with his detached, avoidant attachment style is to back off and give him lots of room, and to let him have his way on nearly every issue that he cares about.

Let the Wookie win, give the Wookie lots and lots of space and autonomy. It's the only way to stay attached at all.

Also, even though I was codependent, I did have some modicum of pride: I did not wish to be seen, or to see myself, as needy, clinging, insecure. I pretended like a LOT of things didn't bother me until Husband, in his immaturity, inevitably pushed things too far. Then I'd blow up. Yell, scream, melt down. And he'd dig his heels in even further. He was a grown assed man now, nobody tells him what to do!

Wash, rinse, repeat.

As we aged, Husband matured out of the more colorful acting out and channeled his autonomy, detachment and winner take all tendencies into something far more insidious to manage: workaholism.

Workaholism is the respectable addiction.

Are you really going to challenge or complain about a hard working husband? a good provider?

I basically sublimated. I made up my mind that I didn't want a divorce, and I accepted that I wasn't going to change him. That left me with, live with it.

Which is what I was doing, what I'd been doing for years, when DDay 2 happened.

I know, I know, everybody hates Esther Perel, but she does describe this relationship phenomenon quite well:

In every relationship, there is one person who is more afraid of losing the relationship than the other person, and there is one person who is more afraid of losing themselves to the relationship.

Childhood and other trauma can amplify these differences.

I came from a spectacularly broken home and I have abandonment issues. I deal with this in a variety of healthy and unhealthy ways. One way I deal with it is, as I describe above, enforcing a degree of aloofness and autonomy on myself, and by default, Husband's attachment style benefits from this.

Husband, having been raised by two flaming narcissists, is, quite predictably, terrified of losing himself and his feelings of autonomy and agency. Makes all kinds of sense.

The infidelity was just another symptom of this dysfunctional relationship style, only this time it happened to include sexual acting out. But it was no different than my husband insisting on an inappropriate amount of autonomy for a married man, and pushing limits until he broke them, in many other ways besides sexual infidelity.

His sexual fidelity was like this magic talisman to which I clung as evidence that despite his boorish behavior, he really did love me.

Losing that narrative shattered me, but really, it's not about the sex nor even the infidelity. It was about losing that magic talisman.

The infidelity wasn't a completely separate, 'special' type of marital problem having nothing to do with our other marital problems. It was essentially the exact same problem- manifested through sex.

*Also interesting:

Husband's father is a loud and proud grandiose narcissist who, for decades, got a LOT of mileage out of presenting himself as The Man of the House. (This has morphed somewhat in recent years, but that's a whole other post. FIL is still a card carrying Loud and Proud Narcissist but he's now not as likely to claim unopposed dominion. He's much more likely to snipe about MIL's controlling nature behind her back.)

Husband's mother is a sphinx like covert passive aggressive narcissist who exerts control and centrality through various 'silences.'

Husband swears he never once saw them argue. Any disagreement was behind closed doors and he never even heard a raised voice behind those doors.

Husband was well into his married, adult years when it became apparent to him that his dad was actually not in charge of shit. His mom ran the show.

That posturing by his parents had a lot of influence over our early marriage as well.

[This message edited by marriageredux959 at 1:41 AM, March 18th (Thursday)]

Last T/J, I swear:

Bluerthanblue - You are exactly right, I do see you as a pretty balanced poster. I know you have given me kind words in the past.

I think maybe I do feel defensive a little bit on this topic. Mostly because this is the wayward forum and there are times when I have aware of what is happening with a ws beyond the forum. I wasn't trying to create conflict, I was more trying to support Poppy a little here. I know exactly why she is pointing out what she is pointing out, and having learned the hard way I thought I was trying to illuminate her response a little more. She gets quite a bit of flack for her perspective in the forums at times, but understanding where it comes from it makes me want to amplify what she says sometimes.

Just like BS aren't always ready to leave when they are receiving bad treatment, neither are WS. Especially ones in abusive relationships.

But I did reread what you wrote, and you are right I was being defensive. My apologies.

WS should first explore what is within their power to change the situation from their end.

Amen. I think really both should do that. After all, we say it all the time. The only person we can control is ourselves.

[This message edited by hikingout at 9:11 AM, March 18th (Thursday)]

Bluerthanblue:

Waywards have poor boundaries. Obviously affairs are evidence of this. Pre-A , poor boundaries can manifest as allowing themselves to be treated poorly by their spouse. Post affair, poor boundaries can manifest as allowing abusive behavior because shame tells us we deserve to be treated badly.

Beyond boundaries, people choose to pursue Reconciliation for a myriad of reasons. Children, money, having invested their youth in their marriage, the desire for redemption, take your pick.

But, I’m still sticking to my initial statement. There’s shitty BS, in real life and on this board. People who already had a failed marriage and should’ve gotten counseling before entering the second. Mentally ill. Drug abusers. Alcoholics. Rapists. Guilty of domestic violence. Infidelity is terrible, but it’s not the only marital sin.

I know this post was addressed to bluer, but holy shit it hits me in the gut a bit. Pre A I was not an abuser of any sort. No substance issues. No violence in our M ever. I was ambitious and I worked 50-60 hours a week. I think I also have a strong personality (I heard that phrase quite a few times in MC) and I think I made her feel unheard. I don't think our relationship was ever really balanced. I was always the leader and she pretty much followed along without complaint. We seem to be opposites in most areas. I'm ENTJ, she's ESFP. I'm enneagram 8, she's 7. I have no issues with conflict, she avoids it. I have a secure attachment style, she is avoidant. My top love language is physical touch, hers is words of affirmation. I have a master's degree in a STEM field, she doesn't have a degree. I'm a planner, she is spontaneous. I can now see how she felt that I didn't always value her opinion.

But what the fuck does any of that have to do with cheating or even the choice to cheat? I get how there are legitimate issues in a marriage pre A, but acknowledging them seems frightfully close to blameshifting to me. It damn sure implies it. It also seems a bit hypocritical and seemingly holds the BS to a higher standard in R because, hey, the WS gets it now and they deserve better treatment.

And I have wondered for years why my wife has stayed with me all these years after her A and my subsequent cheating. The boundaries thing never crossed my mind, but it makes total sense to me. Our relationship is totally out of balance now and has been for many years. I've done whatever the hell I've wanted and taken the GTFO if you don't like it stance. I'm going to discuss it with her tonight.

the WS loses any high ground they may have held, and the focus shifts to repairing wayward brokenness and rebuilding trust.

I don't believe any partner should have a "moral high ground" in the marriage. Ever. Partners are equal in shouldering the weight of the relationship. Before and after infidelity.

At what point is it once again reasonable for a WS to express unhappiness with the marital dynamic and/or the actions of the BS?

In my opinion, both partners should work towards honest communication from the start. Expressing unhappiness with an interaction, dynamic or action within the relationship is the only way to fix it. And the only way to learn to listen to the other person's point of view. Many times we (either partner) construct a narrative and act on that rather than what the other means.

The cheating partner needs to work on developing tools to help them change towards a more honest person. The betrayed partner needs to work towards healing the trauma enough so they can decide whether they want to divorce or fix the relationship.

I know the whole "build a new marriage" is a popular narrative (I've sinned on this side of it as well). But in reality an affair is part of the story of the relationship. Yes, it's a choice made by one of the partners but it's an outcome shouldered by both - as are the pre-affair marital issues.

****

As an aside; being the victim of trauma does not magically confer moral insight. It just means you're hurting.