“Again, you are confusing feeling ashamed, embarrassed, guilty, fearful and regretful with being sorry, which means sadness for someone else’s pain.”
I’m not entirely sure about this. I think people who feel sorry do feel ashamed, embarrassed, guilty, fearful and regretful. This is the difficulty with the whole thing. There are cynical cheaters who just want to cover their own back and don’t care about the one they have wronged, then there are those who cheat who are horrified at the terrible thing they’ve done and wish they’d never done it. The former kind keeps quiet to protect themselves, the latter now have a dilemma: do I ease my conscience by devastating my family with the truth, or do I carry the burden of my guilt in silence and vow to do far better and be the best partner and parent I can be? Some people genuinely weigh up whether to carry the burden of their guilt silently to protect the innocent victims they’ve wronged, or whether to burden them with a truth that will devastate everyone. I’m not condoning either option (Id rather know the truth personally but not everyone would ) but I don’t think all cheats who keep their guilt a secret do so from self protection.
I’ve seen women post here on MN that they have had an affair and feel terrible because they love their husbands, they feel like a terrible person and will feel like shit carrying the burden for the rest of their lives. Vast majority of responses are usually along the lines of ‘don’t beat yourself up’ and ‘nobody’s perfect’ and ‘you’re only human’. Not many responses along the lines of ‘you’re just sorry you might get caught’ or ‘boo hoo you knew what you were doing’.
It’s bloody hard to tell the difference between someone feeling sorry for you or for themselves.
Not all cheats are cynical people just sorry they got caught. Some are, and shame on them. But not all. Of course he didn’t apologise to OP during the affair, he was having an affair! At the time of making atrocious personal choices, people feel guilt but for all sorts of reasons it doesn’t stop them. They are lying to everyone including themselves. Prisons would be empty and there would be no pain in this world if everyone was capable of acting on their consciences as soon as guilt hit.
Cheating isn’t a mistake, it’s a deliberate act, but the actual motive is rarely an act to deliberately hurt their partner, the hurt to their partner is a consequence and collateral damage to the damage an hurt the cheats are doing to themselves by lying, cheating and deceiving. Who actually wants to be a liar, a manipulator, a betrayer? Who actively decides that’s what they’re going to be? Who feels good after the fact about being that kind of person? All of the things we feel after we did something wrong were shelved at the time of the wrongdoing. Do alcoholics know that the next drink is a bad idea? Do we know that eating unhealthy food is bad for us? Do people know the risk they take with drugs? The realm effect of regret and remorse kicks in after the behaviour, at the beginning of the behaviour it either does its job and stops it, or gets justified or denied or mentally shelved to enable the behaviour further. Real regret comes once a big dose of reality forces change, whatever the self destructive behaviour is. To continue doing stuff we know we shouldn’t involves lying to ourselves to push guilt away. It’s not as simple as saying it was a cynical act which didn’t bother the perpetrator. Sometimes it is, but usually it bothers everyone who isn’t a psychopath to a certain degree. The better you can fool yourself and compartmentalise, the more likely you are to carry on the behaviour. Sooner or later it will hit the buffers and reality will show you that you have been lying to yourself and you can’t avoid dealing with it and the issues leading to it any more.
OP it’s hard to tell the difference between genuine remorse and self pity, and the pity you feel for him is because you love him and he has fallen far from being the husband you knew and the man he ought to be.
Pity doesn’t have to translate into rug sweeping or forgiveness though. His actions will tell you whether this is remorse or self pity. Time and reflection will tell you whether or not you can or want to continue your marriage, there is no shame in either decision, that is a decision for you, you are the only one here who knows him, and knows him well enough to tell as time goes on.
One big caveat is that in the early days you are in shock and so are they. You still see him as he was and can’t believe he could do this, you are playing catch up with the train wreck his life has been and now is. Your shock and disbelief and pain leaves you reeling. Their shock can manifest as minimising what actually happened, further lies and trying to control the amount of damage and pain caused. Not all self-motivated, they’ve mentally shelved facing the kind of pain their actions will cause for so long that actually witnessing the reality of it and seeing the reality of your pain is appalling to them so they say anything to try to calm it down.
Be prepared to find out more, take what he says with a pinch of salt in the early days and take care of and prioritise yourself and your own self care. He’s got to sort himself out. It’s over to him now, the burden of proof of remorse is his.
Take care, I actually feel sorry for all of you, it’s a horrible, horrible thing to go through and usually for absolutely nothing as they nearly always want to stay in the end. X