@CraftyYankee the quotes came from my own husband, sadly, after an affair, a huge shitshow, a ton of work, introspection and pretty painful conversations.
I made notes at the time, with his full knowledge and consent, because my brain was as useful as a head full of scrambled egg back then and I would never have remembered it correctly, it was better to reread notes than revisit the painful questions repeatedly if I needed to.
It wasn’t plain sailing at first, none of this level of self-awareness or courage to tell the full truth was present at first. Nowhere near. A lot of it was his own shock on discovery, the shock of realising that even he didn’t recognise himself or trust his own judgment.
Believing your own crap for a good while makes the sudden jolt into reality (I found out) pretty disorienting for the arrogant unfaithful, firmly believing they were never going to get rumbled, as well as the betrayed, who had previously thought nothing was wrong.
He had no idea how often he had shoved away the reality of how far it had all gone. Living in denial.
He did everything I wanted willingly, he wanted it too, but his first knee-jerk instinct to make sure that my staying happened and I didn’t kick him out was to lie, minimise and heavily edit what had really happened.
To admit the truth to me meant he had to admit it to himself too. It meant he had to witness further pain and damage to me, all at his hands, it meant he had to have to admit to himself the full extent of his dishonesty and betrayal, which he’d constantly justified away, minimised and diluted by placing blame elsewhere and he’d denied it to himself.
The betrayed’s survival instinct kicks in with a huge need for the truth and asks questions. The unfaithful’s survival instinct kicks in with a huge need to bury the truth and avoid all questions. To protect that self image as still being a good guy despite a growing body of evidence to the contrary. None of the invented internal narrative works to justify this any more, the truth is out.
He was left with his head spinning, because a day ago at the time he was convinced he wanted the OW and was totally convinced of how he felt about her, absolutely believed that if I found out, he’d leave me. The only doubts he had were when OW was going on about what their life together once he’d dumped me and the kids would be like, and he realised he had constantly made excuses as to why as each of her deadlines passed, he never wanted to. It messed with his head that he thought he wanted to but didn’t want to at the same time, so he stuffed that down too.
He went from all that, to being more worried about losing me and our life together. The feelings for OW evaporated, reality forced him to admit that it was a seedy affair, not a relationship with a future.
He was horrified at the realisation that he had a massive problem now. How to stop me leaving, he knew he deserved it. Plus: How to face her and how to get rid of her and let her down, after all the crap he’d spouted, and show himself up as a future faker and liar, without her going absolutely ape shit and angrily contacting me to fill in all the gory details.
All his own fault and obviously no sympathy there, but it was a massive learning curve about himself and how he essentially avoided every potentially difficult conflict situation in his life by lying, covering up, pretending. The irony is that the lying and dishonesty itself is the worst part, causes the worst shitshow.
He was never really honest with her at the end, still avoiding the conflict by letting it painfully die by going cold, so that in the end she stopped believing the excuses for him not being able to see her for dinner/ at the hotel, work got busy suddenly etc, she had to do the confrontation and finally asked “You’re never going to leave your wife, are you?” Which was exactly what he wanted her to do. Then he got the full force of what she thought of him not long after he’d got what I thought of him too.
She dropped her ultimatum when it didn’t work and tried to backtrack a couple of weeks later and start it up again, but he had none of it.
He wanted to find out how he’d got to be that person and be in denial about who he was, how he’d been able to lie and manipulate and why he was so afraid to discuss his feelings honestly and tackle emotional struggles head on. Tons of work but he’s way happier now, living authentically always makes you happier. Both of us suffered a ton of damage from what he did, we only got through it because he owned it all and turned himself around. OP’s husband needs to admit what he’s doing to himself, as well as to OP. At present he probably believes his own press and has no idea who he has become. Time to get his head out of his arse.