Aussieng. I haven't wanted to add to this thread again, because of the reactions of the OP. However, I think your posts are thought-provoking and wise. I also think you've been refreshingly honest about your own previous marriage. I think you're absolutely right - and it could be that the OP's husband in this case is the architect of his own misfortune, who knows?
What ever his shortcomings though, it just seems to me that the most decent way of behaving is for the OP to explain to her DH what's really going on. Remember, this is the OP who admits that she might not leave DH unless the OM turns out to be a realistic alternative. That just seems to me to be a shoddy and dishonest way of behaving. Like you, this man may be only too aware of his faults, but since he "adores" the OP, there is no sense of him realising how bad things have got if his wife is looking elsewhere. That's because she's not telling him. And she's not telling him because she doesn't want to leave the marriage unless she's got someone else to go to. That seems unfair to me.
The other complicating factor in this is that in doing all this, the OP is knowingly causing another marriage distress. I suspect a lot of people on here would have had far greater sympathy if the OP had come on here asking whether she should leave an unhappy marriage, but as I understand it, what she was basically saying was she might not leave if the OM wasn't an alternative - and in deciding if he was, this was going to mean intruding on OM's marriage. The sympathy was then further eroded by the OP's passive aggressive sarcasm to a great swathe of people who had taken time out to post.
Yes, posters' language was inflammatory at times and posts like this are always going to hit a nerve, but it would be wrong to say that the angriest of posters was speaking from personal experience. A lot of people who have been unaffected by infidelity had an equally strong reaction to this thread. I prefer to think that it is because they could see the injustice and unfairness in the poster's proposed actions and for them, it's just a "right and wrong issue".
I think it's so healthy that you are able to see how you also contributed to your previous marriage's downfall and I read a post of yours the other day when you said that you took those lessons very firmly into your new, happier marriage. I'd be really interested in whether with hindsight, you'd have preferred that your husband had been honest about what he was considering doing, rather than having an affair?
When you're trying to forgive an affair(and contrary to what you said, there are an awful lot of affair forgivers on here!)I do think it is essential that you analyse your own behaviour on the run-up to the affair and acknowledge that there were faults. In my case, it was a bit like you - I stopped noticing my husband as an attractive man. There were all sorts of reasons for that, but like you, I don't see myself as a victim at all. The difference in our case was that the affair wasn't the death knell for a bad marriage - I prefer to think of it as a wake-up call for a good one.
I think you're right that people sometimes cross the line without even knowing they've done it - or they delude themselves that they are not doing anything wrong. So when a poster comes on here and puts it to the vote and asks for views, they should surely welcome people who will tell it like it is.
In that sense, I applaud the OP for sounding people out before acting - but the moment she said that people's strong views and words were more likely to make her continue on this collision course was the moment I wanted to depart from advising the OP. It's the adult version of the child sticking their tongue out and saying "Because you've been so nasty to me, I'm going to be nasty, so there!!"
So, this post is for you Aussieng. I respond to the way you write.