1. The WS figuratively crawls on broken glass to repair the damage they caused.
This has always bothered me.
The best a WS can do after deciding they want R is to be honest, loving, and willing to work to vhange from cheater to good partner. The WS is the primary beneficiary of that work.
2. In a situation where there were sexual things being done with the OM that were either rare or non-existent in the marriage, the WS puts forth 10X to their BS the effort they gave the OM.
I wasn't going to R, I thought, unless my W treated me better than she treated ow. (She did, so I don't know what I'd have done if she hadn't.)
I think focusing on sex acts given to the ap is a mistake and a trap. Instead, I think the BS will be better off if tey focus on figuring out what they want and asking for it, irrespective of what WS and ap did.
*****
WRT the always D proposition, I'm working on a hypothesis about openness to R. What I think I've seen over the last 15 years is that some BSes think the A is about their own failure or about being targeted by their WS, and some BSes think the A is about their WS's failure. It's hard to R if one thinks the A is about themself and less hard if the A is about the WS.
That leads to 6 combos: 1) BS thinks the A is about themself, and the A is about themself; 2) BS thinks the A is about themself, and the A is about WS; 3) BS thinks the A is about WS, and the A is about WS; 4) BS thinks the A is about WS, and the A is not about WS; 5) an A is always about the BS themself; 6) an A is always about the WS.
fBH (me) - on d-day: 66, Married 43, together 45, same sex ap
d-day - 12/22/2010 Recover'd and R'ed
You don't have to like your boundaries. You just have to set and enforce them.