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I use to think that it was my job to try and see my WS not as some one who betrayed me and broke me in two but as the person I saw when we first got married. The man that I loved and vowed to spend the rest of my life with through sickness and health, for richer and poorer until death. There was nothing in those vows about adultery. I am getting off topic.
It occurred to me as I drove myself nuts beating myself over the head trying to see him as something other than the man who had an affair with another woman and now I had to find a way to live with it. It is his job. He has to work night and day so I see him as some one other than a cheating husband. He is the one who has to work hard to get this label of him out of my head. He has to work hard so I do not think of him as a cheater for my first thoughts of him before anything else. Like tonight is trash night and I want to remind him to take it out. I first think that the jerk had an affair. It is a hell that I have to live in my head. I am taking it day by day because if I think week to week I don't think I could hang in there with this marriage that we are so desperately trying to save.

Sounds right to me! :-) they changed our perception of them with the choices they made. It's their job now to change it to who they are now or who they are working towards being. I actually see it as I am getting to know a new man altogether! The man I met was capable of this and made choice after choice that let him to his affair, so now it's time to rebuild himself to be a man that would not do those things! We've been seeing each other now for nearly 4 months and if he keeps showing this man, then I hope a lot longer too!

Yes! I just had this conversation with my H yesterday. Things had gotten way off track the past week because I was feeling like H wasn't supporting me emotionally when things got bad. He is great when I'm crying or sad, but when I get mad and say things that maybe I shouldn't, he recoils and hides.

They cannot do that. The playing field is not level and they have to work extra hard and help us along when we stumble, give us incentive to want to keep moving forward with the person who hurt us so badly. They have to prove that they although they cheated and lied and stabbed us in the back, this does not MAKE THEM cheats and liars and backstabbers. They have a lot of work to do in order to prove that they are safe and caring partners for us.

It is so hard because you can't control your spouse. They have to do this on their own, although we also have to be able to verbalize our needs. Very difficult when you're resenting your spouse for all the mind movies, confusion, sadness, etc that cycle through our minds all the time. It is such a day to day process, you are right. One foot in front of the other...

I am still struggling with this. He has returned to being the same man that he was before the A without the A now. It was the same road that led us to the affair. I am trying to change how I react to him and the things I do. I read some where that if I change our marriage dance on my end eventually he will too. It isn't happening yet. I keep thinking that if he really wanted to save the marriage he should also be reading as much as possible to survive this with a healthy marriage again. He should read until he really understands and gets it. Instead I am the one reading. I see according to what I read that he isn't doing what he should be doing. I tell him but he either doesn't hear me or doesn't care to take the steps necessary to help save our marriage.

Yes, it is their responsibility to change and work to be a person you respect, feel safe with, and learn to love again.

They will never be the person pre-A. If they want to put the work in, they can become a new person that repairs their broken parts and merges it with the person they were pre-A, but they will never be the pre-A them again. That doesn't mean that they can't come out better than they were pre-A... hopefully through their work they work on improving all of them, including the parts that were broken that led to the A.