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I hope someone here can shed some light on this question….Does anyone ever wonder about WHY your WH wants to stay with you? I mean, he cheated, lied, deceived, etc. so really….WHY does he want to stay in the marriage? He made a conscious decision to cheat I just can't figure out WHY he wants to stay if he knows it will never be the same. Mine cheated partly because of the lack of sex I'm sure but now it's NO sex because I can't stand for him to touch me. So, how's that working for him??? I don't get it.

You are a safe alternative. Convenient and what he knows. IMHO

I believe once they cheat most of the time they are lobg detached and gone. The WS who wants to proactivelt R are rare.

$$$$$$$

For an unremorseful WS, Because they really liked it when they had both a spouse and an AP. They want to figure out a way to get back to the place where they had both and the spouse was ok with it (but only because the spouse did not know about the AP). Cake eating at its finest.

For the remorseful WS, they know they fucked up and they want to get back to the place where their BS trusted them.

My Dipshit STBX had the best of all worlds, a loving wife/mother/housekeeper/bookkeeper with an active sex life, and he had the thrill and excitement of strangers from Craig's List, and a regular fuck buddy aka wife's BFF so he'd know if BW had any suspicions. So of course he wanted to Reconcile. He said it was because he "truly loved me."

“Never allow someone to be your priority while allowing yourself to be their option.”

― Mark Twain

Cake eating. I was a sure thing.

Well. I guess maybe not.

I agree with $$$$$ because I found my XH was obsessively calculating child support payments on our computer. Who does that when you're married? Some of them are also afraid to be alone and will not leave until they set up a safety-net relationship to jump into. That's what mine did because he was NEVER alone but he left me alone with two children and didn't care.

So he went relationship shopping while married and our kids were in high school, set it up, left, and a year later filed for divorce when my oldest was 19 and youngest was 17, knowing the divorce would take at least a year and he would have no child support.

It's all very calculated. And they have time to adjust because they've already detached and have been planning it. You do not.

He traveled for work, who knows what he was doing all of those years. I took care of his family, house, dog, cars, etc...responsibilities while he was out trolling for women.

It's always all about them. They do not care about you at all. Or they wouldn't have done it to begin with.

In my case it was cake eating and he didn't want his false self image damaged.

He got the loving wife and family and all of the presumed integrity that entailed AND he got to have his dirty little secrets on the side. Why change anything?

Now he has someone whose love he has to buy and who he knows he can never fully trust.

ETA: do you know you posted this in S/D? You would receive different responses in the R or General forums.

[This message edited by SBB at 4:40 AM, June 11th (Wednesday)]

In my case it's because I am the breadwinner, and D means not seeing the kids for some % and living in a lesser lifestyle. She gets to have it both ways while we're 'together'.

In my X's case, he let slip one time what it was... and it was exactly what I should have suspected from the beginning:

He didn't want to give up with me until he was absolutely sure he was "set" in a new relationship. Things with the OW were on-again/off-again on an almost daily basis. He wanted to be able to have me as a fallback whenever they were "off-again".

His slip? I told him that he had to choose - me or her. His response: something along the lines of... what if I choose her and then it doesn't work out. He said, "I CAN'T be alone."

It all comes down to selfishness. There is no consideration of what this kind of thing does to the BS. Just a "what's best for me" attitude.

Looking back, I am probably responsible at least a little for his attitude. He was living with his parents until we got together. I mistakenly assumed that because he had a decent job with a future, and had to travel with that job on a regular basis, that he was actually an adult capable of functioning in the world on his own. When we got married, all the bills and real responsibilities fell on me. He refused to take them on (and eventually helped less and less even with the money side of things). And I let him.

He got mad sometimes and accused me of "mothering" him. But he also wanted it that way... and wanted to make sure I was still around to play mommy if it didn't work out with the new mommy.

That's all my long-winded way of saying that I think most of the time when WS's want to stick around, it's some combination of wanting to make sure a backup plan is in place, fear of the unknown, and inertia (possibly combined with a fear they will look like the bad guy).

Well, it looks like my thinking is right in line with everyone else's. I've been thinking that he is planning to do something, i.e. separate or divorce, next year when our youngest child graduates. That way there's no child support and he thinks he will owe me nothing. I'm just sure of it. After 30 years of marriage, I can read him and he doesn't even realize it.

I am going after half of his 401k, half of the stock, bank accounts AND I think I'll ask for alimony too while I'm at it.

As some of you have said, I do believe he is detached and gone. I can see the selfishness in him and he would just die if his family or boss found out what kind of person he "really" is. I've given up looking for more evidence because really, what good would it do me except to upset me all over again? He has shown me his true self. I need to keep remembering that every time he gets so sickeningly sweet towards me. Makes.me.sick. Creep.

mine refused to move. i make more than him, paid for everything, including a nice house in a "status" area. i had to threaten him with a court order (about something else (unsecured illegal guns; domestic violence history)) to get him to leave. he was (IS) a classic cake eater. he made me pay for his move and his security deposit--and a month later i found out that for the prior 18 months he was secretly withdrawing >$1000/week from our joint credit margin. he told me later when we were "post-morteming" in a heart-to-heart, that he was/is petrified of being alone. and in retrospect, i see that--he actually had never lived alone, ever, in his life (and he's 57 year old!) women have always defined him (and now it's the OW too, though they don't live together (yet--she's going through her own D; 2 families nuked bc of them)). but he spends every moment without the kids at her house (great use of his $2K/month apartment, yes?) and even insists that i follow his schedule demands to align with her custody arrangements. it is obvious his priority is with her and not as a father. i see he is "addicted" to his relationship with her--he gets profound anxiety when there is a day he doesn't have the kids and he can't be with her for whatever reason. he is one sick fuck. he continues to be a cake eater for everything else too. wants to tell me how much he misses what we had, yet won't get rid of her, etc etc….i have stopped playing these games bc they mess with my head too much. he is truly damaged. it is so hard to accept that i chose him to father my children, and that he will never grow up. and that he's going to make out like a bandit with my money. it makes me sick.

good luck