He is never going to get his head out of his ass. That would require him to drop the selfish behaviors.
Yep. He gives good lip service to your pain and hurt(after the argument talk etc.. has died away) but is unwilling to humble himself to do what is right in moments of conflict. Or in moments he has time to prepare for. Defiance, ego, selfishness, whatever the flavor-- the bottom line is that he comes first. When push comes to shove, his choice is him.
Change is hard. Especially when you have been together for a long time; developing patterns and grooves for communication and conflict. IMO accepting that it would take years, was one of the hardest parts of R for me.
TTC his fucked up actions don't prove or disprove his feelings or love for you. He has a big learning curve here. LOVE for you is not going to break through 20 years of conflict, behavior and personality development. That is where the work comes in. You try, you fail, you learn, you try, you fail, you learn, you try, you succeed.... repeat that 1,000,000 times. And it helps to have a good MC to kick you in the pants sometimes and alternately help get you off the floor.
The mask he wore with the OW, didn't prove his love for her either. He did what he had to in order to set the scene in order to get sex, attention, jollies etc.. Whatever that toll was, it wasn't about you, it was about the threshold that he had to meet in order to get what he wanted.
IMO, you both need an attitude adjustment. HIM, much more so. You cannot continually measure your worth in a disordered persons behavior. Know your worth and set some boundaries and hold them. He must retract his head from his ass and begin actually 'doing' instead of promising and then apologizing when he can't actual humble himself enough to face the mess he made in the moments that he needs to.
Do you guys have an MC?
[This message edited by redrock at 3:55 PM, February 14th (Friday)]