SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Can someone figure this out?

My WS says that he sees his affair as an exit affair. That he wanted a divorce before he had the affair.

This doesn't add up to me.

At one point during his "fog" he told me "the main reason I wanted a divorce was because of her".

Well, which came first, the chicken or the egg?

He says that he never meant for it to be about sex...ok, so if it wasn't going to be about sex, why divorce me at all?

I thought he was starting to understand why he did this.

Here's why it affects me:

If he wanted a divorce before he ever got close to her then why should I stay now?

If he wanted the divorce to be WITH her, and realizes now that it was just an affair fog, then rationalized it by saying he had already wanted a divorce, that feels different to me.

Am I just splitting hairs here?

He is VERY conflict avoidant. I also think he was having a midlife crisis.

He says that he didn't have sex with her until AFTER he filed for divorce but the very next day he asked the attorney to change it to separation to "see if he wanted to be married" and denied that he wanted either of us to date anyone while we were separated.

I have asked him about the timeline, but he says he does not remember.

I have already filed for divorce, but he's been NC for 3 weeks and we have been talking through things.

I don't know why it pisses me off when he says this stuff, he's just trying to be honest.

Should it matter what TYPE of affair it was?

Help me think this through...

My WS says that he sees his affair as an exit affair. That he wanted a divorce before he had the affair.

Change "divorce" for "escape", and it starts making sense. My WH has had many parallel sentiments, although he told his OW she was the reason he wanted a divorce, instead of telling me.

So, perhaps pre-affair he wanted to escape - really from himself and situation and feelings - but so much easier to blame it on "the marriage", which he might have felt belonged mostly to you anyhow. This would register on the surface and in retrospect as wanting a divorce, especially if no introspection had taken place.

He's bouncing the blame of ending the relationship around. First, to the you, then to her. Always either pushed or pulled away from the marriage. Seems like a convenient way to reduce his responsibility for damaging the relationship to me.

Wow, I think you have many valid points there.

I've read that blaming the BS is a typical sign of midlife crisis-that nothing I can do/did was right and I definitely felt this when he said he first wanted a divorce.

He still needs to find his WHY.

And I need to know that the issues he wanted to "escape" he has fixed, and how they flowed into our marriage and affected it. And if those dynamics can change enough for us both to stay married.

Thank you for the insightful and simply worded response!