I like your list and the way you're able to identify so clearly what you need to forgive instead of having one huge nebulous resentment.
To me, forgiveness doesn't mean that you are no longer angry, or have to live in denial or excuse the unexusable. To me it means you relinquish your right to take retribution or stand in judgement of someone who wronged you.
I can relate to you're evil Brian who wants to retain the right to pull out the infidelity to beat your wife over the head with in an arguement. That's one thing I swore to my H that I wouldn't do (and vowed to myself I would never do) when I committed to working on our R.
I agree with you and Sage that forgiveness is more of a binary, yes or no thing and definately a continuous choice.
There's a lot of things that H and I used to resent each other for before, and I think he's more prone to still hold resentments. I'm trying very hard to say, "I don't want to resent you for such and such anymore, I want to let go of that resentment, so what can we do differently from now on"?
I agree with you that it would be wrongminded to say that a marraige going sideways requires an affair to shake it up. I've never seen any books that actually say that, but I have seen the sentiment, many times that something like what we're going through is an opportunity to rebuild an M in a way that is healthier and stronger than before.
