I'm glad you did not take offense, Max. And I'm glad maybe you did get a little wake up call there. I think that possibly your only hope will be to get really sheepish about the whole thing, not make any demands from him at all, and just accept the consequences. I think if you really pull back and accept things, that might give him the ability to be more compassionate toward your repentance. But pushing him or expecting him to do anything toward reconciliation is definitely going to simply push him away.
In case you forgot my situation....I had cheated during my marriage, and although we recovered from an affair in some ways....we really never got over it and we ended up divorced years later. So really, in retrospect, I guess I wish he would have just left me then, at the time of the affair. Because we struggled in vain after that for so many years. It takes full and real repair and rebuilding to make it work...and I don't think you can get there until and unless there is some kind of big change. You can't just go back and pretend it never happened and expect the marriage to survive. So maybe he is doing your marriage a favor by really cutting it off right now...working on himself...exploring his options....and then maybe in the future, if you have let go, he may see you as an option again.
My situation was nothing like yours in most ways, but I definitely understand the guilt and the feelings of loss for what I did. It was basically the biggest mistake of my life, and we are divorced now (for many other reasons too) and yes, I feel like a failure for that. But now...I am learning how to make amends with my old self, so that I don't ever make the same mistakes. I think I had to pay the final price in order to grow though....does that make sense?
