I think of it like this. Your wife does love you. Just because she has this other guy doesn't mean that she has completely swept you out of her heart. Now that she isn't living in fear of you finding out, she is free to let that part of her heart that loves you express itself.
The unconscious motivation is for the affair and for throwing away your family. There is no obviously rational reason for what she is doing therefore, there must be an irrational reason that satisfies some unconscious need or desire.
Let's accept that my wife can't handle the responsibility of being a wife and mother as the true reason for her leaving the family. Then, I ask, is there a way to reconcile that with her self-image? My answer is that there is not. So, she has to invent other reasons to do the things that satisfy the problem that she can't handle the responsibility. In this case, she casts me as the bad guy in the black hat and thus has a justification for doing what she is doing.
I hope that makes a little more sense.
Or, we could decide that they do those kinds of things just to mess with our heads because they like the power trip. I just don't believe that one.
