I told her one day, in the middle of it all, when she said something about "being friends" afterward.
From my personal archives:
This (maintaining "best-friend"-ship with their betrayed spouse) is part of the normalization script, and very common. I was advised to address it early, and HEAD ON, and I did, and to great effect.
"I need to be clear on something," I told my wife about 3 weeks into our ordeal. "I have absolutely no intention of being your friend, much less your BEST friend, if you choose to end our marriage this way, by having an affair and lying to everyone about it. I will of course be civil, and work with you to co-parent our children, but that is all. If you END this affair, and come back and really work on our marriage for a period of time -- say, one year -- including coming to marriage counseling with me and being honest with me and the counselor about the affair, and then it just doesn't work out between us . . . then that's different. But as long as you cut and run like this, not gonna happen."
When we reconciled, my wife told me that this (losing my friendship during her affair, and the potential of losing it FOREVER) was THE single-biggest reason she decided to end it, and come back to me.
