Running out of time

[AntoniaB]

I think maybe what Cadet meant by saying he might be feeling relief about the D is that those in MLC have built up the marriage as the problem in their lives because they are too afraid to confront themselves head-on and their issues, and so they sometimes push headlong into the divorce thinking that "if I am just divorced all these feelings and confusion and pain will go away", kind of like "I want to be a new person with a new life and it will just magically happen if that divorce is final.

My H has referred to his whole path as a "reboot"; he has said directly to me that he wants to "start over at square one" and "try his life again as a different person" and he figures that this OW will help him do that, and he can't be fully committed to her until he is divorced from me.

I think he's wrong. I think he thinks that the emotional ties will magically fizzle away. Maybe your H thinks the same. But they won't. This is why so many of them end up later regretting their move to divorce us. Of course some of us will never know if they regret it. But I think that's what Cadet meant.