After reading your update, I thought I'd copy here what Starsky posted in MDU's thread over in the Infidelity forum. Just substitute OW for your W's OM. Starsky has articulated quite clearly the differences between having feelings coming back and making a decision. This applies to your sitch as well.
Originally Posted By: Starsky
This is my opinion, and my belief system (although many people share it), and take it for fwiw:
I truly believe the old truth of "Love is a decision." It is a commitment that the two of you make, to each other and to the marriage, that says "we are exclusive, we are monogamous, we are going to work on this, til death (or divorce) do us part."
FEELINGS on the other hand, do take awhile to return. They can take a LONG while to FULLY return.
I stress this because often times (and usually, it's a wayward WOMAN, not a wayward man who expresses this) a wayward spouse will say "But I've lost my feelings for you," or "I don't love you anymore," or often "I love you but I'm not IN love with you" (which is completely a FEELINGS statement). My wife expressed the same fears to me: "If I end my affair and come back and work on the marriage with you, I don't think my feelings for you are ever going to come back." To which I replied "I'm not asking for you to guarantee anything about how you will FEEL; I'm asking you to make a DECISION to rejoin me in this marriage, and to work on it for some set period of time that we both can agree on -- say, one year. If at that time either one of us don't feel like this is working out, then at least we will know that we gave it our best shot."
Your husband -- as you have lamented here often throughout your sitch -- has never made that commitment, that decision. He's operated more like a woman, frankly and has led all along with his emotions. I think he compares his feelings for you with his feelings that he gets (or, if he truly ended it with her, that he USED to get) with OW.
And he doesn't think it can work with you.
The problem is, he has never committed to no-contact, and has in fact REMAINED in contact with her, mostly thru work and we hope that's all that it's been, but it's still CONTACT.
Physiologically, this has caused him to remained emotionally BLOCKED to you, and he's being unfair not only to YOU but also to HIMSELF if he makes a potentially life- and family-altering decision (like divorce) based on whether or not he feels "in love" with you currently.
Not until OW is completely out of the picture, and you two agree to work on things exclusively, will his feelings begin to return and even then it takes AWHILE. My wife and I began to feel differently towards each other after a few months, but it took probably 2-3 YEARS for it to get back fully.
It's why I'm such an absolute NAZI about no-contact and transparency. I got overruled here, and I deferred to your decision and the advice from others which DID (and does) very much work at RE-ATTRACTION. We've seen that, and you did it very well! But for re-attraction to then take the next necessary step of COMMITMENT on your husband's part, I believe has a very small chance as long as he's remaining in contact with OW and keeping some part of his heart open to her.
I could be wrong. His statement about his feelings may have more to do with long-term issues he has with you, mixed with how much he's seeing you change (or NOT change) currently, and him deciding "these are the things that made me unhappy in the marriage to begin with, and why I stepped outside of my marriage and left mdu." But at a MINIMUM his decision-making is at least heavily INFLUENCED by the endorphines still running around his brain, in my opinion.
I just wanted to clarify that, since you've said that you are a "facts and logic" person and you like to think everything thru. The GOOD news in all of that is, I don't think your husband even YET has allowed himself to decide what he wants to do with you while UNINFLUENCED by a third party. And it remains to be seen whether or not that might still happen, and maybe his feelings change. So it doesn't necessarily mean that his feelings so far have been a "lie" -- they've just been blocked/influenced by remaining feelings for OW.
I do think it (no-contact decision-making, uninfluenced by a third party) needs to happen, though before the two of you make such a life-altering decision like divorce, if that's what you're thinking.
