Divorce-Busting gets them to think twice. It puts us into a mode of working on ourselves, improving, making little or no demands, etc. It's important at first, but it's not going to carry the marriage forward.
Piecing a marriage together requires hard work on the part of the cheater/walk-away-spouse. Often, we are so happy that our spouses are back that we don't require them to do the real work.
An affair is a clear demonstration that they lack a moral compass. They need to experience and SHOW remorse. They need to quit. drinking. They need to be honest and forthcoming about all details of the affair. They need to stop all contact with the OM or OW. They need to take the initiative in marriage counseling. They need to show humility NOT entitlement.
By making it too easy on them we are robbing them of the opportunity for them to do their own work. It prevents them from transforming. It stunts their ability to grow a conscience.
By making it too easy on them, it makes the reconciliation easy and cheap for them, re-enforcing their sense of entitlement. A reconciliation that's costly for them (meaning it requires they put some skin in the game) makes them value their spouse more and the marriage more. We always value what is hard-won.
Of course, there's the possibility that making serious demands of the WAS once they want to return may turn them off. That's what we all were afraid of. I think, in retrospect, requiring them to do the hard work is really, in some sense, a litmus test. If they balk at doing the work, if they don't want to go to counseling, if they refuse to give details about the affair, if they don't really show remorse, then perhaps they are the kind of people who either CAN'T or DON'T WANT TO grow a conscience. It may save you time. My wife flat our refused to ask my forgiveness for the affair because she felt it wasn't wrong and she refused to discuss it in our marriage counseling. That was a red flag. I should have set a hard line then. If you don't want to talk about the affair in counseling, then we can't really move forward. Had she refused, I should have filed. I would have saved years of pain and suffering. Asking them to do the work is very clarifying. They either do it, or show themselves to be flaming pieces of sh*t. ;-)"
