Remember he has to justify his choices to himself, to convince himself he has no choice otherwise he has to own the hurt he is causing you. only a sociopath would have no problem with that and assuming he isnt he needs to protect himself.
There will have been a lot going on in his head all the way through all of this. In my case i felt guilty about a load of things that even when my W told me not to - I still did and would do anything to avoid that feeling, including some properly irrational nonsense. I couldnt forgive myself, I didnt (don't?) believe i was worthy of it.
What it meant was that rather than tackling the work I needed to do (because i didnt know how or want to admit the weakness) I instead concentrated on the work my W needed to do (without talking to her about it in a positive way) and I suspect she did the same. This just led to distance and resentment
He might know full well that love takes work but he might be afraid of that work or not feel he is up to it or scared that he can do all the work and its still wont be what he wants.
What i'm trying to say is that we can come up with hundreds of reasons and explanations for why BF made the choices he has and some of them are polar opposites - but we will never know, I doubt he will fully unless he does some serious introspection with a IC.
As long as we are looking at all of this we are distracting ourselves from the only thing that we can really do and that is working positively on the the happy, exciting, fulfilling, interesting and attractive person you are (and you are!!). Thats where there is always more work to be done and thats where the work does the most good.
Be the best little you can be and be enough for yourself. As long as you dont give up on you, nothing else matters.
Both mid 30s, 2 young kids BD 7sep14 XW moved on long ago, now living with OM1 D paperwork in progress
