Do I want to know?

[heatherg]

Jabez~

I can't imagine a pain or unhappiness inside me so intense that it would cause me to look outside my marriage.

I believe that most affairs start out innocently enough. Talking, sharing thoughts or ideas and then progresses. But the person denies that it is progressing into anything wrong and by the time they realize they are definitely doing something wrong, it is too late b/c emotional bonds have formed. This wasn't true for me, but it seems to be true for many others, perhaps your W included.
So, Michele says do not attack unless you want SP to defend their behavior and/or attack you back. Think hard about that Jabez. If my H would focus more on his feelings and how what I did made him feel, things would be much better between us than they are now because instead of focusing on his feelings, he's focusing on the betrayal itself. How wrong it was and he's punishing me. Whether he will ever admit that or not is irrelevant. He is.
My H attacks me every time we talk about it, which isn't very often b/c from my perspective, I'd rather avoid the attacks. True guilt comes in, at least for me, when I see genuine hurt or confusion in my H's eyes. If he could just look at me with tears in his eyes and ask me why, why would you do this to us....my walls would come down instantly. But he doesn't do that. He calls me a slut or a whore. That is NOT going to make me sorry, at least not at that moment. And that is what he longs to see from me~that I am sorry. But he's been so busy making me pay, that he's missing all the genuine emotion that's going on inside each of us.
What I meant when I said that a cheater's worst enemy is their own mind is this: I already know what I've done is wrong. I already feel guilt. My life has changed dramatically b/c of what I did, things will NEVER be the same. I don't need to be told that by H over and over. Hearing it from him only makes me defend. When left alone with my own thoughts, that's when it eats me up.
I don't know if your W craves from you what I crave from my H, but if she does, the best advice I can offer you is:
Stop namecalling
Stop judging
That doesn't mean you have to condone it Jabez. It doesn't. But you only have to say something once~the A was wrong. She won't forget that you said it, I promise you.