But that's the fact: in a state of affair you can least expect any pattern of normalcy, or willingness to remember good things, or desire to work on M. That's hard, but it's a symptom, like in a disease. WHen they have someone else on the back burner even if they say that they'll work on the M, they most likely will work on creating a case why it's not going to work. Because there's no incentive: there's an OP who is waiting, and it all is so exciting. Besides, experienced people say that romance is a state of temporary insanity which by the way has nothing to do with love; that's the answer to your question why he walks away from the love of his life. Because he's in an altered state, and because there's no love with OW, there's romance! And romance thrives on challenge; it's not so much a desire for the result, but rather for the process of overcoming obstacles and achieving the prize: the OP. But you know what, the cure for this disease is a good dose of reality. Once smoke clears and reality sets in, your H and OW might make several interesting discoveries, such as there's price for everything, and the affairs that started while being in M usually pay with breakup. According to some statistics, and I'm not saying it's precise, only 25 % of spouses involved in A marry the A partner. From that 25%, only 25% stay together in 5 years. Moreover, during these 5 years such spouses have more chance to return back to the original family (or at least attempt to) than to stay married to the A partner. There seem to be something inherently doomed in the marriages that started on the wreckage of previous ones; and it's logical if you think about it - spouses already know for sure even if they try to repress or deny it, that at least one of them is not to be trusted in terms of fidelity, and the other - in terms of initiating a R with a married person. Add guilt; add unresolved problems from the previous R (and there are plenty - after all, instead of working on problems the spouse chose to run away with OP) that are bound to reappear with the same intensity, and you get, well, recipe for disaster.
I'm not saying that's the absolute truth; after all there are successful marriages started as A; but most of the time they involve a truly awful previous M.
Statistics and other information taken from book "Private Lies" by Frank Dellis
To get through the darkest period of the night, act as if it is already morning.
The Talmud
