Many of the articles assume that wayward spouse is motivated to repair the marriage. In my experience on the DB board, that is rarely the case, at least initially. Usually the wayward spouse is "checked out" and really not that interested in working on the marriage, so the one who wants to repair it has to do all the work themselves -- at least initially -- and that's what I did.
I wanted to come back and comment on this. You are right; usually the wayward spouse is addicted to the affair, which fogs their brain, and the first step is to bust the affair and get through withdrawal before the wayward spouse is motivated to restore the marriage.
In Dr. Harley's affair book he provides two examples, in one the wayward spouse ended the affair freely and came back to work on the marriage; in the other, the affair died a natural death and the wayward spouse came back to the betrayed spouse as "second choice." But in BOTH scenarios, the marriage recovered!
There are some articles I found on Google that recommend many things that can be done to help, I had her read a couple, but she didn't really pick up on the suggestions.
As you get more and more effective with making Love Bank deposits, she will become more motivated to work on your marriage. She has probably felt like it was hopeless in the past, and she may have even felt a "marriage counseling/program burnout" given the number of books I see you've been through. (I had a similar library growing before we came to MB. I don't know where most of those books are, now.
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I know she feels badly about how she made me feel, but she doesn't really feel badly about having the affair. From her perspective, she was on a path to leave me anyway, so it wasn't really the wrong thing to do.
Sadly, this is pretty typical, but it doesn't impact recovery. Most wayward wives tend to blame their husbands for their affair, at least at first. Dr. Harley says that a real owning up to their full responsibility for the affair often doesn't come until later, if ever.
