Why does it seem easier for the WS to move past the affair than the BS? I know that this seems like an obvious answer, but I still don't get it. My wife has fully come around now and we are talking and working everything out. Every question at anytime is answered.(I think, but thats just it, I will always wonder) I just don't understand how it seems so easy for her to get past it. I think that if it were me, I would be racked with guilt. To think that I almost threw away everything that means anything to me. To know that nothing will ever be the same again. To know the pain that those I love the most went through and probably will for the rest of thier lives was caused by me. To know that I will never be trusted again. How can it be as easy as it seems?

It comes down, I think, to the individual WW.

Mine did NOT get over her actions quickly, or easily. It was touch-and-go for a while whether the self-inflicted psychological damage would be repairable at all.

I didn't get over it very quickly at all. Several years later, I'm still battling feelings of guilt, self-disgust, and disbelief.

My BH got over my A much faster than I did.

Think about this; the trauma caused by an affair was due to a series of choices made by the WS. If they "get over" something, it is because they get to believe, "Well, I'LL NEVER do that again!"

As a BS, you never believed they would in the first place, and they broke that rose-tinted vision, and became something completely different.

Your moving forward relies - partially - on their ability to demonstrate that they will take the necessary precautions to prevent the behavior again.

In my WW's mind I feel she shows sorrow but no True Remorse. For that matter she even refuses to see it as an EA and coins it as an Inappropriate friendship. In our MC session last week she didn't see a problem talking with male Co- workers about things like her children (personal matters). My suggestions are way far on the other side of that spectrum. She has gotten herself into 3 EA's by having her needs for conversation and admiration filled outside of our M. My comfort level is basically for her to have only work related issues talker about at work.
Her EX Precautions have yet to materialize. So I still feel in danger even tho she has became transparent and she is working on filling my EN's.

It's not easy to "get past it," at least not for me.

But then, I think a lot of that depends on the WS:
Taking OMT's WW as an example, if she (or any WS) refuses to see the A as what it was, then it's much easier to "get past it." After all, if it's only an "inappropriate friendship," then they've really done nothing wrong, right? But once you realize the depth and breadth of what you've done as a WS, once you've finally "gotten it," the pain you have inflicted on your BS (and even still, we can never truly "get" the entire extent of the BS's pain unless we have also been BS's ourselves), it is far less easy to "get past."

Like writer, I still battle feelings of guilt, shame, self-disgust, and disbelief. Guilt is a good thing, really - it means we have a conscience. It is there to remind us to avoid doing those same things again in the future. Guilt is feeling bad for what we did; shame, on the other hand, means we feel bad for who we are. I still struggle with defining myself by what I did, defining myself as a evil person (which my H has called me) and a wh*re (which my H has also called me). I think the ideal situation is one where the BS and the WS help each other to heal from the damage, even where that damage was self-inflicted, and become whole, healthy people in a recovered M, where they have both moved past the A. The BS's healing has to begin first, however, and moving past the A should be on the BS's timetable.