What's the definition of insanity? Doing the same things over and over again and getting the same results?
Actually, it’s doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Nevertheless, no matter how much that makes sense, and how much I agree with people here that the change must come from within him, my experience is that doing the same thing over and over did eventually produce a different result (perhaps it was just a correlation?)
My husband was convinced the OW was a friend. It still hurts when I remember the look on his face on DDay when he told me "She’s a really good friend". It still hurts when I remember he told me she was a better friend than I was because I wasn’t his friend – I was his girlfriend (we weren’t married back then), therefore, I cannot be his friend (masterpiece logic, right?) He told me my support, and everything didn’t mean as much as hers, because it was expected of me to provide that. And a bunch of other bullshit. From today’s perspective I believe he was trying to convince me it was somehow necessary for him to develop friendship with her. Poor guy didn’t have many friends, and there she was, so friendly and awesome and caring… How dare I tell him what he did was wrong, that he was wrong?!!
Anyway, it took approximately 1 year for him to snap out of it. Perhaps it would take less time, but I was in complete shock during the months after DDay, and he just wanted to forget everything. I guess I was ready to dig deeper once things settled down a bit. We talked a lot, I analyzed every little bit of her behavior and words and did my best to demonstrate to him again and again that she wasn’t a friend, that she wasn’t a good person, and definitely wasn’t so awesome and caring. I am 100% sure she didn’t care about him, she only cared about herself, and she was only using him.
It took a lot of patience, perseverance, persistence, determination, nerves of steel, and indeed a good amount of insanity on my end for him to start seeing things not the way he wanted them to be, not the way he interpreted them, but the way they were. She was not a friend, let alone "a really good friend". I refuse to believe I had nothing to do with him realizing that. If I hadn’t pushed for it, he’d still be blissfully ignorant. However – this is important, and this is the "it depends on him" part – he had to get rid of his arrogance, vanity, pretentiousness, self-righteousness, and many other things which prevented him from being honest with himself, and with me. Not only what he did was wrong, but also, he was wrong about her – he totally misinterpreted stuff, he misjudged her character, he didn’t recognize her true intentions, and so on. To put it bluntly – he was plain stupid.
No one likes to think of themselves as stupid. Once they realize how stupid they were, you’ll hear sentences such as: "I just can’t believe I was so stupid", "What the hell was I thinking", "I can’t recognize that person", etc. It is not just common among waywards, it is common among people in general. I remember back in high school, I had "a really good friend". Then I found out she gossips about me behind my back. Then it clicked – she was gossiping to me all the time, why on Earth did I think she wouldn’t gossip about me? I guess I inflated my own specialness.
Anyway, to conclude – although it depends on his willingness to get rid of certain personality traits which prevent him from admitting he was stupid, your actions can push him to that place. However, the biggest question here is: is it worth it? If he’s soon-to-be-ex like you say, I’d say it is not worth it. I’d say it’s better to invest that energy into your own healing.
EDIT: just to be clear – I'm almost 6 years past DDay, and I doubt it was worth it for me. Yes, I helped him to be a better man. Yes, I got the satisfaction of him admitting I'm absolutely right. But at what cost? It's a Pyrrhic victory...
[This message edited by Hannah47 at 2:48 PM, Saturday, March 11th]