Just want to get an idea of how usual it is for WS to say the bare minimum of truth and request that we just return to normal quiet life and forget all WH bad behaviour. Its a really bizarre situation in that WH has returned to being warm and generally caring and talks about future and yet my friendships, mental health and security have been destroyed. WH will not go into discussion or detail or timeline on his EA maybe PA. and why he became both physically and emotionally abusive. He has admitted to EA. Unbelievably he thinks we should go back into friendship group where AP still hangs out and all the females in the group have distanced themselves from me in favour of AP who has painted herself as the victim.
Struggling with this as it appears he doesn’t seem to want to accept he has been caught and everything has changed. Anyone else had this?
Gracey,
Sorry that you find yourself here, it's a real sh*tty club to have to join. You've been heard and your pain acknowledged, because trust me, I and my friends here on SI know how much it hurts!
Now, for some hard truth, and I will try to be gentle, you need to find your anger and use that anger to act. SI exists here to help people get out of infidelity and quite kindly and gently, your WH is still deep in his affair. There are two books out there, "Not Just Friends" by Shirley Glass and "How to Help Your Spouse Heal From Your Affair: A Compact Manual for the Unfaithful" by Linda MacDonald and having read them myself, they are insightful for both BS and WS, but in your case as a BS, my hope would be that you start standing up for yourself. You are the prize and we will say around here that a WS should be willing to move heaven and earth to fix the damage they've done to their BS and their marriage. At present, your WH wants to pretend this is like old school Nintendo and he can just hit the reset button and go back to the beginning of the level in the saved game and all will be forgiven. That is not how any of this works. Reconciliation following an affair is absolutely the hardest thing that my wife and I have ever done. It requires that both spouses make major changes in their lives and right now your WH hasn't changed anything.
High level, here is what your WH would be doing if he was remorseful and worthy of reconciliation...He would tell everyone in the friend group that he had an affair with the AP and that he and you will no longer be spending time with them socially. He would then delete/block and go no contact with everyone in that group, or at the very least the AP and anyone else in the group who knew of and supported the affair. He would tell AP that he is focusing on his marriage and that he will no longer be in contact with her and any attempts to reach either you or him will be considered harassment, which will cause you to seek a restraining order and other legal support. He would then hand you all passwords/login codes to every single device and every platform to you. He would turn on location tracking so that you know where he is at all times. He would get his ass into therapy and start working on fixing his own shit, because he is the one who cheated and his cheating absolutely nothing to do with you. He would then come home from therapy and be there to answer any and all of the questions you may have about the affair and the events surrounding his affair. Each BS is a little different and their needs are their needs, but if you need to know a detail, he should cough it up without any hesitation. Keep in mind, if you are going to reconcile, at some point you the BS will be asked to forgive him for what he has done, but you have to understand what you are being asked to forgive, so it is natural to want to know the details.
Alright, that is not an exhaustive list, but it is a pretty good start for what you should expect to see if your WH was worthy of reconciliation. At present, he is trying to do what we call rug sweeping. It does not and will not work (ask me how I know 
). What I would advise you to do is to see an attorney about divorcing your WH and for you to understand what divorce would look like for you. That doesn't mean you have to move forward with a petition for divorce, but knowledge is power and knowing what your future post-divorce would look like really helps to take the mystery out of the situation. One of the things that we say around here is that waywards only respond to strength and consequences. Again, you are the prize here and he cheated on you, it is time for you to lay down your bare minimum needs for any shot at reconciliation and if you want to hand him divorce papers and tell him to figure it out, that would also be the badass move that you could pull on him. Why is it that I'm recommending you go this far? Simply put, he hasn't had any real consequences and he doesn't think he will lose you over his actions, so he isn't doing the work. If you serve him with divorce papers and he decides to just throw in the towel, it will hurt like hell for you, no doubt about it, but you will save yourself months/years of agony of a false R and your healing journey will never fully start.
