DRSOOLERS, I think the key difference between R and a situation like mine is that with R, you need to feel friendship toward your WS for R to succeed. If you can't even like them as a friend, how can you love them enough to build a new romantic relationship?
In my case, or others who are separating/divorcing, that means R has failed. I don't like my WS anymore, and I don't want to be friends with him. Assuming that's generally true for S/D, those people are not good candidates for friendship.
One thing about my personal history is that our kid (15yo) is still in the dark about WS's cheating. She's on the autism spectrum, and as far as I know, she hasn't even noticed that's there anything wrong with the marriage. All of the changes to our lives have perfectly good explanations outside of marital difficulties, and we have continued to do things as a family. WS asking for that to continue for another year (ostensibly for the kid's sake, though I'm sure there's self-interest too) isn't totally unreasonable.
Asking me to be actual friends with him is utterly delusional. I can't do it, and I also had to give up on R, but we are not all the same, and I was genuinely curious if anyone could accomplish it with any WS.
[This message edited by NoThanksForTheMemories at 7:50 PM, Tuesday, July 15th]
