Because Love is not sensible. Love just is.

You have to mourn Tom. Give yourself time. I believe before you said you were in therapy, correct please if I am wrong. Try to understand why you are attracted to the type of person your W is. That is very important. Understand you, and then you can unravel the pain. Still, it is a long drawn out process. There just is no way around it, you have to go right through the whole ugly mess. With or without our spouses, we all have to do the self work, which may be one of the hardest parts of healing.

If it helps, my son was in a similar relationship for 7+ years. I term what his GF did with the suicide attempts as emotional blackmail. My son became convinced, that if not for him she would again try to commit suicide and succeed if he were not in her life. He now understands that he just didn’t have that kind of control. He still cares for her, and even still loves her, but he knows that he is much better off with out her. Her unhealthy mental state, caused him to enable, and become in an unhealthy mental state also, he sees this now. He knows that unless she wants help and seeks it on her own, nothing can be done. I believe that he is finally at peace with his decision to let her go. Like your W, she cheated and left him, but he still had to decide to not want to win her back.

Ami