Hey, Mike! Great question - did I ever understand his rationalizations?

I rarely got them. When I did, they were similar to yours which - no offense intended since you seem to have realized and learned from your mistakes - were blaming me. The problem with his - and I don't know if these held true in your case or not - was that they were entirely baseless. For example, in one instance where he was caught, he claimed that he cheated because I wouldn't have sex with him. But he'd not asked, not initiated, and not taken me up on any indications I was attempting to initiate.

Did there come a point where his rationalization might have been true? Sure. But after you cheat on someone enough times, and blame them for it, eventually that person is going to stop wanting to have sex with you - and that's not their fault, that's yours (a general you, not you specifically, Mike) for telling them it's their fault. It's kind of the reverse of the person who gets accused of cheating so often that they finally go out and cheat - you get told often enough that you aren't into sex, you stop being into it.

I'm no therapist, and I don't have (and never did) enough insight into his family to know for sure, but based on what I did know, I believe that what it really boiled down to for him was that his parents had raised him with the ultimate idea that men cheat and women tolerate it - that it was simply inevitable that a man would cheat and the woman he cheated on would simply accept it. And perhaps he eventually found that woman, I don't know as he walked away from our children after the divorce so I have no idea where he is or who he may be with. But I was never that woman. I might have forgiven it once, had he truly felt remorseful and tried to make things right. But the fact that it kept happening was too much for me.

I hope that answered your question without rambling too much! lol