Can "I'm Sorry" Save Your Marriage After Infidelity?

"For every woman still waiting for an apology," are among the first words you'll read when you open Eve Ensler's book The Apology. Ensler suffered abuse from her father for most of her childhood and youth. Her father died without ever uttering anything resembling an "I'm sorry". Ensler felt caged by the lack of apology and so she found the key to free herself. 
A whole lot of us find ourselves in a similar situation, with a spouse or an ex-spouse who either can't or won't take the necessary steps to apologize to us. I'm not talking about an apology spat out, or one that's really a plea for forgiveness. But a true apology, one that offers a full accounting of the harm done and a genuine reckoning. One that leaves the apologizer unwilling to ever do that to another person again because they cannot, they will not be that person. 
I'm often asked why I stayed with my husband after the harm he caused. Year after year of cheating, lie after lie. And when I look back at those early weeks and months after D-Day, there are a few moments that stand out. Including the day that he told me, whether I stayed with him or left, he was committed to getting emotionally healthy. He could not, he would not remain the same person who could betray someone he loved. 
A genuine apology is a rare thing. In part, as Ensler says, we are not taught to apologize when we are children. I cringe when I hear a parent admonish a child to "say you're sorry", followed by a sullen "I'm sorry" that carries not one iota of self-reflection or genuine remorse. 
And to apologize for breaking someone's trust, their heart? Where to even begin? And so the harm is minimized. It's part cowardice, part survival strategy. As one of our Twitter tribe, whose wife cheated on him, noted after his wife read this post, she felt like a "monster". But then, he added, the next day she wanted to read it again.
Because within that admission, that willingness to confess the monster's sins as your own, lies liberation. If we don't exorcise whatever is driving us to behave in ways that cause harm to those we love, then we will continue to be controlled by it. There are three stages through a genuine apology, Ensler tells us. The first is a willingness to look at what drove the behaviour, to "self-interrogate," she says. Not excuses but understanding. "What made you a person capable of [inflicting such harm]." The second is a "detailed accounting" of the harm. "Liberation only comes through the details," says Ensler. 
Though Ensler is speaking primarily to sexual assault survivors, her words hold true for those of us abused via betrayal. "Survivors," she says, "are often haunted by the why." What we need is not justification but explanation. I often urge women on this site to let go of the why, in part because the cheater so often is baffled himself. He doesn't know why he risked everything that mattered for someone who, ultimately didn't. His job, of course, is to find out. But know this: The 'why' is rarely what our culture tells us. It is rooted in the cheater's own dysfunction, his own wound. Hurt people hurt people.
And the third – a stage few reach – is liberation. An unshackling of the apologizer. A release for the apologized to. 
That's what I got in those moments that I can remember so clearly after D-Day. Those were the moments when my husband made clear that he was committed to becoming a man who could not, would not do that again. When he said to me that he never wanted to see such pain in my eyes again and know that he had created it. When he showed up at his 12-step groups, when he worked with therapists. It wasn't so much an "I'm sorry" in words (though there was that, as well) as an apology in action. I saw his "I'm sorry" more than heard it. 

But what if he won't apologize? 

What are you seeing? Are you seeing someone interrogate themselves (ideally with the help of a trained therapist)? Are you seeing someone willing to go through the shame and discomfort of examining why they hurt someone they claim to value?

If not, can I ask you gently why you're continuing to live on crumbs? If not, why do you have any expectation that things in the future will be different than the past?

If so, can you be satisfied with an "I'm sorry" in actions not words? If so, are you confident that the future will be different from the past because the future him will be different than the past him?
And if you find yourself left, without an apology, without a marriage, then what? Then you unshackle yourself. You can do what Ensler did and put yourself in your ex'es shoes and determine what made him incapable of healthy, generous love. You learn to pity him. Or you accept that you might never know and instead focus your energy on self-care, self-compassion, self-love. 

An apology can create space for compassion. Without it, you will have to create that space for yourself. You can learn to forgive yourself for not knowing, for not having seen it, for having trusted someone unworthy of your trust. And then, you can move forward, liberated.