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I am so early in my journey but the folks that are down the line, do you feel proud of your WH and your marriage again? Is it possible to get this back? I feel like all my husbands achievements and sacrifices prior to his affair have been wiped out by this act, his entire character is tainted, he is so deep in shame that I don't think we can even work on the marriage yet, his shame and guilt has got him to a suicide attempt, so this is something that I can discuss with him as I am just telling him what he already knows. Would love people's thoughts on this that are deep in the reconciliation journey

DD was NYE 2024 so I’m new here and struggling with this myself and I understand how you feel.
I’m sorry to hear about your H attempt to end his life, I can’t even begin to imagine what you feeling I just want to say that my heart goes out to you.
As I said I struggle with feelings of not being proud of my H and it makes me very sad, hurt and sort of ashamed of myself if that makes sense?, because why would I be with someone who I’m not proud of? That’s disgusting right? Fake almost?, am I living a fake life? all these questions I ask myself.
I try to remember that for all the bad things he’s done he’s done good things too. He’s still the man that asked ME to marry him, still the man who has always gone out to work and provide for his family every day no matter how he’s felt, he’s still the man that had to sit through 2 horrific child births even though he’s terrified of blood, still the man who worked 3 jobs so we could have a 3 week Disney World holiday, still the same man who at 40 decided to get a new career and qualification so we could have a more comfortable life and he’s still the same man who’s given me everything I’ve ever asked for within his ability.
I’m not proud of his infidelity neither is he, I’m not proud of the man that did that and neither is he I’m not proud of how long it lasted and neither is he.
I know it’s difficult to separate things but I find it does help, I almost feel it’s our brain telling us we shouldn’t be proud of them and no, we shouldn’t but for some things we should and that’s ok.

I remember when renovating our house and we had a new roof, we ordered around 6 pallets of roof tiles and they were quite expensive, it pained me paying for them. In every single pallet there we a few broken tiles, I was furious and was complaining to my dad about it, my dad is a builder and obviously was helping with the renovation, I told Dad we should send these tiles back because there’s a few broken, he laughed and said ‘you don’t send 6 full pallets of tiles back because there’s a few broken’.
My dad was right.

Take care of yourself Drowning45

I am not a religious person but one of the pillars of Christianity that I admire is the possibility of redemption. If you haven’t already, please read the pinned post at the very top of the Reconciliation forum, "Beyond regret and remorse", by onlytime. Perhaps your husband could benefit from this posting, too. He will never be the same guy who you once thought he was, but there is always hope that he can redeem himself and become another version of his former self, more weathered and scarred, but still honorable. If he thinks that his only escape from the failure and shame is to kill himself, maybe he is ready for contrition and a new chance at being an honorable man. Read the post.

I am by no means an expert- just please take this with a mountain of salt because I don’t know your full story. I’m just wondering when I read this if his suicidal ideation was an attempt to distract you from what he did?

And no, I’m not proud of what my WH has done in the past year- yes he’s gone to counseling and ticked a lot of boxes, but there’s so much more than he sees to dig into. Like he and society expect me to set a really low bar for his attempts at recovery and I will not buy into that. Neither should you. Don’t set your bar lower for him than you would want for you daughter or best friend or yourself. Hold your head up and demand the world.