I was hoping she would suffer in the end as this hit close to home..
Wifey made marriage loveless, then she cheated, we divorced and during process she realized her nice life was vanishing (as new boyfriend didn't have a job), begged to come back. Unlike end of movie, I shot her down

All of those alternate endings are awful. I didn't have a problem with the way the movie actually ended. I thought it was a wonderful movie because of the messages. One of those messages stems from what Jerry says when Mae tells him she wants to come back to him.
He tells her there has to be trust. I like the fact he didn't just embrace her and they walk off together hand in hand as the credits rolled. That would have been a typical Hollywood happy ending; she learns her lesson and all is well. In life it doesn't work quite that way.
Jerry did love Mae and he wanted her to stay but when she came back he knew it would take some work on both their parts to make things work. Whether he believed she had come to her senses or not, he was going to have to learn to trust her again. Mae, too, would have to trust him; that her could get past what she had done, and she had to trust herself.
Merely understanding what one had done wrong in the past isn't a guarantee they will behave any better in the future. It would be so easy for Mae to slip back into her old ways. At the first sign of trouble, or boredom, she could run away or find some new guy to divert her attention. As with Earl, she didn't even have to like the guy. She would feel trapped but had to trust she could work through it.
Jerry may seem like a real sap for trusting her and giving her a another chance but that's what happens when we care for someone. He couldn't very well lecture Mae for behaving the way she did if he wasn't willing to trust that they could get past what had happened and make their marriage work out for the best.
Woman, man! That's the way it should be Tarzan.
[Tarzan and his mate]

I think the better ending would have been if Stanwyck's character did go through with running away with the friend (what's his name?), and for the father to keep the baby. Then, for the rest of her life, she would suffer from the guilt of thatbut, she will have done what she felt, guilt or not, selfish or not, giving in to her passions.
I know that ending like that, in which the selfish characters got their ways, didn't really happen pre-1966, because the Hayes code of the day dictated that "immoral" or "amoral" characters were meant to suffer. But, you see, either way, she would sufferonly, it would have been another kind of sufferingand surely a kind more befitting of the story and characters, overall. Because Mae was never the type to be a mother in the first place. The mere fact that she settled down and became one in the first place was a mistake that she must live with, alwaysSome people just aren't cut out for it, and frankly, I was disappointed when Mae went the mommie route.
Please excuse typos/funny wording; I use speech-recognition that doesn't always recognize!

That sounds good, except maybe to make it even darker, he could take the boat far out into the sea, and drown himself, with the kid.
black and white movies were better