It's the same guy. He struggles with commitment and he cheats on his wife with the girlfriend from the beginning, and perhaps has cheated on her with others before. He's trying to create a new life where he's better, in order to do that he develops some kind of split personality disorder. All of this becomes insanely obvious when you re-watch it with this understanding. All of the scenes with his mom and his wife make total sense now. His wife looks intensely sad at the school because he acts as though he doesn't even know her at all, she's realizing the extent of his psychosis.
His wife at the end recognizes that he's acting different, kinder, less arrogant, at the end... and that's why she asks him to 'stay'. She know's they're the same person, hence why she asks him if he had a good day at school, even though he thinks that he's impersonating the cheater guy.
Spiders represent women and how he feels trapped by them in their web. Even though he 'defeats' his cheater self by the end of the movie, the last scene is to remind us that he's still basically the same person and he still sees his wife as a creature that has trapped him in her web. This is why he kept teaching about 'history repeating itself'
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