While discussing some friends’ marital woes recently, this Red Hot Momma found that there is appears to be a wide gender gap regarding adultery. More specifically, the aftermath. The Mr. and I were out running errands when the marital woes of some acquaintancescame up. They were in the process of a messy split over an affair. Although, I personally believe that an affair is the result of a marriage that is already suffering, there is no denying the seal-the-deal nature of straying. His one time infidelity, and subsequent confession, had plunged his entire family into turmoil. Divorce seems imminent.
This dear reader is the part where you start to squirm. While listening to the Mr. describe the misery of the entire family, I said if an affair is over and done, maybe it would be best if the cheated spouse never knew. I was thinking of the poor soul who was unaware that the marriage bed had been soiled, so to speak. I talked of sparing the loved one pain and living with the bone crushing guilt in silence. Vowing and becoming a better spouse with a renewed marriage. Happily ever after.
Not so for Mr. Red Hot. He nearly drove right off the road while listening to my meandering justification of keeping mum on an infidelity. Even after adding the following caveats:
1. Must have been a one time encounter.
2. Must have been purely physical. No “But I was in love!” business.
3. Must not have been public knowledge.
4. Must not have resulted in creation of human life.
5. Must have ended amicably and most important, mutually.
6. I couldn’t think of anymore. However, I reserved the right to add in defense of argument.
Mr. Red Hot was furious. A state he rarely attains without my help. 
He began a rapid fire assassination of my feeble reasons for not sharing. This was vital information I was withholding here. (“Hypothetically!” I interjected.) Of course, one would tell. There was no choice. Fess up. Pay for play. If you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime and lot’s of other tired cliches. Point taken. Adultery is a deal breaker.
Now before you leave the computer to go hunt for stones to throw, I would like to remind everyone that this was an offhand comment made while chewing gum and looking out the window sale signs on storefronts. (Thinking before I speak is not exactly this Hot Momma’s strong suit.) Still, the voracity of Mr. Red Hot’s condemnation surprised me. So, I am going to open up a can of worms here by asking for your takes on withholding information about an affair.
A few ground rules: Adultery is bad. Don’t even try to defend it because I will just delete those comments. After all this is my blog. :) Don’t personally attack anyone. It’s just for fun.
Definitely tell. Obviously there’s serious problems in the marriage and the only way to even begin to make things right is by being completely honest. People find God through pain and only through God can true forgiveness, healing, and love begin.
Seek truth, right? An unconfessed (according to Mozilla, not really a word) heart will rot away, right?
Tell.
In all honesty, I don’t think there is any other option. I rarely feel “black and white” about anything, but this is one of those things that I feel everyone should abide by at all times, no matter what the consequence. If the consequence is so severe that you’re not sure what will come after, too bad. You screwed up. Now you pay for it.
In addition, though, once confession and repentance have taken place, it’s time to move on. Understanding as well that what that means differs for many people. It’s not an easily navigable trench to go through, but one that is unavoidable.
Tell.
Tell. I too am very black and white on this issue. But more importantly, the longer the adulteress/er waits to tell the more holes it will burn in the relationship. The guilty party will always know they have done something wrong and continue to do things to try to “make up” for it. OR continue to try to have to cover up what they have done with lie after lie. And if the partner has any suspicion, it will only cause more grief and anger when they find out they were right, and the person they thought loved them so dearly had not only cheated but lied about it repeatedly.
Hello,
First off, I love your blog.
Now, to the topic at hand. My marriage has been victim of an affair almost 11 years ago now. So, when I speak on the subject, having been through the fire and grown past it, I think I can shed some insight. To begin with, you are absolutely correct in that an affair is a symptom of a deeper problem in the marriage. Most likely one or more unmet expectations. By this I mean, a set of expectations that one spouse will have for the other spouse to meet yet they don’t voice them.
To give you an example. When the affair happened in our marriage, I was going to college and my wife was working at UPS at night. Monday through Friday, I would get up at 6:30am and be off by just after 7am. She would watch our two children at the time until about 3pm when she took them to the sitters and then off to work. I would get them from the sitters at about 6pm and head home. Watch them until about 8pm when they would go to bed and start homework. My wife would work until after midnight and come home. At some point in there, I would clean the house, but leave the dishes because they took so long and I could get so much more done by cleaning everything else (we didn’t have a dishwasher at the time). Sundays were church and home group and Saturdays we spent mostly fighting. Even in all of that, we still thought we were doing everything for the other. Well, my wife would come home in the middle of the night and find the house (most nights) spic and span clean except for the dishes, which I would later find out was the bane of her existence and she hated them. But would she yell at me about this dishes or even tell me about it. No. Instead she would find a dustbunny to yell and get upset about. She had an unmet expectation that she did not voice and it was grinding on her EVERY DAY. Even to this day if you ask her what caused our problems from her side she says the dishes. For me, it was a combination of needed to know that she was there for me and me only which was being worn down every time she would yell at me about the dustbunnies and then want nothing to do with me.
You see, we both had unmet expectations, but neither of us were really communicating what we felt and thought correctly to the other one and a wedge got between us long before the affair happened. On top of this, neither of us was really growing in Christ or walking closely with him because we let the world come in and choke out the Word. We didn’t spend any time in it and things got really dicey. In fact, an elder couple from the church (a really strong and powerful church) told us there was no way we could reconcile and to get a divorce. Imagine our shock.
What did we do? How did we overcome? Well, we went to the Pastor and spoke with him and he sent us to a couple that through Christ saved our marriage. I can still remember sitting at their kitchen table for that first meeting. Gary asked what was going on and I was ready to give him it all. In fact, I had a speech that I had worked on for some time explaining in complete details how horrible I thought my wife was (it is amazing she stayed with me through this) and I began to give him the whole thing. I got maybe a sentence to two into my speech when he stopped me and asked, “How is your walk with the Lord?” Before I even knew what had happened the following words came out of my mouth, “What does that have to do with anything.” And that was where the beginning of our problem was. From there, we were able to get to a ground zero and begin to build our marriage back together (actually really together for the first time) and have something that is so much stronger today than we could have every imagined.
Now, I say all of this to say that while our problems began long before the affair, not telling would be a major problem (and I know it was an off-handed comment). The reason is because there would always be something between you. Not to mention what the enemy will do with it. He will pound guilt on guilt and make your life with your spouse miserable until you can’t bare to look at them because all you see is your guilt. And then, the enemy will find the most inopportune time in the most inopportune way to reveal your secret and devastate your spouse. No, you have to come clean. In our case, the enemy had gotten us so torn apart that we didn’t believe that there was any way to save our marriage even though our spirits were screaming at us to reconcile and trust God. It will never be a good conversation to tell your spouse you cheated on them, but in the long run it will be healthy one. Even if the spouse leaves, you can at least have a clear conscious that you came clean and they did not forgive you for your mistakes nor realize theirs in the mess that had become your marriage.
There is so much more I could say about this having been there and lived to tell that there is life after an affair. But I will stop for now because if I don’t get off my soapbox this could wind up being several thousand words (LOL!).
Love in Christ,
Pat
Thanks for the great comments guys! I am impressed. Pat, thanks so much for sharing your story. I know it will help lots of people.
my wife and i have been going thru this for quite some time now but she wont confess her wrong she says it’s between her and GOD. I dont trust her i dont know what to do. Please pray for my marriage
Shelton- Bless you. I am praying for you and your entire family. God is good, all the time.
Wow, does this hit home. Not with me, personally, but a few close friends and I are stuck in a very awkward situation with friends in a small community. It is SO hard to know how to handle that information. I know you are talking about spouse to spouse, but what do you think about telling someone else that their spouse is or was cheating on them?
Charla- this time last year a very close friend was going through the whole cycle of adultery with her husband. She would suspect him, stalk him, then catch him. He would confess. Promise it would not happen again. She would trash him for a few days, then blindly devote herself to him once again. It was very, very difficult to know he was cheating on her and be civil to him. But I was and am glad that I did not interfere at the time. Eventually, she got fed up with it all on her own. She left him and started her life over. All of this to say, I have had experience with this very situation. I think it is harder when you live in a small town. I am a small town girl myself and know that bad news beats you home by ten minutes!
I know it is hard to watch such injustice, but I say I would stay out of it. Here is why. Most of the folks I have known who were victims of a cheating spouse knew it long before they were ready to acknowledge it to others. They might have been in denial, but on some level knew that things just didn’t add up. They weren’t ready or strong enough to face it for awhile. And who could blame them? Betrayal is a huge thing to process. It is humiliating enough without adding in the embarassment of being “the last to know”. So I say sit on the information. But you are not powerless in this situation. You have the ultimate weapon in your arsenal. Prayer. I believe it is best to pray for GOD to give all parties involved, including you, wisdom. Pray for the affair to end. Pray for healing of the marriage. Pray for your own marriage and the marriages of friends. By rooting yourself in prayer, you will be in the best situation possible to help her when she comes to you.
Just a thought…Sometimes GOD gives us information that we are not supposed to do anything with on our own. A privielge of being a friend to GOD is that we get to partner with HIM through prayer. That could be what you are being called to in this situation.
Wow, you made me think. Great post. You really opened up some deep thoughts in people. Before reading these comments I would have said don’t tell. That is where I have been forever. I felt like if it was something that happened once and was all the things you listed then don’t do that to the unsuspecting spouse. Right? Wrong! After reading here, I can see the other side that God has for those entangled in these situations. My parents had this problem and I watched them go through it. I confess I still don’t really understand their story. I think because there is no real healing there, yet. Long story, I wish I could post it but Mom reads my blog and it would hurt her and dad so I’ll stay away. They have been married over 50 yrs and there are still a lot of love there and a lot of good but…I know she hurts. She’s just so good at putting it aside, “I don’t hold grudges, because life’s too short for that” is one of her favorite quotes.
hmm.
Thank you. I will probably come back here to see what else you have going. Thanks again