Is There Hope for my Marriage?
When a woman discovers (or is told) that her husband has been repeatedly unfaithful, this is the question weighing heavy on her mind and heart. I will say that there is always hope. Because of Christ’s redemptive work on the cross, there is always hope that with a truly repentant heart, your husband could do the hard work necessary to change. However, it is very hard and long-term work. Certain boundaries would always have to be in place to ensure that your husband doesn’t slip back into old, familiar, sinful patterns. Unfortunately, the likelihood of this happening is not high. Statistically speaking, the chances are not good. Single digits, if looking at percentages. Why is this? First of all, these men have learned to cope with hardship by escaping and using hook-ups as a coping mechanism. They’ve never had to work through hard things before without their addictive behavior. Certainly, repairing their marriage will be hard work. Some men won’t even try; they’ll walk as soon as you learn of their behavior. Some men will say they’re going to do the work to stop, but their actions don’t convey that. They will say the right things without doing the work to actually stop being unfaithful. Other men will do the hard work for awhile, but at some point, give up. They might stick with it for 9 months or a year, but eventually, they see their wife still “hasn’t gotten over it” or recovery isn’t nearly as exciting as their addictive behavior or the thought of lifelong accountability seems daunting, so they walk at this point.
The hardest thing to accept is that you can’t control your husband’s behavior, and you can’t keep him from cheating. You can’t love him enough to change him. You can’t love him enough to make him want to be a godly man. You can put safeguards in place, but ultimately, the choice of whether or not to honor his marriage vows is on him. His choices will absolutely affect you. After all, they determine if you can keep your family together or if you end up divorced and a single mom. This uncertainty can leave you feeling helpless and hopeless. However, you still have choices you get to make and things you can do right now. The first thing is that you get to choose whether to stay or whether to leave. Even if you choose to stay right now, you can always choose to leave 6 months or a year or 10 years from now if your husband isn’t honoring his marriage vows or doing the work to stay faithful and love you sacrificially. You also can choose to start the hard work of healing. Whether or not you stay married, you now have a deep, multilayered wound from your husband’s betrayals that will take long-term work to heal. Knowledge about your husband’s addiction can help. Journalling can help. Counseling can help. Online forums with other women in similar situations can help. I did an online support group for Christian women who had been betrayed by a husband’s sex addiction that I found incredibly helpful and healing. (I’ll list the link below.) There may be in-person groups in your area, especially if you live in a big city. The final and most important choice you will make in the midst of this chaos is whether or not to trust God. When the person you loved and trusted the most betrayed you like this, it can make it difficult to trust God. After all, why didn’t he protect you from this? If this has been occurring for years, you may wonder why God didn’t reveal it sooner. If you haven’t been married long, you may wonder why God would let you fall in love with a man like this, especially if you’ve been through past trauma. I struggled and wept as I prayed because I didn’t understand why I had to go through this after the pain I’d already experienced from losing a husband suddenly. This was a death of a different kind – the death of the marriage I thought I had. However, your choice of whether or not to trust God with this situation as well as the future of your marriage and your family will ultimately determine if you carry on as the woman and mom that God wants you to be or if you become angry, bitter, and resentful. You get to choose. I am currently memorizing Psalm 1 along with my kids. Verse 3 says, “He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither.” The “he” is referring to someone who delights in the law of the Lord, according to the previous verse. What does all this mean? It doesn’t say the tree never endures storms or loses some of its leaves. It does say that this person will yield fruit when it’s time, and the tree doesn’t die. This is God’s promise to us. Even in hardship, if we keep trusting in him and walking with him, He will make sure we yield fruit in our season, and we won’t be completely crushed by what’s going on in our marriage. It doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt. It doesn’t mean God’s promising to “fix” your husband or your marriage. It does mean that God still has a plan for your life, and he will work all things for good, if you keep on trusting and walking with him. It’s like Joseph’s time in prison; who knows what God has in store for your future? “And who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this?” (Esther 4:14b) God will bring you to the right place at the right time, regardless of what your husband chooses to do.
I understand what it’s like to feel powerless. I wish I could share this with you in person so I could give you a hug and a cup of coffee because I know you need both. You need someone to tell you it will all be OK, and I’m here to tell you that it will, regardless of what your husband decides. I also want you to know that you’re not alone. I didn’t share this with hardly anyone when I first found out. I was humiliated. I felt that surely no other woman was sitting in church with her husband who was doing this to her. Surely, this didn’t happen in other “Christian” marriages. I’m here to tell you that it does. That was perhaps the most powerful thing about the online support group that I did. I realized that this is happening more and more. So many women feel like they can’t share with people in their real lives because it would change how people viewed them and how they viewed their husband. It could potentially jeopardize their husband’s career. So many struggle with this alone, but healing happens in community. You need a support system now more than ever. If your husband doesn’t like that, then he shouldn’t have cheated. If he doesn’t want you to have help, then that says a lot about where his heart is and whether or not he truly wants to change. Women of all ages, nationalities, social classes, and education levels can be hurt by this. This doesn’t mean you aren’t good enough or you aren’t pretty enough; this just means that we live in a fallen, sinful world, and your husband has made the choice to indulge in sexual sin.
With all this said, it’s still difficult to accept that your life doesn’t look quite look like you thought it would. This has shattered the way you view both your husband and your marriage. It also alters the way you see the world. If you end up saving your marriage, your life still doesn’t turn out like you thought it would. You never thought you’d have to worry about whether or not your husband is telling you the truth and whether or not he’s being faithful. If you end up divorcing, you will have to learn to do life on your own and make a new life for both you and your kids. That also doesn’t look like the life you’d planned. I know when I was growing up that I wanted the perfect little family in the perfect house with a white picket fence. I wanted to grow old with my husband and see my grandkids running around. I never planned to be widowed in my 30’s and then divorced in my 40’s. Know that God can still work all of this out and make it good. It wasn’t God’s desire for Joseph’s brothers to sell him into slavery, but God used that to get Joseph to Egypt where he would use him to save the people of Israel. God used imprisonments and beatings of his disciples to spread the gospel and save others. In the ultimate example, God used the single greatest injustice in history – the death of his son – to reconcile the world to himself and defeat Satan and death forever. Please understand that it was never God’s heart for your husband to involve himself in sexual sin. Once that happened though, it was absolutely God’s desire for him to repent. However, God never forces someone to follow him. Your husband will have to make that choice on his own.
You may be asking yourself at this point: what do I do now? You pray and wait on the Lord to show you your next steps. If you diligently and sincerely seek God’s plan for you and ask him to guide you and show you the heart of your husband, he will. It won’t come as a billboard with flashing lights on your way home, but eventually, you will know summarily what’s happening in your marriage and what your next step should be, even if it’s not what you wanted. It may take months or even years, but God will show you. I know women who have realized the Holy Spirit is prompting them to end their marriage because their husband has shown he will not honor his marriage vows ever. I have known women who were prepared to leave and even relieved because their marriages had been difficult, but then God spoke to their heart that they should stay. I can’t tell you whether you should stay or go, but God can. When he does, I can tell you that you should obey. If God prompts you to leave, it’s because you’re his daughter and he doesn’t want to see you hurt and mistreated over and over by your husband’s choice to live in sin. Divorce is never God’s desire, but he does allow for it because he knows that sometimes, it’s necessary due to one spouse’s choices. In cases like this, it’s really God’s protection over you and your children. If God moves you to stay, he absolutely will give you the strength and grace you need to walk with your husband through his recovery. Also know that just because God prompts you to stay now, he may prompt you to leave a few months or years down the road if your husband chooses to turn back to his infidelity. You are never powerless over your situation. If you keep abiding in Christ, God will direct your steps.
Forgiveness does not mean reconciliation. These are two very different things. We are commanded to forgive, but that will take time as you unpack all the layers of pain and hurt that your husband’s actions have caused. However, Scripture does not command us to reconcile with a spouse who refuses to repent. Don’t let anyone quote Scripture to you about forgiveness in order to guilt you into staying in or returning to a destructive marriage. You can forgive without reconciling with your spouse. While you should absolutely forgive, even 70 X 7 times, you are most definitely not commanded to let your husband cheat on you that many times. Whether or not reconciliation occurs will depend on his actions.
It may not seem that anything good can come from this, but at the very least, God will use this to teach you a lot about yourself. Once you’ve recovered from the shock, you can do the hard work to really learn things about yourself you may never have analyzed before. I discovered why I minimized or dismissed red flags that should have been warning sirens. I learned why I let myself be mistreated. I realized that my needs mattered too. To be sure, your husband’s behavior isn’t your fault, but recognizing things about yourself can help you heal and also keep you from settling for this treatment in the future.
If I could leave you with just one thing, it’s this: you will be OK. God will redeem your story, whether or not he redeems your marriage. He will, over time, heal your broken heart. God will faithfully love you, even if your husband does not. “And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up.” (Galatians 6:9)