The shock of an affair often leaves you stunned and confused. You are also forced to re-evaluate your priorities. Sure it is easy to see how the cheater needs to change and how messed up their priorities are, which they may or may not change. What you can change is yourself, your own behaviors, your own attitude and your own priorities. Today, I want to address the priority part of those changes. Discovering an affair means that you will have to consider what marriage means to you. You will have to decide whether it is something that you make a life-long commitment to or is it something that you work at until you get tired and then give up on it? You also have to decide whether you are going to view your spouse as the enemy or whether you help them in their struggle against the common enemy which is at the root of the affair.
These decisions and more will be made by you. You can discuss them with others and debate about the pros and cons of each choice, yet the time will come when you have to make choices on your own. You will have to address what the limits of your love and forgiveness are. You will have to be honest about what is really most important to you. You will have to face whether it is more important to do what is ‘right’ or to avoid pain. You will also have to look at your choices in terms of the ‘here and now’ along with the long-term impact. The choices you make on priorities will echo through the years. Although the movies and story books make it look like the story eventually ends, in real life, relationships go on long after the movie ends.
Some days you will be doing good making choices about getting out of bed. Other days you will be able to make different choices. Don’t rush the choices, they will come as you are ready to deal with them (and some when you are not). You may have to make a choice, but you may not have to do it at that moment.
You can make it through the pain. Although it seems to be endless, there is a time that it will subside. There are often clouds and fog that keep you from seeing that time, yet it will come.
Best Regards,
Jeff Murrah
5 Responses
Working to make copies of all financial records of my husband’s expenditures since he started having this adulterous arrangement [ I REFUSE to call it an ‘affair’ …it was a business deal ..sex for money …or some such equal supply ] This is needed to make copies mostly of his checks written since she got pregnant ….It amounts to way more than any legal child support would have called for .
NOW he is really sorry since we are deep in debt and it is causing more trouble for our household.
She is going to school …even though she is a college grad and has skills that are very marketable. She is going free of charge due to the help for ‘single mom’s” ….in addition to what we send which is way over the legal set amount she gets free medical for the kids…so we are going to stop paying for health insur . and she has worked the system well.
To think she will be enabled soon to be a social worker give me chills…I read about the way many social services intrude upon families…and homeschool families…I am glad for HSLDA the legal defense working for homeschoolers.
It is very difficult for me emotionally to go through many years of financial records and see not just the huge amounts of cash he turned over to her …and thinking of those times when we had been told to ‘pull in the purse strings’ …but to see HOW he did this so slimely …
I also ran across a letter he wrote for a job interview back when he was the man I married..How he emphasized his attitude regarding having built his integrity …how much honesty and truthfulness and fair dealing was important to him …and IT WAS at that time .
The sin of adultery turns people into blind pigs….eating all they can of whatever it placed before them without any thought to the consequences…or when thinking of them …devising more and more wicked ways to hide their sinful leeching.
This is very difficult but I must make a lot of copies and keep them should this woman ever claim he did not give her child support….I have observed already in the children’s sharing with my husband that she has led them to think he has not given her much …and no doubt that is her sob story elsewhere…She uses these types of methods to get what she wants from people …either fabricated crisises….or sad tales of how unfair life has been to her. In truth she had a very lucrative family of origin with a father who was a bank president….
It sad how some people’s lives have been bent. I too had troubles in life …who doesn’t …and if we wanted to compare troubles …I think “I ‘WIN” ! hahaha…but I did not allow that to make me into a criminal thief and manipulator.
People can change their lives if they want to …and there is plenty of help for them to become morally straight.
I am learning more than I ever thought about the way people who do these things become able to do such wickedness …and have even more appreciation for those who determine to be upright.
I was reading about Passive Aggressive husbands in another site…it is difficult to read …much sounds similar to my married life….I still remain steadfast in the hope of what learning from the LORD may bring about but it is very VERY painful as my husband continues to maintain his position on how HE wants to live life ….His last comment was that WE are ‘toxic’….My reply was people are going to challenge your desire to rule….even your own appetites will try to turn you toward sin …but YOU make the difference…it is not WE as a couple that is ‘toxic’ it is that he does not want to overcome by learning what he must do to enter into marriage as it was meant to be.
He has not wanted the responsibilities that come with it …like transparency , relating…and living for someone besides himself and his career!
BAH! ….you can tell I am getting fired up ..it is frustrating when someone CAN do something …KNOWS what to do ..but simply refuses to …and would rather mull around in his sorrow about his own pain from causing others pain …boo hoo!
One tactic that they mentioned on the Passive Aggressive site was that they would turn the whole matter on the wife saying ‘ OK >>>I AM JUST a bad man’ …thus agreeing that they did wrong but making the spouse feel badly for calling them on it !….so she then ‘comforts ‘ the ‘baby’ ….it is such a game and it works …cause many of us women are nurturers and not comfortable with having to confront sin ..especially when it is our husband …
But to be a helpful and righteous spouse seems that we cannot stand by and encourage more crappy attitude about some kind of entitlement to go along and live in such a damaging state …..
OK …I am done for the moment ..thanks for letting me vent,.,.just noticed some of the years I needed are now missing ! argh…and they don’t have some of them online banking either….sigh!
Zaza,
The copying and documenting of actions is definitely one of the hard realities that is hard to deal with. At that point, you are dealing with facts and not good intentions. Although it is not fun, there are times when you have to prepare for potential legal challenges. Given the behaviors you have told me about that the lover has, she sounds like she could lie about anything until forced to deal with the truth. She has already lied about many things and played the system. It sends shivers down my spine that she is going into social work. She definitely knows the social service system and how to squeeze benefits out of it along with taking from others. ‘Takers’ like her continue taking on a larger and larger scale. It is tragic that your family is caught in her clutches. Ecclesiates warns about women such as her, likening their clutches to iron chains.
In terms of passive aggressive behavior in husbands, the dysfunctional behaviors often continue as long as the dynamics continue supporting it. It will likely take you and him both making changes to stop the pattern. I view it as a game that some men play to avoid responsibilities and fein helplessness. It involves their denial of manly responsibilities and avoidance of many issues. Perhaps I will elaborate on that in a future post.
Thank you for your supportive acknowledgement of the difficulties that we are dealing with and may likely deal with in the future …I note that the scriptures warn us not just of individuals but whole cultures and world wide decent into darkness . Ignorance of the scriptures in truth and acceptance of all kinds of immoral and ungodly thought resulting in all kinds of harmful plague like behaviors….As individuals give way to immorality the whole society becomes a cesspool of a great increasing population of those who are willing to do whatever ‘is right in their own eyes’ and bring about destruction not just to those they take advantage of but to their own souls without remedy .
I pray that those who are concerned about their souls take their walk more seriously in earnest .It would appear we are headed more and more into the ‘bondage’ that those caught in Egypt suffered….yet our hope and our freedom FROM is within since Jesus Christ told us that His kingdom is NOT OF this world but is spiritual and those who continue in HIS word are His disciples INDEED>
I get really down sometimes despite my hope and faith …but then I read the 23rd Psalm with the understanding that though we are IN this world we are not OF it …and it IS the ‘valley of the shadow of death; …but for those who are trusting and learning to walk in Christ through this ..we are translated from death of this life even as we walk along heeding his Word …and living by it …and we are passed NOW from death unto life as we are IN Christ.,…doing all that he has told us to .
He has prepared a table in the presence of our enemies …indeed.
It is tough to be ‘alone’ in this walk …I had so trusted that my husband would be faithful to Christ and to me …to have a marriage that would be what God would be magnified in …at least to the best of our ability to grow in knowledge and practice of leaning upon Him …but it was not to be…at least not thus far ….I have much to learn from the Lord in this particular circumstance . What a lesson! but I have to continue to be toward what is His will …despite whatever else happens…
Thanks again for your encouragement….it means a great deal to me.
Hi Jeff – I very much would be interested in another post about passive-aggressive behavior in men.
Although my divorce has finalized and I am moving on, I think it would be beneficial to have that knowledge so I may avoid the same pitfall in future relationships. I am a strong woman of Christ and am looking for an equal partner who is appropriately assertive. I do not want to fall in the same patterns with another man.
Thank you,
Christina
Christina,
Thank you for writing. Since the tendency is for people to gravitate toward what they are ‘familiar’ with, there is a risk of falling for the type of man you were married to before. I will go ahead and address those issues.