“How far should you go in keeping your spouse?” is a question that occurred to me this weekend. Over the weekend, we watched the movie Serious Moonlight. In the movie, the betrayed spouse discovers her adulterous husband’s activities when she returns home unexpectedly. She then takes matters into her own hands, including taping him to the toilet until he decides he loves her and wants to stay with her.
Although the movie is designed as a comedy, it raises some serious questions. One that you may have to consider is “How far should you go in keeping your spouse?” You may have seen the movie and have other concerns. For the moment, let us consider this one.
When your marriage and the integrity of your family are being threatened, you will consider options outside of your normal behavior. Some of those options may be illegal, unethical, sneaky or criminal. When your marriage is at risk, you evaluate situations and decisions differently. When one spouse cheats, the ground rules of the relationship change.
When an affair happens, behavior such as lying, hiding, and deceit are now deemed acceptable by default. You and your spouse may not have made an agreement that such behaviors were acceptable. You likely never made the agreement that the affair was acceptable either. Affairs have a way of changing the default behavior in your marriage.
Although you may not have considered spying or tracking your spouse, that option is no longer distasteful. Things like GPS tracking devices, apps that spy on your spouse’s phone or keystroke loggers may become tools you find yourself using since the cheater refuses to tell you anything. (I address the topic of spying in more depth in the e-book, Why Wasn’t I Enough?)
The situation reminds me of the old saying “All is fair in love and war,” When there is an affair, your marriage is under attack. You are at war. You are fighting for your spouse’s affection. The lover and the cheater have teamed up against you. When you are under attack, it is natural to fight back.
I do not advocate what the characters in Serious Moonlight did, although I can understand how people could consider such options. Extreme situations often call for extreme measures. If you are trying to fight for your marriage and also trying to be seen as “nice” at the same time, you have some serious challenges ahead of you.
How far you are willing to go has a lot to do with what you views on marriage are. If you view marriage as a lifelong covenant, you may be open to options that someone who views their marriage as more of a business contract wouldn’t consider. If you and your spouse have claims on each other, you have different options than those who view marriage as based on letting each of you have your own separate spaces.
You beliefs will either limit or expand the options available to you. This includes not only your views on marriage, but also your views on God’s law versus man’s law. If you value man’s law over God’s law, there will be different options compared to those who valuing God’s Law over man’s law. There will be some code or law you abide by, even if it is one you make up as you go.
No matter what code you use, there will be limits to how far you can go. There are physical, conscionable, sexual, and financial limits you have to consider. There may be one way of getting your spouse’s attention that works more effectively than any other. Since you live with them, you know what is important to them.
The situation you are in may also expand or limit your options as well. If you are a military spouse, you have different options than someone living in the wilds of Australia. If you have a source of income separate from your spouse, you may consider options that some spouses would not dare to. If you are in a position where you have to consider your public persona, there may be limits on your options as well.
Whatever options you consider, they will have to be evaluated in terms of risk versus benefit. You will have to consider the potential benefits and the risks associated with each choice you make about how far you should go to keep your spouse. You also have to consider time. There may be timeframes you are limited by that can either tone down your options or make you more desperate in terms of the options you can live with.
Best Regards,
Jeff
2 Responses
And don’t forget —- in your vows you said for better or for worse, so…where is YOUR commitment if you got “worse”???????
Who is being more unfaithful – you or them?
Some thought provoking material to consider about who is being ‘unfaithful’. Although it is easy to see the cheater’s unfaithfulness, the betrayed spouse can be unfaithful by giving up on the marriage. What corks me is when ministers and counselors who claim to be devoted to family will actually encourage unfaithfulness. Those who you look to in support of family are often the ones who advance the actual destruction of the family while hiding behind ‘good intentions’ and lofty ideals.
The hard part comes when you find yourself having to support faithfulness when all those around you are cheerleaders for unfaithfulness. I like Bill Gothard’s take on this with his ‘Rebuilders”, yet few spouses are willing to go to such lengths for their marriage.
There is also the added dimension of whether spouses have lost faith in God as well. Your vows are made before Him. You ask for his blessings and assistance, yet often bail when things get rough or painful thinking that He has left you or is not powerful enough to come through.
Faith and commitment are important parts of keeping a marriage together and making it through recovery. An affair will test you in terms of how committed each of you are.
Thank you for your comments.
Jeff