Dear Broken, Unfaithful Man,
I could have a lot of choice words for you.
But that’s not really my place, and I’m sure you’ve heard a lot of that anyway.
So I want to say a few different things.
First off, taking you out of the situation you’re in, God loves you. He sent His Son to die for you, even though He knew you were going to do this. The blackness of your sin, though very, very black, isn’t blacker than anyone else’s and the blood of Jesus can wash it away the same as it can wash away any other sin.
Here comes the tricky part. It doesn’t just happen. You have to repent (turn and run from your sin, committing to never commit it again), you have to acknowledge that you need Him to save you from your sin, and you have to ask for it, wholeheartedly.
Unfaithful Man, I hope with all hope that you do it.
So many say after the kind of betrayal you’ve committed, your wife should never, ever, in a million years, ever let you back into her heart, life or bed. For the life of me, I don’t know how she could.
But, Broken, Unfaithful Man, I hope with all hope that she can.
God created the family, and the marriage bed, to be undefiled. Same as anything else, we humans are good at messing up what He designed to be pure. But, just like everything else we mess up, He can fix it. It is amazing, mind-blowing even, but He can fix it.
I have witnessed personally, with friends and acquaintances and people around me, the power of God working in and healing marriages. These were marriages that were torn apart by the wicked claws of infidelity and adultery. You’ve committed a horrible sin against the woman you promised forever to. You broke her heart, her home, her spirit, her life. But, with a commitment from you to do a couple things, I totally believe He can save yours too.
- You need to include God and His word in your daily life.
- You need to do honest, steady work to prove to your beloved that you are different, you want to make things work, you want her forgiveness and presence in your life, and you want to be faithful to her from here on out.
God can work on your marriage and heal it. It will take time. It will take lots of hard work and commitment and tears and heartache, but it will be so worth it in the end. I’ve seen it, over and over.
Get out of the situation you’re in.
That woman isn’t going to be any more fulfilling than the woman you already promised to love, honor and cherish for your entire life. She will most likely get smart and realize that with no ties, no commitment to her, you’re a waste of time.
Broken, Unfaithful Man…
I know it’s easy to look back and say “well if my wife would’ve actually treated me right and appreciated all my hard work and cared about me for me, we wouldn’t be in this situation”.
Don’t do it.
Yes, your sweet, lovely wife, I’m 100% sure, has blame in your marital troubles. That’s absolutely something you guys need to address and work on in the future. But at this point, your running to another instead of your wife is what’s poisoning this whole picture.
So, here’s some things you can do:
1) Get your life together.
Leave that woman immediately. Decide that you’re going to quit doing destructive things – to your family and to yourself. Yes, this illicit relationship is destructive to YOU.
2) Get help.
Find a Bible believing church with a pastor (and/or Biblical counseling team) who is unafraid to tell you like it is. Start counseling with him/them. Get into a Bible, start learning about God, what He did for you and then memorize Scripture. That will surely help you in times of temptation.
3) Contact your wife.
Be open, remorseful, real, understanding. She’s probably going to have a lot of hard things to say to you. Be hopeful. Suggest counseling together. Suggest that your relationship could be something different and better than it ever was. Make it clear that you’re going to do whatever it takes to win her heart back. Remember the things that made you fall in love to begin with, start seeing her good traits and start TELLING them to her. Learn her love language and start speaking it. Loving someone with no strings attached is one of the best ways to break down a stone wall around their heart.
4) Be patient.
It’s going to take time, possibly a very long time, to build trust again. Be understanding of that fact. Become transparent and open to accountability in every area of your life. There is no such thing as privacy between you. No private codes on your phone, passwords only you know, private Facebook accounts or messages. You broke that, and it probably shouldn’t have been there in the first place.
5) Be accountable to a male role model.
Your pastor, a friend who believes in and cultivates his own strong, faithful marriage, someone wise and willing to be committed to helping YOU be committed will be so helpful in this journey back.
And lastly, don’t give up. Don’t blame anyone else for your mistakes. Be a man – not a broken, unfaithful man, but the knight in shining armor your wife has always needed. Then be committed to working on your relationship wholeheartedly so that, as a result, BOTH of you can end up getting what you need out of it.
Marriage is hard. But it’s beautiful and fulfilling and one of the best gifts God has given us. Believe in it and work for it.
Then you will no longer be that broken, unfaithful man.
You can do it.
Believing in you,
Tiffany
