SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

My problem-

I have been taught to put my trust in God and also do unto others as you would have done to you.

And then my FWH cheated on me.

I’m in pain and want to let go of my hyper vigilance and let go and let god……but I have to acknowledge that God let me be in the dark for 20 months while my husband cheated.

I also have never cheated on my husband or any partner so I know I did not deserve this betrayal.

Moving forward my beliefs must switch. I know now that God can allow me to be betrayed and no good I put out in the world assures my heart.

I just don’t know why I feel like a sacrificial lamb in my husband’s downfall and maybe he’s a better man for it now…… but I am left realizing that you can’t trust anyone and Lyon don’t always get the energy back that you put out.

My thoughts this morning.

And it’s my birthday today.

I can’t offer advice on your spiritual dilemma, but happy birthday!

Happy trip around the sun, Howcthappen! I hope your day turns out to be wonderful.

I'm not a religious person, but I can speak to the hypervigilance and injustice.

Something that I learned to embrace fairly early on is that I am not in control of what other people do, including my husband. He had shown me that he was working on himself and working hard to be a man who I could trust, so I decided that I could either remain hypervigilant or I could turn it over to the universe and decide that if it happens to me again I will handle it then. Same thing as "letting go and letting god."

Back when I was in the early days of A recovery, some wise person here said, "Life is fair in that it's unfair to everyone." That really stuck with me. We all go through trials. Some of us have to deal with the trial of infidelity. It sucks, but I could either remain mired in pain or I could push off the bottom and recognize that experiencing the pain helps me appreciate the good, simple things more deeply. One of my favorite quotes is, "Laughter through tears is my favorite emotion."

Big hugs. I hope your day is wonderful.

[This message edited by SacredSoul33 at 3:54 PM, Tuesday, June 20th]

Happy birthday to you!

My favourite subject. The concept of karma comes from the Indian philosophy, and it's inseparable from the concept of reincarnation. This life is just a chapter in a long book of many lifetimes, with the happy end in liberation.

Part of faith in God is trusting that the experiences he sends us are for our good, so that we could learn, grow, and rely on him ever more. I believe the experience of infidelity and divorce has taught me:
- To stand for what I believe is right, even when it's hard.
- A little bit of compassion. Having lived through experience so painful, I do not wish it on anyone - not xWW, not former friend the AP. I hope they can learn their lessons in milder ways.
- Letting go of the outcome (and let God). I made the effort and it helped me grow but my marriage ended. Maybe now God wants me to do something different.

I don't know what you need to learn from this, but it is a step towards happiness. Sometimes you need a moment to find the right direction.

This is just a special, very personal, case of "the problem of evil".

If you have already made peace with the problem of evil in your belief in God, you just need to recognize that in this case you are the one who has suffered.

I had to reply because I have had the same struggle as someone of faith—-how could God have let me suffer such pain and to be a victim of such evil especially when I have tried to live a life of kindness and love to all???

We are taught that God will use our pain, to help others but also to draw us closer to him. We are taught that we are all given free will, but that means our spouses had that as well and so they have the freedom to choose their sin. Unfortunately we suffer, no way around that.

However, I would gently ask you to journal your prayers and keep an eye open for His answers.

God has always answered me. Not always in the way I wanted, but I’ve never been left totally abandoned. In fact it’s been kind of irritating at some points. For instance a family member who is also a woman of faith, and whose first marriage ended in infidelity, has been one of my closest supports and as I would wail in her arms:

"why? Why would God choose THIS path for me? Yes I will become stronger, yes it will lead to change, but why THIS path? Wasn’t there another way??!"

She would calmly answer: "Your story isn’t done yet. You have no idea what he has in store for you."

I’ve also been reading Lysa Terkherst’s book It’s Not Supposed To Be This Way, where she explains finding out her husband’s affair and her faith that God would use her pain for good, but I had to stop reading because it was so painful and I STILL didn’t see how any good could come from betrayal….. well 2 days ago I googled Lysa Terkherst to see how her life is fairing and she just uploaded a sweet video of her new partner and the first line in her description?! : "The hard parts of our story are not the end of our story"

It’s easy to have faith when life is good and we feel like it’s fair. It feels almost impossible to have faith when life is tragic and unfair. But God never promised heaven on earth (quite the opposite really), we WILL struggle, there is soooooo much evil here and we will suffer because of it, but he doesn’t leave us. We still have to have faith because it’s not faith with conditions, just like it’s not unconditional love with conditions.

I know this doesn’t take away your pain, it doesn’t make life better the way we think assurances would, but no assurances any human being could give you would be sufficient anyway—we are human and capable of lies and evil and selfishness as all of us here are very well aware of. God keeps his promises, but unfortunately we were never promised a happy life free of pain or struggle, he just promised that he would always be there and always love us.

I could give another 20+ examples of how often I’ve seen God give me a friend or a song on the radio RIGHT when I was breaking down during this hell I’m walking through thanks to my spouse’s infidelity. If you look for it, it’s there.

I hope you have a beautiful birthday. Look for the joys, look for beauty. Find a rose and smell it. Splurge on a fancy coffee or treat, plan a lunch date with your best friend. Sometimes we have to MAKE our own peace, seek out the good and wonderful things, drag them to you, collect them…. They’re there….

There’s no guarantee that we get the dreams we want, but there are still amazing things in this life. Ugh part of me can’t believe I’m typing that because just this morning I was sobbing on the floor of the shower, gutted because my spouse could so easily discard me and our family after I did nothing but love him. But it’s true, I can still see the joy and the beauty even through my tears.

Our story isn’t done yet.

What you’re talking about, theologically, is the problem of evil. Why do innocent people suffer? It’s an issue that any thoughtful person, of any belief system, has to wrestle with in some form.

Many belief systems resolve it by pointing to larger arcs of justice—where true justice is achieved in the afterlife, or in other lives.

I haven’t really thought about this issue in relation to my husband’s infidelity, but I thought about it a LOT in earlier stages of my life, and it’s one of a cluster of issues that pushed me out of the conservative Christianity in which I was raised into my current state of quasi-agnosticism. My parents were missionaries in an impoverished, war-torn region, and I couldn’t square their views of god with the horrific realities I witnessed as a teen. (It also seemed super problematic that so many people were being relegated to hell basically due to an accident of birth). Anyway, it’s not a simple, black and white issue, and I’ve learned over time that Christianity and other belief systems have sophisticated ways of grappling with it. Whatever your beliefs, you can find good reading and ideas out there to help you wrap your head around this issue and help you on a personal level.

What has helped me when I’ve struggled with this issue in my own life is to take a larger view of suffering. I try to put my own pain in perspective (there are many people suffering much worse than me), and I try to overcome it, but also embrace it as a clarifying experience that hones my values and builds my empathy. (I’m not always successful at doing that, but I try).

On a concrete level, I work in a title 1 public school where the vast majority of kids I teach are impoverished and traumatized. When the unfairness of my husband’s infidelity has hit me particularly hard, I’ve tried to turn outward and be a source of support for those in even more pain and need than me. Dozens of them pass through my classroom every day. It’s sobering and grounding.

I don’t understand why life is hard and good people suffer. Many realities in our world are deeply horrific and unfair. But I can choose gratitude for the good things in my life and put good things out there for others, even if it doesn’t always come back around to me.

[This message edited by Grieving at 2:37 AM, Wednesday, June 21st]

Thank you.

Sad cookie monster
Thanks for sharing. I found your input very helpful! Especially the news about Lysa terkeurst.
I would love to hear about the 20+ things you mentioned in your reply (I copied it below)
Maybe you could do a post sharing those examples?
As you said our faith gets tested and rocked when our world falls apart and it is always good to hear other people’s positive stories

"I could give another 20+ examples of how often I’ve seen God give me a friend or a song on the radio RIGHT when I was breaking down during this hell I’m walking through thanks to my spouse’s infidelity. If you look for it, it’s there."

I realized I didn’t wish you a happy birthday! I’m sorry this is all so hard. I hope you find some peace. ❤️❤️

Cedarwoods—

I will give you a couple of the most powerful ones off the top of my head. Unfortunately I haven’t written them all down like I should have, been kind of all over the place with my trauma, dealing with my kids, and still living under the same roof as my spouse/soon to be ex, which has been a rollercoaster of insanity.

Two weeks after DDay I thought my spouse and I were reconciling (it was false, I didn’t find out for 4 months though, but I hadn’t told anyone at this stage) and I asked if my spouse had spoken to their AP. They said yes that AP was ‘just a friend’ and they were still talking. I was new to all of this so I hadn’t insisted on NC or anything, I mean I had thought that was obvious…I was gutted, it was like a new betrayal all over again and I found this out 30mins before I had to pick up a friend for an appointment we had planned together. I was a wreck but it was too late to cancel. I picked up my friend and she could tell I was upset. It took her 3 questions before she asked if my husband had an affair. I had to pull over and I was bawling. The first words out of my friend’s mouth were "you’re safe, this is a safe space, I’m part of a betrayed wives group". I knew she was a Christian but I had no idea about that personal struggle. She was the first person I told about the affair and she’s been one of the most loving supports one could hope for.

During one of my IC appointments my therapist asked me to visually describe what I felt and I told her I saw myself pulling a wagon with my entire life in it and I was just so tired and I wanted someone to help/take over. Couple days later in church our pastor mentioned the wagon we were all dragging behind us with all the things we were waiting to be perfected in our lives before we really trusted God enough to let go.

One night when I was praying in my head and crying silently like most nights, my prayer turned angry and I told God that it was unfair to ask me to have faith when I had no proof and all I had was pain. I said "how can I believe that you’re really with me when I can’t even feel you physically, you say you’re always with us but I can’t touch you" and immediately the image of a family member who hugged me extra tight twice while saying goodbye that day popped into my head, so I argued again "well I can’t hear you, you don’t actually speak to me it’s only ever just a voice in my head and that could just be my own thoughts" and immediately the image of a different family member who had sought me out especially to tell me that they loved me and just wanted to tell me that they were there for me during this hell popped into my head. Both those images were instantaneous, I didn’t sit and think on it they just came immediately after I shouted my accusations in my head.

The family member who has been my rock kept trying to get me to remember her favorite Bible verse, it’s the one she would repeat to herself over and over after her husband’s affair and it got her through the hardest times and that divorce, but I just didn’t "feel" it so I kept looking for different verses. I tell you that verse followed me for a week. I picked up a journal at Marshall’s with bible verses and flipped it open just to see what the pages looked like-boom there was the verse. I was scrounging for a tissue in my car during a meltdown and instead found the paper with the verse that my family member had printed out for me (she even made sure to put it in huge bolded font) even though I had tossed it with a stack of other papers. I opened Pinterest and there it was on my home page.
Philippians 4:8 in case you were curious.

There are so many more but these were the ones that really shocked me, like a quick static shock because they were so powerful that I couldn’t dismiss them as coincidences.

Some of the other ones were things my children have said and that has really really shocked me. They still don’t know everything that’s going on because they are young, but wow, randomly out of the mouths of babes comes truth you can’t argue with and then I wonder how they got that thought because although they’re clever sometimes it’s just too on point!! And others were random songs on the radio because when I’m driving with my kids unfortunately I tend to get flooded maybe because driving isn’t busy enough and I’m trapped? But as I’m flooding/crying, trying to suppress my hyperventilating to not scare them the radio has randomly saved me at least twice with songs that spoke right to me and calmed me down.

If you’re looking you see it, if you’re doubtful you can explain it away or ignore it.

My spouse’s betrayal has been the most gut wrenching, soul shattering thing I’ve experienced…it doesn’t even compare to losing my mother and she was my best friend and I was lost without her. Before this my faith was quiet—it was there, I believed, attended church, but it was in the background. Now-well now it’s the light guiding me through this long tunnel through hell. It’s hard because I don’t talk about my faith except with those who I know believe because I never want people to feel like I’m pushing it on them (been there in my youth when I wasn’t ready to believe and I hated that feeling). Now I just feel and see God everywhere, like a gentle hum in the background of daily noise always guiding me back to the tune I’m supposed to be singing. And it’s hard cause I’m f*cking angry, angry at life, at my spouse, and even at God because I still don’t want this pain. But I keep hearing him guide me back to following his word—which to me simply means living like Christ-be loving, be kind to everyone, be honest. I really can’t argue with that, especially when I’ve seen the opposite, when my spouse chose pure selfish pleasure and caused me to suffer an indescribable pain. I’d rather live through my faith and die without regretting who I chose to be and how I chose to live.

I hope this helps. I’m sure some would scoff and tell me all of this is reaching—my soon to be ex would be one of the first to say that after vehemently rejecting their faith in their youth…. and yet strangely enough they have started to attend services on their own in the last month which is something I NEVER thought would happen. Another thing I can’t explain, but I’ve been praying for them daily.

Sorry if any of this is jumbled, typing late at night, so tired!

The righteous suffer in this world. I’ve come to find the experience of infidelity is one of the greatest lessons in life, teaching you can trust nobody but God. This brings one very close to God as when you are in the most pain, The Most Highs is there. My comfort when I was in the most pain after DDay and throughout was crying and calling out to The Most Highs.

I think those that experience infidelity are special in the fact that God had enough faith in us to experience something so bad, the deepest betrayal, so we could experience a glimpse of the love that God has for people, despite being betrayed by them.

My wayward did what she did cause fundamentally, she lacked faith in God. And part of my healing is looking past the physical matters of the infidelity, the emotions, sex, everything. Which is not real love, and creates deep repressed pain in the wayward. And seeing infidelity at its core. Which is someone being unfaithful due to a lack of faith in God. This removes myself, the incredible spouse, from the equation of reasoning. Not of pain, but reasoning. They didn’t do it cause of any worldly reason - emotions, sex, you. They did it because they lacked faith in God.

[This message edited by lineagegold at 9:14 AM, Wednesday, June 21st]

I have recently found the writings and podcasts of Richard Rohr. He is a Francican Priest,and the rest of the people on the podcast are Baptist, and Evangelical Christian. One of the concepts he talks about in the Universal Christ is that many of us start our Christian lives by building our spiritual container with rules and simple understandings of the role of God and Jesus in our lives. It is very ordered and easily understood by children.

Then life hits us, and our understanding of Christ and Gods roles in our lives, and even what all the "rules" really mean. That stage of life is dis-order. It is where we question the rules and relationships we were taught as children. It is where we wrestle and grow as spiritual people.

Finally, after the wrestling and searching for Christ happens, we enter re-order a new understanding of God's role in our lives. You will not likely find re-order in a church or organized religion, it comes from within, and being open to theologians who understand more deeply the role of Christ.

I have suffered betrayal as well as cancer. Order was broken. Over time I dealt with dis-order, anger, dissolution, and every other feeling you can get when the stories you were told about Jesus and God fall in the face of betrayal and your body betraying you. My journey now brings me to re-order. I am closer to God and the Christ than I ever was with Order. I see the world, the gospel and my relationship with God in a clearer, more mature, and humble way.

It seems clear to me that we come closer to God in times of great love...and times of great suffering. I have seen both, and I know it to be true for me.

Beautifully put, woundedbear. I’m pretty agnostic in the sense that I feel little certainty about conceptions of God, the afterlife, etc, but I haven’t found my agnosticism to be incompatible with moral values or faith or meaning. And like you and others here, I’ve found that intense love and pain can lead to experiences of deep faith and a compelling sense of meaning, if I’m willing to let go of my more self-centered instincts and walk down that path. Infidelity sits at that intersection of love and suffering that has yielded some of our most profound insights into what it means to be human and live life in this world. And so it’s an opportunity to reflect and grow, even if it’s an injustice I wouldn’t wish on myself or anyone else.

I know i expressed gratitude to all of you on a different thread, but man, you guys are really lifting me up these days. Thank you.

[This message edited by Grieving at 7:00 PM, Thursday, June 22nd]

I just don’t know why I feel like a sacrificial lamb in my husband’s downfall and maybe he’s a better man for it now

I definitely know that feeling! My H started poring through his Bible after Dday...trying to find a way to "fix" the sin of adultery that he had done. The more he read...the more he realized how LITTLE he knew of God. As he started learning more...his whole attitude changed. He is now a MUCH better person.

I...on the other hand...became very ANGRY with God. I lost my faith in Him...something I NEVER thought I would do. I have been married twice...and cheated on twice. WHY would I...a very faithful person...not be able to have a monogamous M??? Was that too much to ask for???!!! My H had his FUN...doing what HE wanted...and now he is the model Christian. While I tried to be as selfless as possible...especially in my M...and got rewarded with a lifelong knowledge that I was a wife who wasn't worthy enough to not be cheated on. You just can't UNDO something like that!!

One morning when I was fixing coffee...I angrily asked God WHY did He ALLOW this to happen????? As clear as day...an answer came through. The answer..."You asked for Me to use you to help others. You never asked for Me to use you to help others without causing you pain". WOW. I have often prayed for just that...for God to USE ME so that I could help others. Of course...in MY head...this "help" was more like giving my TIME to others...or even giving monetarily. Not giving my well being and peace!!!!

When my H woke up...I asked him if he felt I had helped HIM. Without hesitation he said I had. My timeline on this is a little fuzzy after all of these years...but I distinctly remember when my H said he started reading his Bible. One night we were riding around...and I was in a deep...despairing...pain. I talked a lot at that point...and one thing I said was that I couldn't believe my H had damned his soul to hell for committing adultery. My H said it was like lightning struck him. He didn't say anything at the time...but he never thought that having sex with a stranger was committing adultery. I KNOW...ludicrous!!! My H said that adultery was like cheating...and cheating was what coworkers did. That was when lightning struck ME...LOL!! I swear...my H is an intelligent person...but how in the world could he be that ignorant I will never understand!!!

Anyway...my H realized at that moment that he DID commit adultery...and he was desperately thinking about what he could do to NOT go to hell!! The next morning he started reading his Bible all the way through. He then read my Catholic Bible. By doing this...it truly transformed him. So...I found my answer...THROUGH ME...God helped my H.

My H is now SAVED. He is saved because God used ME to help him get saved. WOW. Just that FEELING...I can't describe it!! What an HONOR to have God HELP my H get back to salvation...through ME! THIS is truly what I have been praying for. To KNOW that it is my H that I helped...even if I don't get to help anyone else...this has truly helped ME!!

YES...I was in PAIN. YES...I would give just about anything to NOT have adultery as part of my M. But I can't. However...I CAN move forward...with what I call Mv2.0 (Marriage...version 2.0)...with a H that now cherishes and RESPECTS me. I don't believe I would ever have had THIS M if we hadn't gone through what we did. We are now 9 years out from Dday...and I wouldn't trade THIS M for anything!!

HAPPY BELATED BIRTHDAY!!!

I just came back to this post. Wow. Just wow. Thanks so much! I have more to learn on this journey.

If you believe in God . . . then by default satan should also exist.

satan is fixated on destroying marriages

Your husband had a FREE WILL . . . he CHOOSE to listen to satan's lies,(lust of the flesh) rather than the Holy Spirit

Watch Ravi Zacharias YouTube video to understand why bad things happen to good people . . .

Title - Freewill and Love Ravi Zacharias

Let his be your daily confession . . . Romans 8:28 And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.