Dealing With a Third Party Situation in Your Marriage

I am so very grateful for the responses I always get from you. I really appreciate you and by the mercy and grace of God, I won’t stop sharing these truths with you as long as the living God inspires me to share.

It’s a beautiful day and a beautiful time and opportunity to share the word of God with you. So in today’s post I want us to consider the reaction that we can possibly have if for any reason we discover or suspect any infidelity in our marriage.

I have heard a lot of women say that that will be the day their marriage ends. I have equally heard a handful of men say they can never go on with such a marriage. Sincerely speaking I believe God Himself understands how hurting such a feeling can be because God in whose imagine and likeness we have been made is a jealous God. As a matter of fact, infidelity in marriage is about the only reason Jesus gave as a near acceptable reason why a man can divorce his wife. But let’s look at it from another angel.

I always try to advice that when you are faced with a situation the first thing to deal with is the emotion arising from the situation before dealing with the situation itself. For whatever problem you have in your marriage, and even in any other area of your life, never deal with the problem in the middle of boiling negative emotions. Because when you do, you might not particularly like the outcome of your reaction to the situation. So it’s always advisable to deal with the emotion first. Suspend your reaction to the problem for as long as it takes for you to deal with the emotions within you first.

With that said I want to go back to the intruder matter; what I am about to write next might seem almost impossible, but hear me out first. Now, when you suspect your spouse is cheating on you, its important not to react because your suspicion might be wrong. No matter what it looks like, it’s important to have a confirmation of your suspicion before jumping into conclusion.

If you have confirmed that what you fear is happening is actually happening, please take as much time you wish to either cry or mourn the betrayal that you feel, you can even ask God why He allowed that to happen to you, but please don’t react. Hold back your anger from reaction to the situation. Don’t fight your spouse, and don’t do anything irrational.

When you are done with the emotions and you are able to think objectively, weigh the options before you. First you can decide you don’t want to continue with the marriage, but before you take that decision, you need to understand that the marriage is not all about you alone. First you are in that marriage because you are on assignment for God, so you need to put that into consideration. Then you need to consider the children in the marriage, is sacrificing the happiness and the need for your children to grow up in a normal home worth the breakup of your marriage in the wake of a betrayal? Then you need to consider yourself, the time and effort and sacrifices you have put into building your home to the point it is at the time of the betrayal. Is all the effort going to waste really worth it? And then lastly you need to understand that once you go for the decision to divorce, God’s verdict is that you are not allowed to marry someone else (1 Corinthians 7:10-11). The option you have left is to reconcile with your spouse.

But there is a side to it that I think is very interesting; it’s the decision to forgive rather than walk away. When you choose to forgive, it’s important to do so prayerfully. You won’t just forgive and hang in their feeling miserable with a chance of a repeat and the probability of being taken for grant by your spouse. But when you choose to forgive, you hand over the situation into the hands of God; you commit your cheating spouse into the hands of God that the Lord will fill him or her with a sense of remorse and a sense of guilt such that he/she will not be willing to return to that sinful act any longer.

You can just imagine that you caught your husband in an affair with another lady and he expects you to react but you don’t. And he tries to push you to just say something but day in and day out you just keep mute over the matter without any word or reaction. You carry on with your life and marriage as if nothing happened; after a while such a man will be consumed with guilt, then with a deep sense of remorse. Without any reaction from your end but you pray rather than act, it won’t be long before the man calls off the affair and put his act together. That singular act of holding your peace rather than fighting back will make you his queen for life. He will never want to hurt your feelings again because he feels grateful to you for the way you handled his misbehavior.

I really understand that things like these are really hard to hold in, but they are not impossible. When you consider the fact that you have labored so hard on your marriage only for an intruder to come steal it away from you, you will be wise enough to keep that which God has blessed you with. But when you are weak with emotions, pray for grace from the Living God to see you through. He is always willing and available to answer when you call and provide for you all that you need when you need them. May the Lord bless our homes in Jesus name.