5 comments so far ↓

• 1 Jackie // Dec 23, 2007 at 7:30 pm

  (USA) I’m so glad for the couple mentioned in the testimony ,"The Other Woman". The dynamics of how the husband became entangled in this affair are quite similar to what happened with my husband and a woman at church. Good for this husband, in that he came to his own senses quickly enough, and pulled out of it before it consumed him and destroyed his family.

  My husband had an emotional affair with a woman who was giving him an ego boost, when I was preoccupied with and struggling with our children. Though it has been over a year since I learned of this LONG TERM romance, we are still in recovery mode and trying to get the marriage on better footing. This has rocked the foundation of my trust, and this marriage. It took me YEARS to convince my husband he was betraying his vows. For some reason, because this relationship unfolded in church my husband cleansed what was happening, in his mind. It took a few more years to get him to see additional communication with this woman was nurturing temptation.

  I’m so glad to read this one couple has recovered from such a betrayal. I am also pleased to know they have recommitted to their marriage with a little support from their church.

• 2 Kyra // Jan 30, 2008 at 4:50 pm

  (USA) I found out a year ago that my husband of 18 years was having an emotional affair with a much younger married co-worker. They would e-mail and talk during working hours and then he would even call her from our home on the company cell phone. I am devastated. Just to know that I wasn’t good enough, thin enough, pretty enough has broken my heart into pieces. 21 years ago, I lost my first husband to an accident, leaving me with an 11 month old son. I met and married my current husband and he has been the "dad" my son has ever know. I feel that the death of my first husband was easier to accept than this emotional affair because I knew he died loving me!

  I am struggling so very much with forgiving him. I love him with all my broken heart and he says he wants to make our marriage work and that he loves me. I don’t understand how he can change his feelings so quickly. I don’t believe he is being honest with himself or me about his true feelings. I don’t know anymore. We have gone to marriage counseling and I am going to a private counselor as well. I resent the fact that he had the affair and I’m in counseling! Can someone help me try to move on and forgive him?

• 3 Tina // Mar 21, 2008 at 2:45 pm

  (USA) Kyra, I know exactly how you feel about being angry because he’s the one that had the affair and you’re in counseling. I too, feel the same way about my husband’s emotional affair. Nine months into my marriage I found out that my husband was having an emotional affair with a women 10 years younger than I and that it had been going on for the past three months…three months…that meant that six months into our marriage he made a choice to get emotionally attached to another woman. He spent more time on the phone with her behind my back every single day in that three months than he had with me in the entire nine months of our marriage.

  She too was married but was not getting the attention she needed from her husband. Apparently he was addicted to porn on the internet and their marriage was struggling tremendously. What went wrong, was I not beautiful enough, attentive enough, thin enough, young enough…had I made a mistake? I just didn’t get it! And the truth is I still don’t.

  He assures me that he loves me and that there was nothing wrong with me …that it hadn’t happened not because of anything that I did or didn’t do. Another really big thing that makes me angry is that I find I’m the one apologizing when we argue, but I’m the one that was hurt by him…shouldn’t he be apologizing to me???

  The truth is, men and women don’t see things the same way. My husband felt that when he apologized a year ago, and a time or two since then, that was all I needed. He assures me that his apology was heartfelt and I really believe that it was. But as a woman, what I need is for him to apologize to me again and again and again. He doesn’t see that. He has continued to do everything I have asked of him, to help me through this, and for that I am thankful, but finding a way to communicate the right message at the right time is important.

  In our recovery, I am finding that the things I know in my head and my heart that what I need from him is most likely not what he is perceiving that I need. We are having to make a great effort in our communications to properly share our thoughts and feelings without tearing each other down. That’s a really, really difficult thing to do when you are so hurt and angry, but God can help! I am still not ready to forgive my husband even though I know that is the key to getting through this and healing our marriage. Easier said than done!

  I have to pray constantly that God helps me to be wise in my words and that He helps my husband to really hear what I’m saying. I also pray that God helps me to focus on all the wonderful things my husband brings to our relationship and that He helps me to focus on those things, and not the weakness that my husband showed a year ago. One thing that’s helped me on this walk is knowing that I "can" forgive, because God has forgiven me. He "can" help us find our way to forgiveness. God Bless

• 4 Sue // Jun 10, 2008 at 12:47 pm

  (USA) I am struggling with my pastor husband who has a very outgoing personality and has a "crush" on a lady in our church and really does not even realize it. He gets involved in her family problems with her parents, siblings, husband and children. He talks to me more about her than we talk about anything in our lives including the lives of our children or grandchildren. He does not like for me to talk about OUR problems (finances, etc) because he feels helpless to FIX them.

  He’s doing everything he can - he is bi-vocational and works for commission on his secular job. The church is small and barely pays for our gas that he uses in the ministry. I stay depressed because we are not able to pay all of our bills, but he feels I am blaming him if I try to talk about it. Meanwhile, the other lady (the church secretary) can talk to him about all of her problems and does so freely. He calls her frequently regarding her problems or just to check on things going on.

  He has something to say to her or about her in his sermons on Sundays and yet he really does not realize what he’s doing. He does not see that he has this "crush", for lack of a better word. Meanwhile I feel like an insecure, jealous wife for resenting all of this.

  He does not keep the phone calls or the conversations secret. He goes out of his way to tell me about them and I am included on their family counseling sessions and she also talks to me about the problems. However, my husband just seems to be so preoccupied with her in his mind that it even comes out in his sermons, by subtle reverences to songs that speak to her heart during her struggles of losing her father to death, and her being a caretaker for her mother who is in a wheelchair, and the full plate she has had to endure and similar remarks.

  I have to say he genuinely does have a huge compassionate heart for people, male and female. But it seems he attaches himself to certain women in the churches we’ve been in. We have gone to counseling, but he does not see the problem since there is nothing "sexual" or "inappropriate" happening. This is his extrovert type personality.

  Are there any other pastors wives out there with this problem??

• 5 Nita // Jun 22, 2008 at 9:53 am

  (USA) I found out in January of this year, after my husband left his email account open accidentally, that the "friend" he had been discussing civil war interest with, (that I did know of for a whole year), was actually a very “close friend.” There were tons of emails where they wrote each other, and then by accident I found a "reply" that he had drafted and saved, where he was telling her that she was his "dearest best friend, and he thought of her all the time, and not to worry about mine and his relationship being on the mend, that he would tell her if it was.

  Wow, I didn’t know we were having a problem!! We had moved, at that time, and I had got depressed because of family problems and work problems, but he never let on that he was having problems with me!! I knew he became distant emotionally with me, and I couldn’t get him to converse with me about very much.

  I found other emails where he was constantly reassuring her of what a great friend he was, etc., and also, he had always told me that they never talked on the phone accept twice at the start of the friendship, and that was for research, because he felt he would have been crossing a line. 2 months ago, something he said made me suspicious so I looked on an old phone bill from 1 year ago (when I felt they were most intense) and found where she had called him on the days he and I were off but I was off to help my invalid mother whom lives in another town. I was also out of town, on conference once, and she called him during that time late at night. He did reveal he was surprised that incoming calls showed up on wireless phones, and now he says he truly does not remember all those calls.

  I am so hurt, and I love him, and this past 6 months have been devastating for us both. I truly feel like he was on a snow ball effect with her and didn’t even realize how it all looked. He says he didn’t want to hurt me or make me jealous in revealing how close they had got, and that there was nothing ever physical. Most times I believe him, but sometimes it all hits me again, especially how they arranged to talk to each other when I wasn’t around. He did lie to me about the calls, and several times during the year, when I asked if they were still emailing, he told me it had slowed down, but it really didn’t. How do I make this get out of my head?