I searched her eyes for the familiar fire. Seeing none, I thought, who is this woman? My wife of two years had become an instant stranger. She repeated the sentence I could not understand, “I’m moving out.”
I asked, “What are you saying? Why do you want to leave?”
“I’m unhappy… lonely… miserable actually. There, I said it. You make me miserable. Maybe with a little distance between us—we’ll get closer.”
I touched her arm but she pulled away as I said, “That doesn’t make any sense. How can distance make us closer?’
“I don’t know, but I do know that I can’t stay here. I need some time to sort things out—a little space. I’m not even sure I even love you… that I ever did.”
I stood, frozen as I begged, “Please don’t go now. Can’t you wait until tomorrow?”
She silently picked up her suitcase, flung her purse over her shoulder, and with a dramatic toss of her hair, walked out our front door.
I knew that I hadn’t been the best husband, and that I got angry at her too often and that my need to be “right” often made her wrong. I knew that, lately, she had been distant.
However, I didn’t know that my wife was having an affair.
During the month Nancy was gone, I was a mess. Each time I called her, I would start to cry and ask her what I could do to get her to come home, but she answered my questions with one-word sentences. Then she would abruptly say, “I gotta go” and hang up.
I asked friends to “spy” on her and they said that she seemed fine… happy. They told me to move on with my life and try to accept the fact that she was gone. When Nancy told me she was filing divorce papers, I believed that our marriage was over.
Then, one night, after a miraculous change of heart, (for the full story, read Nancy’s book) she came home and said, “I’ve been lying to you for months, but I’m going to tell the truth now. Ask me anything.”
“Is there another man? Are you having an affair?”
She looked away and whispered, “Yes, with a man at work. But it ends today. I’m going to quit my job tomorrow and I will never see him again. I hope that you will take me back and we can stay married.”
I do not regret my choice to forgive Nancy.
Her affair was a symptom of a terminally ill marriage. I’m not excusing her behavior, but I was NOT an attentive, loving, encouraging husband. She repeatedly told me how sad, lonely, and discouraged she felt and I selfishly tried to talk her out of her needs. I didn’t compliment her enough and I was not the spiritual leader of our home. Our marriage was a mess and a lot of that was my fault. I was also tempted to stray and might have if someone pursued me.
The decision to forgive came quickly, but the rebuilding of our marriage took a long time. I would feel good one day and hopeless the next. Then she would get frustrated and confused. There might be a week where we would be caring and loving, and then we’d slip into old patterns and have to remind ourselves to get back on track.
I did not ask for details of her affair.
I didn’t want obsess about what she did and where she did it. When the thoughts of her with him came to taunt me, I didn’t allow them to stay. Instead, I chose to think about the future were building. I read Philippians 4:8, which helped me think about things that were pure, admirable, lovely and good.
The first thing we did was get Goldy advice from a wise Christian couple (Nancy’s parents) then we spent several months seeing a Christian marriage counselor. We got involved in our church’s couples group, and started reading marriage materials like the Familylife Home Builders series. We knew we had to find out, “Okay, what does a husband do? What is my role? What does that look like?” She had to find out, “What is a Godly wife supposed to do?” We learned Biblical principles and found practical ways to apply them. Probably the one thing that helped me the most was the verse in 1 Peter 3:7 where it instructs me to dwell with my wife in understanding.
For years and years, every comedian on television says, “Oh, I can’t understand my wife.” It’s the proverbial joke in our culture. But if the Bible tells us to dwell with our wives in understanding, it must be possible.
That became my personal mission—to understand my wife.
I learned that my wife is more sensitive than my buddy. I can tease and make wise cracks at my friend’s expense, and he’s just going to respond with a playful insult. But when I make fun of my wife, it breaks her down emotionally and spiritually. It hurts her and she pulls away from me.
I learned that if my wife says, “You’re tailgating and it’s scaring me,” I should stop tailgating. If I love her, why would I want to frighten her?
The more I understood about my wife, and respected those God-given differences, the less we argued. We used to have “brush fire arguments” they are the little spats that turn into World War III in 90 seconds. As we extinguished the brushfires, the intimacy grew, and our love grew.
When we got back together, it was a good day if we were just polite to each other. If we could say “please” and “thank you” and not fight or yell, that was as much as we could have hoped for.
We offered each other mercy while we were trying to change.
When we slipped up, we tried not to get too bent out of shape over it because we both knew we were trying. It was like we were two parallel pendulums swinging back and forth, just missing each other. But through self-control and studying God’s Word, and putting those principles into our marriage, eventually we became like two pendulums, swinging in sync—together. But it took time, self-control, and a strong commitment.
Many of the habits we had established were very difficult to break. Before, we would be waiting for the other person to make a mistake so we could point it out. But when we began this new cycle. I was trying to please her and she was trying to please me.
Because of these new insights, Nancy realized how much my forgiveness meant to her. She thanked me many times for being willing to take her back. She treated me with new respect and I began to appreciate her.
It’s been over 25 years since Nancy’s affair but we’ve never stopped learning from it.
Our theory is: always be fine-tuning your relationship. Never let your guard down for a moment. Never take each other for granted and be careful not to get caught up in emotions because our emotions can deceive us.
We had to learn that the Word of God is our value system and though our emotions may change, God’s Word doesn’t change. The truth is the truth.
We are amazed at how far we’ve come —we laugh a lot now and really enjoy each other. When we disagree, we do it without a brushfire. Our 21-year-old son often sees us holding hands and he knows that we are living examples of mercy and restoration.
We had a broken home—but with the Lord’s help and a lot of work, it’s fully restored—stronger than before. My wife’s affair shattered and saved our marriage.
You can read more about Ron and Nancy Anderson’s marriage story in her book: Avoiding the Greener Grass Syndrome: How to Grow Affair Proof Hedges Around Your Marriage by Nancy C. Anderson, by Kregel Publications. Ron and Nancy love to encourage other couples as they speak at marriage seminars and couples’ retreats across the country. You can learn more at www.RonAndNancyAnderson.com and see video clips of TV interviews on their blog: www.JoyfulMarriage.blogspot.com.
and do your online shopping. 
14 comments so far ↓
1 Dean // Nov 9, 2007 at 4:43 am
(MALAWI) Been moved by this story. Shows how far forgiveness should go. We also have been forgiven, so why not extend the same to others? In our church, that’s what we say every Sunday when reciting the Lord’s prayer.
2 Nangobi Lily // Jan 25, 2008 at 8:43 am
(UGANDA) It was such a difficult time. I am also a victim. My husband doesn’t care at all about me. I have 3 children (twins) aged 8 years and 1 year old baby.
However, I am involved with a wedded man and I am also wedded in Church but have been pushed by his inability to perform sexually. We sometimes go for 3 to 6 months before have any sex. This has prompted me to have an extra marital affair. When I tried to talk to him, he shouted saying I should never compare him to any other man and that marriages are different.
3 lily // Jan 25, 2008 at 8:46 am
(UGANDA) Please help and pray with me. I am in the same boat with Nancy, but I don’t know how to end this because he is a co-worker and we share the same office. I can’t leave the job because I was jobless for 3 years and have this as my golden job.
4 Cindy Wright // Jan 25, 2008 at 11:26 am
Dear Lily, I’m so sorry for the difficulties you are experiencing in your life. Sadly, the lack of care and love in your marriage put you in a more vulnerable position to walking into the affair you are now having with this man. But as you know, your heart will never find peace apart from living God’s way. No matter what your husband has or hasn’t done, you are only tortured more if you do things contrary to the way God would have you.
Breaking off with this man will be one of the most difficult things you will ever have to live through. In a MUCH lesser sense, it will be like tearing off a bandage that you applied to a hurt. However, now that it is stuck, you find that it is causing more infection than you had going in the first place. So now you know you must remove it even though it will hurt horribly (because it’s stuck on so intensely). By tearing it off, you know that it will also tear off a part of yourself. But you still know that this pain will be less harmful in the long-run than allowing the bandage to stay. It’s an awful dilemma to experience.
But I sense from your letters that you know this is a choice that you need to make. I hope in the future we can find an article that we can post that will help those who are in an affair, to help them break off that relationship. But in the meantime, you may want to write Nancy on her blog that is posted at the end of the article. She’s a wonderful person and may have some suggestions that can help you. There are other web sites we have posted in the resource part of the “Extramarital Affair” and the “Surviving Infidelity” sections that you might want to visit to see if you can find additional information that will help you with this.
I pray you are able to break loose from the stranglehold that sin has on your life. I also pray that you are able to find help for your emotions, and prayerfully your marriage, so that you are able to find ways to cope without participating in something that is sinful and hurts you, and especially God’s heart like this does. Please know that my heart and my prayers are with you.
5 Zizi // Jan 31, 2008 at 7:11 am
(SOUTH AFRICA) I have been married for over five years now and I’m going through a divorce because I had an affair when my husband was away. He still is. We didn’t really have a perfect marriage. We were constantly fighting and he also had an affair which I found out about and I forgave him. I don’t want to go through the divorce because I really love him and I know God put us together for a purpose. But he doesn’t want to give us a second chance. He says he stopped loving me a long time ago. I’m really hurt by all this and I can’t let go. It took me two years to admit to my husband about the affair and now I want my husband back. I want a second chance to prove to him how much I really love him and appreciate him.
In a way I had this affair because I felt unloved and uncared for. I felt my husband was taking me for granted and this one person that came into my life changed everything. I began to hate my husband. He has told me several times he cannot be with me as he doesn’t love me enough to remain married to me. I can’t pray; I feel my whole world has turned upside down. I know God can make a difference in my life, but how do I approach him when I have committed adultery? Is it too late for a miracle? Is it too late for wanting a second chance with my husband? Please help me as I’m almost losing my mind. Please pray for me. I have heard several testimonies saying prayer changes things. Can it also change my life? I want my husband back. Please help.
6 Sarah // Jan 31, 2008 at 11:20 pm
(SINGAPORE) I am going through a similar thing Zizi. I had an affair with some guy in the very early stage of my marriage. My husband did something very extraordinary to get me back. He told me, as well as those around us, that all he wanted was for me to be back with him and he would forgive and forget everything. Now more than 10 years later, the extraordinary thing he did in order to get me back has come back to haunt us. Our family had to be uprooted from the comfortable environment we had in the US. My husband’s career is now in jeopardy because of the move. He has turned very vindictive. He has turned from a loving husband and father into someone we don’t know. He now blames me for everything that went wrong. He said his life has been destroyed because of me. He is now involved in an affair with a colleague. Although she lives in Boston, they had managed to meet last week in China. I can’t speculate what they did, but from their online chatting record, he had pursued her very hard for sex, and she might have turned it down. But she has been shamelessly leading him on, and he has fallen her victim. They are now chatting online constantly. Yet he hardly talks to me and doesn’t do much with the kids. Because of some very unique situation, I am not able to expose my husband’s affair and directly confront him right now. It hurts so much! I have been encouraged by brothers and sisters around me, those who know about the situation, that I should just turn to the Lord, and He would direct me. But I find it very hard to do. The pain is eating me alive inside. Anybody knows what I should do?
7 Mark // Mar 30, 2008 at 6:04 am
(USA) WOW!!! This is almost the exact same thing my wife and I (of 13yrs) are going thru. After counseling with our Pastor’s wife, she has decided that she is living in sin and ended the affair. However, in her honesty, she revealed and affair that ended with an abortion just 1month before we got married. She told no one about that until just recently. She has been living with that buried secret all these years!!! Now we find ourselves in almost the same situation 13yrs later…the devil has not given up on my wife, but, with GOD’S HELP, I have not given up either. It hurts, don’t get me wrong, but I don’t believe that the last 13 years and 2 beautiful boys were in vain!
8 Amanda // Mar 30, 2008 at 9:26 pm
(AUSTRALIA) This is amazing. I am going through the same situation with my marriage. I have had a bad marriage for many years. I have fallen in love with another man I have a huge emotional connection with (I’d say I had an emotional affair). I didn’t mean for it to happen. My husband has forgiven me but I am still having doubts about our marriage. And it’s killing me to have no communication with the other man.
I feel bad as I broke his heart too. I still see his face in my head when I told him I was going to stay with my husband. I broke it off several times now but I have continued to talk with him and see him. I am scared I will go back again.
Please pray I can remain strong and that my heart will mend. I am thankful that my husband has forgiven me. I want to fight to save our marriage and make it what it should be. It’s just so hard right now.
9 Cindy Wright // Mar 31, 2008 at 9:38 am
Hi Amanda, I’m so sorry for the pain you are going through right now. I know that it is extremely difficult to battle this type of emotional entanglement. The mind knows one thing, but the heart grabs onto that which it shouldn’t at times and the battle is enormously fierce.
As I read your comment, that your heart knows it is best to be faithful to your husband and try to rebuild your marriage, I rejoiced with you and with the Lord over this victory. But I couldn’t help but think that your actions are prolonging the pain and the process of reconciliation. You don’t put your head into the mouth of a hungry lion and then pray that it doesn’t bite you.
When you say that you “broke it off several times” with this other man and then you say you “have continued to talk with him and see him”, aren’t you putting your head into the mouth of the roaring lion and expecting no harmful consequences?
There is a time to pray, but there is also a time to flee from temptation. The Bible tells us to “flee” from sexual temptation” — not stand in the face of it and dare it not to bite you. The Bible also says that the enemy of our faith is like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour. You are to resist him and flee from temptation, and after you have done this, to stand firm in the faith that God can help you to overcome “everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles.” As flee and then you stand firm, THAT is when you pray. You have done and are doing what you are called by God to do, and now it will take God’s help to get you to the next level of living as you should.
You need to throw every thought of this man out of your mind as immediately as it comes in. It is like giving the enemy a toe into the door of your mind. It invites entry. You need to throw out these thoughts as often as they come in. If it is 200 - 500 times a day, that is as often as you throw them out as if they are junk mail, meant to tempt you and clutter your mind with garbage. You will find that eventually the thoughts will come less and less as you allow them to starve. Whatever you feed will gain strength.
The look of pain that you saw in this man’s face is real. But he had no business connecting with another man’s wife — just as you had no business connecting with him. You need to leave that pain alone for him to battle and you battle your own pain instead. You are hurting your husband, your marriage and the Lord further by allowing yourself to go down that memory path. Again, you must deny yourself entry.
And then you start feeding your marriage. Ask God to show you how to romance your husband and your marriage and invest time and effort into being the woman of God and wife that God would have you to be. The Holy Spirit, who is our Wonderful Counselor, will show you how to do this as you keep asking for it and doing what He shows you to do. If you redirect your energies toward your marriage and your walk with the Lord, instead of towards this man, you will find the rewards to be greater than you can imagine.
I pray for you Amanda. We are called to faithfulness as children of God. I know you will be able to do this as you do what it takes to be faithful. I’ve seen this kind of thing happen over and over again. But those who carry out the principles of God, never lose. The gain is great!
10 Mike // Apr 3, 2008 at 10:51 am
(USA) My wife told me the day before our daughters second birthday that she needed a break from me. I asked if we were separating and she said yes. I left work to go home and talk to her. She said she was no longer happy with me and wanted to take care of the kids and everything herself. She told me to leave 2 days later. I didn’t want to upset the kids so I went to my mothers.
We have a 5 year old and a 2 year old. The night she asked me to leave she asked a mutual friend, who conveniently is splitting up with his wife, to stay. He stayed there every night (moved in). I have been praying for God to have his will. I know it is too late for her and I but I don’t have any hate for her. I want her to be happy. I filed for divorce and got temporary custody of the kids and the house for them to live in. Also my wife is pregnant at this time. She says it is my child and I believe her. I love her and pray that she finds peace.
My children are the biggest part of my life. God has given me peace and comfort through this. I love the Lord and know he will have his will. I know adultery is not acceptable to God. I held our marriage very sacred. We were married for 8 years. She is like a completely different person. Please pray for me.
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