I’ve Committed Adultery

If you have committed adultery, and have read my article Reconciling With A Hardened Wife, and now want to write a letter of reconciliation, be certain you also read over Identifying Your Mistakes and study the Guidelines for Writing a Letter of Reconciliation.  

If you have committed adultery and your wife has left you, it is not impossible to restore the relationship. However, it is very difficult. My article Reconciling With A Hardened Wife is intended for men who have not been unfaithful and have given their wife no biblical grounds for divorce. However, the solutions for typical guys also apply to a man guilty of adultery, but such a man must communicate to his wife with greater empathy and understanding about the pain his unfaithfulness caused her.

If you committed adultery, then your sexual sin is your primary offense, and therefore cannot be simply added into a letter along with your other failings. Her pain from your unfaithfulness deserves the most attention, since you have violated your wedding vows and betrayed your wife’s trust when you joined yourself to another woman. God told Israel that such a deed was so heinous they were to execute every adulterer (Lev 20:10). Jesus said that sexual sin was so serious that it was the only grounds for divorce and remarriage (Mat 19:9). Your wife needs to know you know how devastated she is. To get an idea of how devastated she is, check out the list below. Then make that the theme of your letter following the pattern of the sample paragraphs provided in the Guidelines.

When a man is unfaithful to his wife...  

·        She feels betrayed. On their wedding day they took vows of faithfulness, so God declared them to be one flesh. Their vows bound them in a permanent relationship and gave them ownership of one another’s bodies (1 Cor 7:4-5). When a man has sex with anyone but his wife, he is giving away something that is not his to give. Because of the depth and intimacy of their union, a wife will always feel betrayed.

·        She loses her security. His faithfulness was part of the foundation upon which their marriage stood, so his adultery causes the marriage to immediately lose stability. Since a woman’s greatest need is for security, adultery causes her to stand on shaky ground. She in turn may become emotionally unstable.

·        She loses trust in him, which is not easily rebuilt. If she stays with her husband she is taunted by questions about how it happened, what the other woman was like, how they met, etc. On top of that, she will always be haunted by doubts about him, wondering where he is, what he has been doing, who he’s been with, how pretty is his new secretary. A woman haunted by doubts is a prime candidate for divorce.

·        She feels inadequate and becomes hampered by doubts about herself. She found security from having one man in the universe that loved her just as she was, but the discovery of his unfaithfulness causes her to think she is not attractive enough. She may hate him for making her feel that way.

·        She is hit harder by his sexual contact with another woman than he might be were she the adulterer. In his mind it was a one-night stand with someone he didn’t care about, so didn’t take it seriously. A woman however, equates his actions with the emotional intimacy that she herself attaches to sex, so the devastation is significant.

·        Her emotional devastation leads her into depression. Depression can lead to feelings of isolation, loneliness, and all kinds of instability.

I want you to think about this. The woman you swore to protect, honor, and cherish has been ripped up by someone. The most vulnerable spot in her being is her heart, and someone targeted it like a bulls eye with his neglect. She has been hit in the core of her being, and is still staggering from the wound. And that negligent someone is obviously you. I appeal to your compassion for the tender flower God placed in your care. Please see what your wife has gone through so you can do your part in her healing process.

Along with a deep compassion for the pain you have brought on your wife, the key thing for you to remember is that the lust that drove you into the arms of another person, is not gone just because you feel badly about having done what you did. You need to listen to my free online session Taming Lust.

If there was some kind of sexual sin in your marriage, then self-centeredness will be rampant in you, since lust is rooted in and fosters self-absorption. Sexual sin is about passion, which forms the core of both narcissism and hedonism. The problems in your marriage then, were not caused by self-oriented words or poor listening skills, but by self-centered passion. For you to become a new man that your wife may one day trust, you must do everything possible to get free from your lusts. You will not be free to truly love her as long as your passions are in charge. I suggest therefore that you order the mp3 download or CD set Motives of the Heart which will help shrink a man’s view of himself and make the kind of changes in him that are lasting and deep.