When Your Husband Cheats

Last night in one of my Facebook groups, I encountered a post that broke my heart. A woman shared that she had given birth two days prior only to discover that her husband was cheating on her.

He chose the birth of their child as his time to announce that he was leaving her for another woman. She was left alone to process her postpartum hormones, sleepless nights, the relentless demands of a newborn, and a freshly shattered heart. She had not seen it coming. It hit her like a ton of bricks.

It takes a special kind of narcissist to behave this badly, and I have nothing nice to say about this kind of selfishness. It’s unspeakably cruel to do this to someone. And I suppose I’m especially sensitive to this particular story because I’ve lived so much of it myself. My daughter was only a few weeks old when my (now ex) husband decided to leave me for the first time. He hadn’t worn a wedding ring in months, which probably should have clued me in, but it didn’t. I was completely blindsided. Trust me when I tell you that the sting of this kind of betrayal can stop you in your tracks. It’s a sucker punch to the gut that will quite literally take your breath away. There’s nothing quite like it.

I won’t sit here and tell you that I did everything right in response to this. I didn’t. I’m pretty sure I violated every rule in the relationship book during those dark days. I relentlessly, obsessively texted him at all hours of the night. I begged and pleaded with him to stay. I verbally berated him for his abhorrent conduct as though that would help. I weaponized Scripture and tried to manipulate him into fixing the marriage. Then I shifted my efforts to my own self improvement and tried to contort myself into a version he would want. I tried to be sexier. I wore more make-up. I tried to be whatever it was he was finding in someone else, no matter how personally degrading i might find it.

It took me a very long time to realize that there’s a lot of truth to the old adage that insists the best way to seek revenge on your husband’s mistress is to let her keep him. It’s true in retrospect, but in the middle of the betrayal, let’s just be honest— most of us just aren’t there yet.

And of course the reason the begging and pleading doesn’t work is because he doesn’t actually care about your heart. He just pretended to for a time while it served his interests, and now he just doesn’t give a damn. If this doesn’t make sense to you, fantastic! It shouldn’t. Sociopathy isn’t reasonable. Treating people like garbage you can just discard is counter-intuitive to most people with a pulse. It should never be something anyone thinks of as normal. Most of us would never dream of behaving this way, so it’s really hard to process how someone else that we chose could do it.

Then the self flagellation begins: “What the heck is so broken in me that I would choose to marry a monster? I must be defective. I’m the real problem.” It’s a vicious, hopeless cycle.

And I’m convinced there’s this unwritten rule that the mistress always has to be uglier and trashier than the wife, which also doesn’t make sense. I remember looking at one of my ex’s multiple extras and thinking, “Really? Why??? She looks like faces of meth.”

I’m not really sorry if that sounds brutal; I think I’ve earned it. And so has she. She was arrested for drug possession a few months later.

Today I can genuinely say that I pray for her healing. It’s not just something I say to get virtue points. Healthy people don’t steal other women’s husbands, so I can only imagine the sordid road that led her to that place, and now I honestly just hope she gets better. It’s okay if you’re not there yet in your own journey. You don’t owe a homewrecker anything at all. I just find that forgiveness tends to loosen my own chains, regardless of what it does for anyone else. I just don’t want to carry the extra weight of bitterness around like a ball and chain.

It took me a while to understand that infidelity isn’t ultimately about the spouse who’s been cheated on; it’s about the spouse who does the cheating. This means it really doesn’t matter how perfect you are. Any improvements you make to yourself (weight loss, new wardrobe, perfect hair/makeup, etc.) will only serve to magnify the inadequacies he experiences in himself. He cheats to remind himself he still has the power to sway women. He cheats to resolve his own crisis of identity. There’s nothing you can fix about yourself that will fill the holes in his own sense of self, so don’t even bother trying—not unless you want to become deeply enmeshed in a toxic cycle of codependence where you are somehow always the one at fault in every single set of circumstances.

And while I did a lot of things wrong and had to learn the lessons the hard way, the one thing I am certain I got really, really right was to join and faithfully attend a Spirit-filled church. This is honestly the best and surest advice I can give to any woman stuck in this situation: find a spiritual family that will uphold you in the kind of prayer that actually believes it can move mountains. Search high and low until you find the group of people who are tapped into the heart of God and who will flood you with the support you’re desperately going to need for the journey ahead. I don’t know where I would be if I hadn’t found mine. The road in front of you is too fraught to try to handle alone. You need people who will war on your behalf.

And I’m talking about a church full of people who aren’t afraid to get their hands dirty, not people who will judge you for being a mess. There’s a marked difference, and it’s one that matters. The good news is that it will be relatively obvious which type you’re in pretty quickly. Don’t stop until you find the real deal—the kind that’s not afraid to lay hands on people and believe in miracles. You need prophets and intercessors, not pharisees and judges.

When I first joined the church that revolutionized my life, I was not an activist or a blogger. No one knew who I was, and I didn’t really know who I was either. That’s part of the reason I was in this mess to begin with. I was supervising the Membership department at the local YMCA while trying to keep my children fed and my bills paid. I’m fully convinced that my life group prayed me into my next season.

They noticed if I was missing from church, and they reached out to make sure I was okay. They loved my children and faithfully prayed for them. One woman personally took it upon herself to rock my young autistic son during the church service so that I could sit in the service uninterrupted.

When my group learned I was concerned about my ex’s violent outbursts, several of the men volunteered to accompany me to custody drop-offs and pick-ups to keep me safe. They helped me pay my bills when I was short on dough. They dedicated an entire group meeting to praying for my family. The men in the group formed a physical circle around me and promised to fill the gaps since my husband had left. One woman spent a whole prayer session asking God to show her truths about me and my future. She wrote them down on a piece of paper. One of them read, “God is going to use you in a public way to advocate for justice for both women and children.”

The trans insanity was nowhere on my radar when I received this message. I largely shrugged it off and said, “Okay. Whatever.” I couldn’t see then that God had already begun to start strengthening me for my next assignment.

While I prayed for God to change my husband, what was really happening that God was changing me, and He was using the local church body to support me through the effort.

They say that if you were to remove a butterfly’s cocoon on its behalf, you would actually be doing it a disservice. The butterfly’s struggle to push its way through the opening of the cocoon pushes the fluid out of its body and into its wings. Without the struggle, the butterfly would never, ever fly. The struggle is critically necessary.

So was my struggle, as it turns out. I needed the grit I would develop through surviving this nightmare. I don’t wish the sting of infidelity on my worst enemy. It’s a singularly agonizing experience. And it’s lonely as hell, even if you do have a village of prayerful support at your disposal. There were many nights when my head hit my pillow, and the ache of loneliness almost overwhelmed me. But while my husband had abandoned me; God had not, and neither had His people. I’ll never forget the cascade of tears that came flooding down my face during as I belted out the words of the song we sang in one service: “Your love never fails, never gives up, never runs out on me.”

It was during this time that I became truly anchored in Jesus. No matter what my ex threw at me, I really started to know and believe that Jesus was holding me through it.

I remember poring through the Psalms during this time and adopting Psalm 27:13 as my personal mantra: “I remain confident of this; I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.”

I would repeat the verse over and over until I could force myself to sort of believe it, which, admittedly, is hard to do when you’re buried deep in expensive custody battles and grieving the reality that your husband’s choice to cheat on you now has to mean that you miss 50% of your daughter’s Christmases.

But as I type this, there’s a wonderful joyful man lying in the bed next to me, wedding ring prominently displayed on his finger. Our precious son is watching Mickey Mouse in the crib next to our bed. Our teen children are happy and thriving. I am actively living the prayers I used to pray. God has been faithful to restore the locust-eaten years.

It’s been a process. Change did not happen overnight. But this morning I can see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. He brought me through that awful season and gave me beauty for the ashes that once permeated every area of my life. And I promise you I wouldn’t be here without the faithfulness of Christian people praying me through the storms.

So that’s my advice to you as you navigate these waters: Find your tribe. Believe in God’s goodness even when you can’t see it. When faith is too hard for you, rest in the support of those who will pray on your behalf. Do the next thing. Keep your chin up and your eyes heavenward. God gave me Isaiah 54 during this season, and I’m sharing it below because I think someone reading this blog needs to read it, too. May He fill you with hope as you trust in Him. May you know that you’re not alone and that there’s hope and beauty on the other side of this mountain.

Enlarge the place of your tent,
    stretch your tent curtains wide,
    do not hold back;
lengthen your cords,
    strengthen your stakes.
 For you will spread out to the right and to the left;
    your descendants will dispossess nations
    and settle in their desolate cities.
Do not be afraid; you will not be put to shame.
    Do not fear disgrace; you will not be humiliated.
You will forget the shame of your youth
    and remember no more the reproach of your widowhood.
 For your Maker is your husband—
    the Lord Almighty is his name—
the Holy One of Israel is your Redeemer;
    he is called the God of all the earth.
 The Lord will call you back
    as if you were a wife deserted and distressed in spirit—
a wife who married young,
    only to be rejected,” says your God.
 For a brief moment I abandoned you,
    but with deep compassion I will bring you back.
 In a surge of anger
    I hid my face from you for a moment,
but with everlasting kindness
    I will have compassion on you,”
    says the Lord your Redeemer.

 “To me this is like the days of Noah,
    when I swore that the waters of Noah would never again cover the earth.
So now I have sworn not to be angry with you,
    never to rebuke you again.
 Though the mountains be shaken
    and the hills be removed,
yet my unfailing love for you will not be shaken
    nor my covenant of peace be removed,”
    says the Lord, who has compassion on you.

 “Afflicted city, lashed by storms and not comforted,
    I will rebuild you with stones of turquoise,^[a]
    your foundations with lapis lazuli.
 I will make your battlements of rubies,
    your gates of sparkling jewels,
    and all your walls of precious stones.
 All your children will be taught by the Lord,
    and great will be their peace.
 In righteousness you will be established:
Tyranny will be far from you;
    you will have nothing to fear.
Terror will be far removed;
    it will not come near you.
 If anyone does attack you, it will not be my doing;
    whoever attacks you will surrender to you.

 “See, it is I who created the blacksmith
    who fans the coals into flame
    and forges a weapon fit for its work.
And it is I who have created the destroyer to wreak havoc;
   no weapon forged against you will prevail,
    and you will refute every tongue that accuses you.
This is the heritage of the servants of the Lord,
    and this is their vindication from me,”
declares the Lord.

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