Well, I’ll answer that, but first, I have to skip to the end of the story. It’s been four years since I got that second email and my husband and I are still married. I love him. He is my soul mate, and we have the best marriage of any couple we know – only now it’s for real.
I’m not telling you our story to scare you into thinking that all service members cheat. I don’t believe that and I don’t want you to, either. I’m telling you this so that you’ll know four things:
1) Military affairs can be very different than civilian affairs
2) An affair doesn’t have to mean a divorce
3) How to offer real compassion to friends who are suffering the agony of an affair
4) A marriage can even be better after an affair
After about two months, I started accepting his phone calls, but at first it was just to work out the logistics of the divorce. Where would we file, who would get what, that sort of thing. Then my three-times-divorced mother said something very wise to me: “You’re going to have to forgive him,” she said. “If you don’t, it will make you bitter. And, forgiveness is the hardest part. So if you can forgive him, and if you think he’s really sorry, and if you believe he’ll never do it again, then why not just stay with him? Life will be better for you and the kids if you two can work things out.” What she said resonated with me. My parents divorced when I was young and, if there was any way I could, I wanted to spare my kids that pain.
And he did seem very sorry. He said he had found God. Even the tone of his voice was different. He came home (and moved into our guest bedroom) and we started going to very talented marriage counselor. But here’s where the story hits a bump: The counselor started us on an affair recovery program that was supposed to take six weeks to complete. Problem was, our program – just like every affair recovery program I’ve studied (and I’ve looked at a lot of them now) – requires that the “injured spouse” (that’s me) take equal responsibility for what went wrong in the marriage to cause the affair.
Let that sink in for a moment.
