How My Marriage Survived An Affair

This story isn’t about cataloging my husband’s faults or justifying my affair. I chose it, and I take full responsibility. I didn’t unravel overnight, our marriage had real fractures and I was hurting, but the decision to cross that line was mine alone.

Now that that’s settled, do me a favor. Time travel with me. Go back to 2020. A time when we were confined to our couches in yoga pants, glued to the distraction docu-dramedy that was Tiger King, while also being terrified in the backs of our minds that the world might not ever go back to how it was. We were in uncharted waters, for sure.

Somehow, we’ve all collectively decided to suppress the joint trauma we have from 2020. It doesn’t come up in casual conversation anymore, and when it does, it’s almost always political. There’s no reminiscing, and there’s definitely no lingering. We don’t look back on the good or bad times from that bygone era because we don’t want to think about it. The good times weren’t really that good after all, because even on the best days, we were still locked in our homes.

And then there are those of us who only had bad times—that group of us who didn’t realize how miserable we were in our day-to-day lives until we were forced to stop masking the pain with work, friends, happy hours, kids’ extracurriculars, and insert your chosen activity here. Those of us who don’t want to think about the choices we made: relapsing, finding a new addiction altogether, or, if you were like me, having an affair.

In January of 2020, I had my second miscarriage. Two months after that loss, we were locked inside our homes, and I was forced to spend the next year watching people announce their COVID babies and spend their lockdowns with their newborns.

I wish this were a story of me rising to the occasion, leaning into my husband, the church, and Christ for healing and hope. But it’s not.

The Blushing Bride

I entered into our marriage bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. I was the most excited young wife. I made homemade breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I bought every piece of lingerie I could afford. I flipped furniture from thrift stores to make our home feel like ours. I read all the books on how to be the best wife possible. June Cleaver had nothing on me.

Over time, however, it became clear that I was the only one putting true effort into our marriage—a fact my husband easily admits now. I could see we were having challenges that I was sure all young couples faced, and I knew the right answer: get plugged back into church.

My husband had no problem attending. That’s how we were both raised. But we were raised with no real pursuit of Christ in our homes. Church was what you did on Sunday, and the church was responsible for teaching you about God. Our families didn’t take much ownership in that department. Sure, we’d bless our meals before dinner, but there was no family Bible study, no meaningful time of prayer, no discussion about our spiritual health. Maintaining a Christ-centered home was not a real priority for either of our families. That became evident when both of our parents divorced in our late teens and early twenties.

That would not be our story. I was determined.

We joined a local church, but I could see we were still falling into the trap of checking the church box rather than growing in Christ together. So, in an effort to be even more proactive, I suggested some devotionals we could do and asked to do Bible study together. My husband is brilliant, and learning from him is my favorite pastime.

My gentle nudging turned to pushing. Pushing turned to nagging. And nagging? It resulted in silence.

To any husband who may be reading, please heed these words: The worst position you can be in, in your home, is married to a wife who has stopped asking. If she isn’t asking, she doesn’t care anymore, and reviving the woman you used to be married to is equivalent to resuscitating a body that’s been underwater too long—it may not be impossible to get her back, but every second that person went without breathing, the greater the chance for irreparable damage.

You may be wondering what happened exactly in our marriage to shut me down entirely. Marriages survive without dedicated Bible study every day, right? Sure. But what I’ve learned is that a marriage apart from Christ is one filled with secrets: secret hobbies, secret stories, and unspoken (and unhealthy) desires.

It started online.

Within two months of our first conversation, I left my husband.

How else could an affair have started during COVID? If it weren’t so sordid, it would’ve made a good rom-com. Lonely boy sees girl in a video online and becomes immediately smitten. Heartbroken girl finally feels celebrated, seen, and rescued after feeling trapped in a metaphorical dungeon. Their conversations would last until the wee hours of the morning, when neither could keep their eyes open anymore, only to wake up the next day and do it all over again.

We’re just talking.

These are crazy times.

Whatever it takes to survive.

People are allowed to make friends.

These are things we tell ourselves to justify our actions.

Within two months of our first conversation, I left my husband. Prior to meeting him, I had essentially given up on my marriage. I just didn’t know how to get out. But now, I finally had a good reason and somewhere “safe” to land on the other side.

I was lovable. I was interesting. I was a person that someone wanted to talk to. Finally, someone valued me. Someone saw me. Someone listened to me. No… Someone worshiped me. Me. Me. Me.

Leaving my husband was easy. I was so dead inside at that point, there was no amount of begging or tears that could change my mind. I had warned him this was coming if things didn’t change, and he finally lost the game of relationship chicken.

It had all been talk up to that point. But now, it was action.

I spent the next four months talking to a divorce attorney, couch surfing, visiting the man I was talking to, experimenting with recreational drugs for the first time, and pursuing any dark opportunity presented to me. I call that season of my life my middle finger to God. I knew exactly what I was doing, and I didn’t care. If I was going to have a miserable life anyway, why not have some fun along the way?

But what about my husband?

Fight or Flight

“What have I done?” he asked himself after I left.

He was faced with two options: turn the other direction himself and let me go, or fight for me. For him, there was only one option.

How a man responds in a fight-or-flight situation, in my humble opinion, is the difference between becoming the hero and the villain.

By the grace of God, my husband fought for me.

While I was in obvious crisis, unsure if I’d be alive one day to the next, my precious husband was forced to watch me drown from afar, tossing the life preserver only for me to vehemently swat it away. Seeing the results of years of my untreated trauma and his neglect culminate in such an explosion, his knees finally hit the ground.

Battle

My husband had his work cut out for him. I had no faith in him, was planning a new life with someone else, and I wasn’t in love with him anymore.

I begged him for freedom from the bondage of our marriage. Hadn’t he put me through enough? Couldn’t ending our nightmare marriage be one simple thing he could do for me?

No.

Finally, he was the one who was determined.

My pleas for divorce fell on deaf ears. Whatever it was going to take, he would save his marriage and become a man worth being married to.

Making a marriage thrive can’t fall on one party. It had fallen to me for our entire marriage up until I left, and I couldn’t carry the weight of us anymore. It was as if it dawned on my husband that his strong, broad shoulders were made for more than the gym. They were made to carry me.

He let me continue to fall apart over the next several months, waiting for me to finally crash so he could pick me up and carry me home.

The Weary Traveler

It was brutal to watch from the sidelines as my husband finally became the man I had prayed for him to become before I gave up. There were times early into our separation that I considered going back and seeing if this change was authentic, but having been burned so many times before, I stayed put.

Like my husband, I faced my own crossroads: let go or fight for myself.

Accepting letting go in the early days of our separation crippled me. I laid in bed mourning the loss of the future I longed for and was tormented with the reality that he would end up being for someone else whom I had desperately begged him to be for me.

But then, almost on cue, my phone would light up, and there he was—the security blanket of reassurance I needed when doubting my choices.

I need you.

I’ll take care of you.

You are so damn beautiful.

He’ll never love you the way I do.

We’ll make having kids a priority. I promise.

And that was the one. As a woman who was desperate for children, that was the hook I needed. The rest of them inflated my ego, but that one spoke to the longing of my soul.

The consequences of my choices were surrounding me—suffocating me until I could barely breathe.

Over those next four months, I learned every terrible thing I could possibly learn about myself. I am capable of dark deeds just like anyone.

Not interested in having anyone in the area I lived in see me in that condition, I’d travel to him and do anything I could to forget what a chaotic disaster my life was in that moment.

But escape isn’t real.

The consequences of my choices were surrounding me—suffocating me until I could barely breathe. Did I really want to be this person? Not just someone who gave up on her marriage, but who gave up on herself?

Over the course of those four months, I reached a breaking point. I wanted to die but was too afraid to come face-to-face with the maker of the universe to do anything about it.

But you know what they say: it’s always darkest before the dawn.

The Prodigal Wife

I thought I had been trapped in my marriage. I didn’t know what a cage actually was until I imprisoned myself.

I was with him, five states away from my husband, when it became clear that it wasn’t just time to go home, but it was safe to go home.

But how? How could my husband forgive me? How could we ever trust each other again?

Every possible fear and doubt waged a war in my mind. I prayed for peace and silence to no avail.

But somehow I managed to make the first healthy choice I’d made in months.

“Will you meet me at the airport?” I texted my husband.

"Just say when." There was no judgment in his response. No anger.

Slowly, peace began replacing the chaos.

The next day, I sat in the airport with my headphones on, blasting “Reckless Love” on repeat.

There’s no shadow you won’t light up, mountain you won’t climb up, coming after me. I played the bridge over and over, attempting to drown out the fear that plagued me. I was surrounded in an international airport by executives, families headed for vacation, young adults moving cross-country to college, but somehow, I was able to carve out a completely private space where I pleaded with the Lord to help prepare me and my husband for this painful reconciliation.

I thought I had been trapped in my marriage. I didn’t know what a cage actually was until I imprisoned myself.

Four hours later, my plane was landing. I had never experienced anxious excitement like this in my life. I was nauseated and shaky. The last person I wanted to see was my husband, while at the same time the only person I wanted to see was my husband.

I gathered my belongings, stopped by the bathroom to make sure my face wasn’t red and swollen from all the crying I’d done that day, and tried to think of any other reasonable stop I could make to delay this encounter.

Failing to come up with anything, I began walking. This must be what walking death row feels like, I told myself.

Had my husband’s attitude changed? Would he change his mind once he saw me?

The fear was crippling.

Coming down the escalator, I found him.

Peace flooded my body, but shame quickly followed.

He met me at the bottom, and I was too afraid to make the next move. While I stood frozen, he wrapped me up and rested his chin on top of my head. We both let out the breath we’d been holding for months. We may have had challenges ahead of us, but we both knew we’d get a full night of sleep that night.

I always judged anyone who had an affair so harshly, and now it’s clear that life is significantly more complex than I previously understood. You can’t ever really know what drives someone to do what they do, and while it may not be an excuse, it is an explanation.

If you’re staring down the barrel of divorce but desperately want to restore your marriage, I am going to give you the steps my husband took to not just save our marriage, but ultimately, save my life.

• Go to the church. And I don’t just mean go to church. My husband knew if he was going to save his marriage, it was beyond what he could do alone. He met with a council of older men in our church where he confessed his wrongs against me and the Lord, received prayer, and found a group of godly men willing to walk alongside him in this journey no matter where it ended.

• Have patience. I cannot even recall all of the vile, wicked things I said to my husband. My goal was to be as terrible as I could be so that he’d stop fighting for me and grant me a divorce. He took every attack in stride and, instead of reacting in my presence, he took it back to those men who loved him through it.

• Be stubborn. I wouldn’t admit it at the time, but my husband’s unwillingness to discuss divorce was incredibly comforting. It was frustrating in the moment, but that was keeping the small part of me that still loved him alive.

• Pray. Pray for each other. Pray for yourself. Pray against any force that would destroy your marriage.

• Join a recovery program. Joining a recovery program like Celebrate Recovery to address issues ranging from alcohol abuse and childhood trauma to sexual integrity can be the lifeline your marriage is searching for. Celebrate Recovery gave us a safe space to open up and, since he began attending before I did, taught him valuable communication tools for when I did finally come home.

Love your wives and lead them. Love your children and protect them. Be the spiritual head of your home, but please be a leader worth following.

Those are the marching orders Erika Kirk gave to men at her husband’s memorial.

Ballroom dancing, like marriage, requires a strong male lead to have the most beautiful dance possible. A man sure of himself and the next steps he’s going to take provides so much security to a woman. A wife cannot follow her husband if he doesn’t even know where his feet will go next.

Thank God my husband learned how to dance.