Over 23 years in pastoral ministry, I have been privy to more marital disaster than I would ever have imagined. Some couples call it quits, some couples soldier on and some couples recover miraculously. They don’t just survive, they thrive on the other side of moral and sexual collapse.
Why is that?
What do they do that other couples don’t?
While we should never think there is a magic formula for marital happiness, there does seem to be certain Gospel actions associated with miraculous recovery.
Couples who survive and thrive after a serious moral failing tend to do the following:
1. Confess sin specifically and appropriately
Trust cannot be reestablished apart from specific and appropriate confession. Both of those adjectives are important. By ‘specific’ I mean with reference to specific commandments.
Avoid phrases like “I’ve made some bad decisions.”
No one knows what that means and it sounds like something less than a full confession of sin. It sounds like a confession of bad taste or awkward timing, and it falls far short of what is required when a marriage covenant has been assaulted by sexual betrayal.
Instead use phrases like:
“I committed adultery”.
“I broke the 7th commandment”.
“I committed sexual immorality”.
“I violated my marriage vow”.
That is the sort of confession that very often summons grace and mercy. If you did it, own it. It is the fastest and only way back.
Also make sure that your confession is appropriate. By ‘appropriate’, I mean exactly the amount of detail desired by the offended party. There is such a thing as too much detail. Be aware that the details of your moral failing have the potential to run on infinite loop in the mind of your wounded spouse. Find out how much detail he or she would like to have. Tell them that you will disclose as much or as little as they would like. But give them time to think about it.
I recommend saying something like this:
“Honey, I committed adultery. I had improper sexual contact with so and so beginning on such and such a date. It was a violation of my marriage vows and it was totally inappropriate. I am willing to tell you as much or as little about it as you would like to know – but you can know this for sure. It’s over. I ended it, I’m ashamed of it and I am totally committed to making sure that nothing like that ever happens again.”
Say that and then be quiet. Let your spouse stew in that for a while before telling you how much or how little detail they’d like to receive.
There is no moving forward until you have done that.
But then after that, you need to do this:
2. Establish reasonable limits and boundaries
Nobody wakes up on a Tuesday and decides to blow up their marriage. Sleeping with a prostitute or having an affair with a co-worker is not just something that happens. It is never just bad judgment, it’s always the result of bad habits and porous boundaries. If you don’t fix that, then you’re not on the road to recovery.
After a moral failing, your spouse has the right to rigorously edit your habits, relationships and behaviours. If you don’t like that, then consider not having the affair in the first place. If you want to recover, you have to surrender some freedom.
I recommend the following:
- Regular, unscheduled, unannounced cell phone checks. Your spouse now has the right to pick up your phone out of your hand at any moment of the day and to review your browsing history and text log. This is non-negotiable.
- A full review of entertainment habits. What shows are you watching? Your spouse has the right to cross anything off the list. What time do you go to bed? Your spouse has the right to demand that you go to bed when he/she goes to bed. Do you have a weekly night out with friends? Your spouse has the right to cancel that night or to insist on regular check ins. Again, non-negotiable.
- A full auditing of friendships and associations. Most affairs begin as inappropriate friendships. Your spouse is supposed to be your best friend. Your spouse is supposed to be your confident. If you have been dividing your friendship inappropriately, your spouse has the right to direct changes. He or she has the full right to cancel any threatening opposite-sex friendship. You get one goodbye email. If the friendship is with a same-sex person and is of a non-sexual nature, it may also be deemed a threat to the marriage by reason of influence or quality. Your spouse has the right to demand a 6-month pause in that friendship. If you want to recover, this has to be on the table.
You aren’t recovering unless you’re changing. Change is hard. And so is accountability. Couples who survive and thrive after a serious moral failing:
3. Commit to rigorous and embarrassing accountability
Again, both of those adjectives are important. By ‘rigorous’ I mean regular, scheduled and frequent. By ‘embarrassing’, I mean invasive, awkward and specific.
I remember when I decided to get serious about my own sexual purity. I made a decision to invite a friend to ask me 5 embarrassing questions every time we got together. They were horrifying. They were graphic, awkward and borderline inappropriate – but knowing that I would have to sit at that coffee table and look into the eyes of my friend and answer those embarrassing questions was, in a sense, the last nail in the coffin of my fallen sexual nature.
Newsflash: People don’t enjoy shame. Use that to your advantage.
Shame is not always a bad thing in the Bible. God says that sometimes shame can keep you from doing stupid things and it can save you from facing future punishment. We see that in Jeremiah 8:
Were they ashamed when they committed abomination? No, they were not at all ashamed; they did not know how to blush. Therefore they shall fall among the fallen; when I punish them, they shall be overthrown, says the Lord. (Jeremiah 8:12 ESV)
Learn how to blush. Put yourself in a position to answer horrifying questions on a fairly regular basis. If you won’t do that, then you won’t likely recover.
