Why do you have an affair? (3)

"Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you" (Colossians 3:13).

            Why is my husband taking off his eyes off to another woman?  Why is my wife giving affection to another man?

            It seems that there have not been many dramas depicting affair relations like these days.  A woman comes to a married couple and tempts the couple's husband.  Another man comes up and tempts the couple’s wife.  This is the parts of the Korean drama ‘Temptation.’  On the one hand, I wondered why a writer wrote this kind of story.  Is it for popularity so that many views can watch it?  On the other, I think this drama seems to show the reality of Korean society.  So, I read and meditated on the Bible and wrote two meditations on the subject under the heading "Why do you have an affair?"  The first Word of God was based on Proverbs 5:8, in which the reason for having the affair is because the man is close to the woman whom he should be far away.  We have learned the lesson that the husband should be close to his one and only wife and the wife should be close to her one and only husband instead of the husband being close to another man’s wife or single woman and the wife being close to another woman’s husband or single man.  On the contrary, we have learned that the husband should love only his wife whom God has joined him faithfully and make her happy and rejoice with her.  We learned that he should consider his wife loving and beautiful and should always be satisfied with her breasts.  And we were taught that he should be always captivated by her love.  If not, then he will have affair.  The second Word of God was based on Exodus 20:17, in which the reason for having the affair is because of covetousness.  If the man has covetous heart he cannot satisfy with his wife’s breasts (Prov. 5:19) and begin to covet another woman.   So he looks at another woman who is not his wife, led by the lust of eyes.  And his ears start to hear about her.  And Satan entices him with the lustful desires of sinful human nature and causes him to sin (2 Pet. 2:18).  Satan makes him to covet another woman.  But the Bible says that covetousness never has enough (Isa. 56:11).  In the end, covetousness doesn’t allow him to be satisfied with his wife (Prov. 5:19), making him to covet his neighbor's wife (Exod. 29:17).

                I want to think about "Why are you having an affair? (3)" based on the Word of God Colossians 3:13 with Paul David Tripp’s book “What did you Expect?”  The reason is that the couple doesn’t forgive each other.  Certainly, the Bible says in Colossians 3:13 to forgive each other “as the Lord forgave you”.  But the couple refuses to obey this Word and has affair.  To explain this more specifically, the greatest reason why the couple doesn’t forgive each other is because they don’t really know that the Lord has forgiven them.  And the couple doesn’t forgive each other because they cannot understand the Lord's forgiveness with their hearts.  Not only that, the couple are dissatisfied with each other and their complaints are increasing.  As a result, the couple doesn’t tolerate each other.  Actually, they aren’t able to do so.  The couple who doesn’t forgive each other not only will not tolerate each other truly, but they cannot.  And the couple who doesn’t tolerate each other has already refused to forgive each other in their hearts.  So why does the couple come to this point?  I would like to think of the process based on the seven paths that many of the couples are walking as Dr. Paul Tripp said.

The first path is Immaturity and Failure.

                Marriage means that in this sinful world a sinner man marries a sinner woman.  Therefore, in our marital relationship, we cannot but sin against God.  In addition to that, many marriages mean that one immature man and one immature woman are married, so they make numerous mistakes and experience many failures.  Especially the young immature couples make many mistakes and experience failures in their marriage.  After the mistakes and failures, they aren’t ready for marriage because of their naive thoughts about marriage.  As a result, they experience conflicts, strife and hurt in the early part of their marriage.  One of those naive thoughts is the unrealistic expectation of marriage.  Although they think that they will never fight, will not have any conflicts what so ever, and dream that they will live happily as they love each other with God’s love but there is a lot of chance that their dream will break down at the beginning of their marriage.  As a result, the fantasies and dreams that they had before marriage are broken, and suffer in disappointment and wound.  At that time, the couple will be awakened from their fantasies and dreams and will pray and ponder in front of the Lord in terms of how to achieve their ideal dream in reality.  It is fortunate to have such struggles and prayers.  But if they don’t have those struggles and prayers, then the miserable couple will be getting more and more swamped by the reality of broken dreams.  Their marital relationship is bound to be deteriorated.

                The second path is Falling into Comfortable Patterns.

                When the couple experiences failure in their marital relationship due to their immaturity, they can choose the difficult path of learning through failure in order to build their marital relationship and pursue the maturity of the couple.  But they choose the comfortable path of neglecting their marital relationship to get worse.  The couple’s sinful nature is to choose the comfortable path rather than the difficult path.  Then what is the comfortable path that the couple tends to choose according to their nature?  For example, when the couple argues, fights, and hurts each other’s heart due to not acknowledging and respecting each other’s differences, their choice of the comfortable path is not saying “I am sorry” and not forgiving each other.  And according to their sinful nature, they hate each other, remembering the hurts they have from each other.  Moreover, they pile up the hates in their hearts instead of trying to solve in the Lord.  They do this according to their sinful nature, choosing the comfortable path.  In this comfortable path that the couple chooses, there is lack of commitment and effort in trying not to make the same mistakes and failures in their immaturity.  As a result, the marriage becomes even worse because the piled up wounds, pains, and tears that are tangled in the couple's hearts from the same repeating failures and further new failures.

               The third path is Establishing Defenses.

                What is really important in marriage is to ask for forgiveness to each other and forgive each other sincerely from heart.  But this is not only difficult but impossible without God's grace.  To that extent, the couple’s sinful nature is to build a wall between their marital relationships rather than to forgive each other and tolerate each other.  And they are keep on building their heart wall higher and higher.  So the couple no longer confesses their wrongs and sins to each other honestly and asks for forgiveness.  Rather, they point out and criticize each other's faults and sins and even condemn each other in their hearts.  They do this to reveal their self-righteousness.  They criticize each other because they think that “I am right and you are wrong.”  When they criticize each other, the immature and full of self-righteousness couple put up their protective film in order to protect themselves from getting hurt from each other.  The protective film is to establish a defense between oneself and one’s spouse.  So when the mature spouse is reproving his or her spouse with the love of God, the immature spouse who receives the reproof establishes a defense wall and protects himself or herself from getting hurt.  In addition, the immature person will be offensive to his or her mature spouse.  Then the spouse who is being attacked gets hurt in his or her heart and is in pain.  And if the other spouse is immature, s/he will also attack and eventually will have a marital war cycle in which the couple defends each other and attacks each other.  Then their marital relations will get worse and worse.

The fourth path is Nurturing Dislike.

                The couple who is immature cannot tolerate each other differences.  So they are accustomed to argue and fight rather than tolerate and forgive each other.  And in their conflict, they are just trying to protect themselves and not their marital relationship.  In the meantime, the couple constantly attacks each other, so that their marital relationship gets worse and worse.  They look at each other more negatively than before as time goes by.  And they are increasingly critical of each other, looking at each other's negative aspects only.  As a result, the marital relationship grows worse and worse because the couple grows a sense of hatred toward each other.

                The fifth path is Becoming Overwhelmed.

When the marital relationship becomes worse and worse, the marriage becomes a great burden to each other.  It is the overwhelming burden that is too heavy for them to bear by themselves.  At that time, if the couple becomes one in the Lord, they can bear each other's burdens and humbly leave all the burdens to the Lord by faith.  But since the couple’s relationship got worse and the lost faith and ability, they are unable to bear each other’s burden and to leave the burdens to the Lord.  As a result, how heavy would it be for the couple to bear their burdens separately?  In the end, the marriage will become even worse because of their heavy burdens.

                The sixth path is Envy of Other Couples.

                The couple whose relationship is getting worse and worse may eventually start looking at other couples around.  Especially when they see other couples who seem to have good marital relations, they may compare themselves with those other couples.  Then they will envy those couples whose marital relationships look good in their eyes.  With a sense of frustration and of shame, they think about break up with their spouses and encounter new meetings.  Although they know that they shouldn’t do that, they think it’s better for them to have new start again by making a relationship with a new encounter rather than give themselves up.

                The seventh path is Fantasies of Escape.

                When the couple’s relationship becomes heavy burden, the couple tends to compare with other couples who seem to have better marital relationships then them.  And as they become jealous of the other couples, they may think they won’t be able to sustain their marital relationship any longer.  As a result, they tend to fantasize about not only escaping their bad marital relationship but also encountering a new relationship.  Especially when a husband who has not been respected by his own wife gets attention from another woman, he is likely to have an affair with her.  It is also highly likely that a woman will have an affair with another man who cares for her warmly than her husband if her husband does not only love her but also hurts her again and again.  And if they have an affair, they will demand divorce from their spouse unilaterally in order to break up with the spouse.

                I don’t think that an affair just happens with a day or so.  There is a high probability that married couples will have an affair if their marriage relationship is not good but the relationship has been bad for a long time.  There is high probability that the married couple will become interested in the other opposite sex other than their own spouse because their marital relationship has gotten worse in which they refuse to forgive and tolerate each other and have many complaints toward each other.  These are the couples who have potential to have affair: the couples who have experienced many failures because of their immaturity, the couples who choose the convenient way to let their marital problems and conflicts to be continued to exist because they don’t put any effort to resolve the, the couples who put up their defense system, saying that they are right and criticizing that their spouse is wrong instead of putting efforts to keep the unity of the couples in the Lord, the couples who view each other very critically and they are very pessimistic, the couples whose life together are now so burdensome, so the couples who compare their relationship with other couples and are jealous of them.  What must the couples do?

                The couples must seek maturity in the Lord because the maturity in the Lord is directly related to the maturity of the marital relationship.  In other words, the couples who gradually grow together in the Lord cannot but mature gradually in relation to each other.  As a result, their relationship grows progressively toward perfection in the Lord, so that not only can the mistakes and failures be reduced, but they can use the mistakes and failures wisely to be beneficial to their marital relations.  These mature and wise married couples who are committed to the Lord’s building marital relations choose a harder path than a comfortable path.  And the harder path is, for example, self-sacrifice.  The mature couples who choose this harder path have a life pattern that devotes themselves to sacrifice and puts it into practice to build each other up in the Lord.  Their marital relations in the Lord get mature toward perfection as they accept, forgive and love each other.  As they mature, they don’t fall into the couples' war cycle, attacking each other and defending each other.  Also, they do not raise resentment against each other.  Rather, they develop feelings for each other.  And they bear each other’s heavy burdens.  That's why not only their burden is light but also their hearts.  Not only the mature couples don’t compare with other couples, but they also don’t see any need to do so because their relationships are healthy.  And because they are happy with their marital relationship, they do not have the fantasy to escape from the relationship.  Rather, they obey the Lord's command in prayer as they wrestle with the Word of God in order to build the Lord-centered marriages.  Therefore, as a Lord-centered witness community, those couples are used by the Lord as a couple presenting a godly model that reveals Christ in this world filled with adultery and divorce.  I hope and pray that the Lord continue to build our marital relationships to be more the Lord-centered.