Adultery caused the marriage rift; NOT its confession!

Don’t you realize that your bodies are actually parts of Christ? Should a man take his body, which is part of Christ, and join it to a prostitute? Never! And don’t you realize that if a man joins himself to a prostitute, he becomes one body with her? For the Scriptures say, “The two are united into one.”

-I Corinthians 6:15-16, NLT

Confessing Is NOT Causing!

A persistent myth around infidelity is how confessing or exposing the cheating is what causes the rift in the relationship.

In other words, the infidelity and lies being made known is treated as the cause for the relationship damage rather than the actual deceptions and infidelity themselves.

I find this myth incredibly stupid. The cheater is not protecting the faithful spouse from suffering by continuing to lie about the infidelity. 

They are selfishly protecting themselves from facing the natural consequence for their treacherous behavior.

It sometimes is easier to see this by analogy:

Your accountant successfully and secretly steals tens of thousands of dollars from your estate. You never suspect the theft as this accountant is especially good at covering her tracks.

So, from the outside, everything looks good as far as your relationship with your accountant is concerned.

You are ignorantly happy with your accountant, and she is perfectly happy in the situation having robbed you secretly of a great deal of your wealth.

If someone told you the truth that your accountant had stolen tens of thousands of dollars from you, would a sane person really blame knowing this as the cause for the rupture in your relationship with your accountant?!

No, a sane person would blame the theft and deception of the accountant as the reason for the relationship being ruptured. 

Who stands to gain the most from the theft remaining a secret? You or the thieving accountant?

The thieving accountant, obviously, stands to gain the most from keeping her treacherous behavior hidden.

A cheater has stolen trust and much, much more.

The confession of this “theft” is not what ultimately damaged the marriage any more than the revelation of the accountant’s embezzlement caused the demise of that relationship.

It’s NOT the revelation or confession, but rather the actual cheating and lying that causes the damage to the marriage.

*A version of this ran previously.