“Since they are no longer two but one, let no one split apart what God has joined together.”
-Matthew 19:6, NLT
When your wife is more concerned about the opinion of her male “friend” than she is of her husband, you can be assured she has crossed over to an emotional affair, minimally.
This is a dead give away for an emotional affair. The heart of the spouse is entangled in illicit ways with an outsider. This shows up by the outsider’s feelings taking precedence over their actual spouse’s.
In this scenario, the cheater is blind to how their behavior is harming their spouse. Either that or they simply do not care. Sadly, some cheaters may even be doing it to hurt their spouse intentionally.
The point is the oneness of marriage is violated by making another potential mate more important than the actual mate.
My pastoral opinion is such relationships need to be ended if it comes to this. The cheater is playing with fire jeopardizing the marriage by such entanglements. A line has already been crossed even if not physically.
Such a cheater is breaking the marriage vow of “forsaking all others” by prioritizing their emotional lover’s feelings over their spouse’s. It is already sinful. The cheater needs to forsake the sinful relationship and repent.
Sadly, many cheaters will not do the godly thing. They will continue down this path of destruction. In such a case, the only choice left for a faithful spouse is to step away and divorce allowing the cheater to face their spiritual destruction alone (see Mt. 19:9, Heb. 10:26-27).
