Marriage should be honored by all, and the marriage bed kept pure, for God will judge the adulterer and all the sexually immoral.
-Hebrews 13:4, NIV
When a spouse decides to commit adultery, the marriage is forever changed. What is done cannot be undone.
I believe the natural state of such marriages is one of death. Do some come back from this? I suppose. But we call those miracles or pseudo-miracles (with the later referring to the marriages where people stayed together but never fully healed and recovered).
For those faithful spouses who stay married to their cheaters, they have to contend with knowing their spouse was both willing and actually did cheat on them. This is not a pleasant place to live emotionally or spiritually.
A truly repentant cheater understands this.
They understand that their sins have damaged both the faithful spouse and the relationship in lasting ways. With such understanding, they refuse to ever blame the faithful spouse for being jumpy about trust issues. They understand that is part of the fall out of their sins.
Sadly, some cheaters either never “get it” or simply do not care about how they hurt their spouse. Some–the worst–take joy in harming the faithful spouse.
You can fully forgive a cheater yet never be able to trust them, again. Forgiveness does not magically fix everything that was broken by their sins against you.
