“I cheated on you emotionally. But don’t worry. I already worked through it with my individual therapist.”
-Cheater
Sin is crouching at the door, eager to control you.
-Genesis 6:4b, NLT
I wonder how many here have heard something like this from their cheater. The cheater has declared themselves “fixed” but are unwilling “to show their work.”
Such a cheater is protecting themselves from facing the consequences of their sins.
They are unwilling to be open and honest with their spouse. If they were, they would not have hidden this affair (and the work on it with the therapist) from their spouse.
It is just a matter of time before they enter into another affair. They have justified hiding one (and conveniently “fixing” it so that the faithful spouse is not involved); so, another won’t be a problem.
Speaking as a pastor, I would add that any therapist who signs off on this approach to “fixing” an emotional affair is a bad therapist.
They are a coward or simply weak. A strong and godly therapist, from this pastor’s perspective, would confront this cheater and insist on the first meeting about the affair that she tells her husband about it or the therapy ends.
A good and godly therapist would not join in on this self-delusion–i.e. one can fix a marriage-trauma inducing sin by not talking to the victim of said sin.
In my pastoral opinion, such joining in the self-delusion is enabling sin. The therapist (or pastor) is sinning against the faithful spouse by enabling the cheater to keep her nasty secrets from him and not exhorting her to walk in the light.
A cheater that claims she has dealt with her emotional affair already by doing individual therapy (without her husband aware or involved) is living a dangerous delusion.
Do not buy into such a delusion.
Sin is crouching at the door about to devour.
_____
*A version of this post ran previously.
