You, however, smear me with lies;
you are worthless physicians, all of you!-Job 13:4, NIV
One of the more infuriating things about looking back on my first marriage’s demise is how awful the counselors were!
These were professionals who were worse than worthless. They enabled an entitlement mentality by my cheater and aided in her further abuse of me.
Like Job’s friends, I would have been ahead to never have had their “counsel.”
The crazy part is remembering how my ex admitted an emotional affair to them, and they passed over that as if unimportant. Worse, they followed her lead in using that information as reason to attack my performance as a husband.
This is one of the reasons you might have a cheater admit to an emotional affair–i.e. they can weaponize it against the faithful party. Some professionals will even help them do this!
They take the revelation of an emotional affair as indication that the marriage is having issues–meaning that the faithful party is failing in some way (which the cheater gets to point out, of course).
It is disgusting and ungodly.
A good, godly pastor or counselor will not take the emotional affair confession bait. They will refuse to allow the cheater to beat up their spouse verbally over their own sin (see 2 Cor 5:10).
Instead, they will treat emotional affairs as the serious sin that it is. They will attack the lies the cheater has sold themselves. Or they will, at least, not allow the cheater to attack their affair victim.
They will make it clear that the cheater has wrong the faithful spouse and owes them–and that is NOT the other way around.
Faithful spouses get to decide when–or if–they are satisfied with the cheater’s repentance work regarding the marriage. The lying cheater does not get to make this decision unilaterally like they did to cheat. A good pastor or counselor gets this!
