A friend is always loyal,
and a brother is born to help in time of need.-Proverbs 17:17, NLT
One of the hardest parts of infidelity discovery is how that impacts your relationships. You lose some people out of the whole disaster.
The tricky thing is discerning which relationships are over and which to keep tending. This is especially tricky for faithful spouses–if you are like me–who tend to be loyal to their own detriment.
Is there kindness and loyalty?
The person who is insistent on continuing their friendship with your (unrepentant) cheater is probably not a good friend to keep, in my opinion.
You do not need someone who is neutral about your trauma–i.e. soul rape. That is disloyal and callous behavior towards you.
A real friend is loyal.
Do they respond well when told of how they hurt you?
A real friend cares about how their behavior impacts you. Your heart matters to them. They will make things “right” when they have hurt you.
A false friend could care less and may even blame you for your hurt. We don’t need false friends.
Do you get anything back from being their friend?
This is the reciprocal part of the relationship. The beautiful thing about friendship is that we get to choose who are our friends. We can choose someone else if we discover they are just using us.
Honestly, this reciprocal part is like the first question. What I want to see is mutual kindness and loyalty. It is a pretty low threshold, in my opinion. Sadly, some cannot clear it.
We lose “friendships” when going through marital infidelity discovery. That is part of the grief work we must do. It does hurt–these secondary betrayals.
Yet, we also discover incredible friendships during this time that are “fire” testing and stronger for it!
