Then they sat on the ground with him for seven days and nights. No one said a word to Job, for they saw that his suffering was too great for words.
-Job 2:13, NLT
Please do not underestimate how traumatic and disorienting discovering marital infidelity is!
Speaking from my personal experience as well as from running this faithful spouse support site for years:
Validation is key to recovery.
The faithful spouse has just had their reality blown apart by discovery of the cheater’s lies. Before they can even engage in preliminary “forgiveness” work, they need to know what exactly happened.
They need to know what is “real.”
Religious people are known to harangue faithful spouses for not “forgiving” and being “bitter.” They are quick to categorize faithful spouses as “stuck” in a “victim mentality.”
These blind (and somewhat calloused) individuals fail to realize the difficulty of reconstructing one’s world after it has been blown up by infidelity and lies.
They fail to see how the faithful spouse is struggling to believe what happened, actually happened.
They fail to grasp that a faithful spouse is more than just a victim but is certainly not less than a victim in this matter!
A loving and wise Christian friend validates the faithful spouse’s experience and helps them grasped the ugly reality of this unjust situation. They approach their traumatized friend with humility and kindness.
They are slow to judge as “bitter” and quick to humbly assert that they themselves might need even longer to truly believe their spouse cheated and lied to them if in their friend’s shoes. In other words, they support them in their grief as opposed to judging them in it.
Too often, Christians ascribe vice to faithful spouses for being “stuck” on the injustices. The truth is that faithful spouses are still struggling to believe their partner was capable of and actually did the wicked things they did.
This struggle is not a vice. It is a very normal response to traumatic loss.
The faithful spouse needs your validation of reality, not your condemnation. Please lead with humility and not religious pride, which tells the traumatized: “You just needs to forgive.”
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*A version of this post ran previously.
