Why was I stuck for so long?
This is a good question to ask ourselves after a divorce from a cheater. Some people break free faster than others. That said, others take a long time coming to terms with their marriage’s end.
I really struggled with the end of my marriage.
Three things really kept me stuck:
1) I had a very strong anti-divorce stance at the time.
I came to my first marriage with a complete commitment to work through anything. My thought was that this was shared with my (now) ex-wife. It was not.
My bad theology on divorce kept me in a relationship longer than what was healthy. I tolerated things, like emotional infidelity, that a spouse ought never to tolerate.
2) I struggled to frame my divorce in a way that was biblical, initially.
Up until I learned about the Other Man, I was really struggling with accepting the divorce. To be honest, even after discovering him, I wanted the marriage to survive. Thankfully, it didn’t.
I had to have a solid reason to accept the divorce. One of my problems was my ex was pursuing the divorce without a biblical reason to divorce me. Yet I had to deal with the reality that the divorce was going to happen regardless of how I felt.
Thankfully(?), I was given a solid reason to divorce in the OM. Even without that, I think my divorce could have been justified via I Corinthians 7:15 regarding an unbeliever leaving.
3) I was economically vulnerable to her when the divorce occurred.
This was a BIG reason I stayed stuck. My career was struggling to launch during the Great Recession. Put another way, I lacked the economic strength to leave on my own.
Obviously, God provided and I found my way to such independence. However, this path forward was unseen at the time of my crisis.
My encouragement to faithful spouses is to work on this economic strength so that you are not utterly vulnerable to your cheater in this area. It is hard. However, it is worthwhile.
Even after I achieved such independence, I was still stuck on point #1. I had to let go of that past belief system and accept my first spouse was someone other than I had thought I married.
In 2009, I began to see clearly the reality of my marriage falling apart. At the time, I was financially in bondage. I was a part time security guard, making low wages. My alcoholic, cheater (now ex-husband) was a correctional officer, with an income large enough to provide for both of us. Unfortunately, I eventually found myself financially trapped. I, also, could not leave my cheater (ex-husband). In the end, to make a long story short, we both ended up loosing our home to foreclosure.To add to injury, I was forced into homelessness, while my ex-husband had a place to stay. I was completely devastated to say the least. During the two and a half years I was homeless (living inside my vehicle and later on the streets), I could not keep a job or properly care for myself. I asked various so-called Christian churches for help in getting off the streets and, in short, I was treated like an outcast. Soon, I began to feel hopeless, and I consistently begged God, the Lord Jesus Christ, to take me out of this world. Literally, I had no one to help me or care for me. My consistency in reading my Bible and praying and begging God, the Lord Jesus Christ, for help is what kept me going.
Oh yes! I left my small career in radio at age 21 to marry and raise kids. I was a stay-at-home mom for the next two decades, and had no skills to enter the workforce. I was completely at his mercy. We were also in a cult-like church that emphasized the authority of the husband. If I left the husband and the cult, I risked losing my kids. I had to wait until the kids were old enough to make up their own minds to follow me out, and got a part time job (because the husband stopped working and we were living off credit). I managed to escape a few years ago. I am now starting again at age 52, and am doing better than ever except that the catastrophic financial fallout still pursues me and the kids are plagued with mental torment from their father’s abuse and the cult’s brainwashing.
Many regrets. How I wish I’d left much sooner, but I couldn’t risk losing my kids. I just have to accept that everything happened for a reason and it is what it is. But it is HARD.