The cheating started when he was working 3 hours away and was gone 5 days a week. In the beginning, he came home every weekend, than about 4 months into his job, he started saying he has to work on weekend. Our marriage isn't perfect, but we were doing great. I'm not saying that I'm perfect as I'm sure no one is, but no matter what my h did will not constitute me to cheat on him so why did he cheated on me just because he works 3 hours away. After all it was his choice. My h doesn't do anything in the house. He go as far as cook dinner once in a while, but that's pretty much it. I do the laundry, clean the house and anything else besides working a full time job. On top of that, he gambles every day and I recently lost my house due to his gambling. Maybe I'm just too close to the problem to see it clearing so can any one else tell me whether my decision to leave my h is the wrong one as I do want to make the right decision for my children.

I have to take issue with this statement. From everything I've learned, both from MB and other sources, the BS is not the one at fault for the A. The BS may share some blame as far as the relationship within the marriage goes, but the WS alone made the decision to cheat and is the sole bearer of blame regarding adultery. As a BS, one cannot begin to heal without fully understanding that. Adultery occurs with or without other marital problems. Not everyone with marital problems cheats, either.

I'm sorry if I didn't write that well enough to be understood. Of course I was not blaming her for the A! What I meant was, if she's asking whether to stay, she needs to go back to the origin of the problem and see what really happened at that point. If she had been doing any LB or DJ at the time, he may have rationalized what he was doing (blamed her). Therefore, if she decides to work on the marriage, they need to start being honest about everything within the marriage that they both have problems with, and not do the same thing again. That's all I meant. If she's honest with herself, she may recognize some things she may have done differently. I know I have had a wakeup call after reading this site.

Of course, it sounds like the guy's got some major issues, and he may have just decided to have his cake and eat it, too. In which case, he may not be worth salvaging. But only she knows that.

Adultery does occur with and without marital problems. In the quest of "What do I do now?," whether marital problems were the root of the adultery or something else was is an important piece of information.

Moon_Flower, Your husband cheats and you just lost your house because of his gambling. A small but telling behavior is his refusal to help around the house. Your H needs to grow up and step up to the plate in many ways. 1. All of the MB "protection" like sharing passwords. 2. Never ever gamble again and probably get into a gamblers support group. 3. Be a partner in your life together. 4. Count your vote equally with his vote.

If he doesn't agree to this or if he doesn't actually do this, I'd divorce him. Divorce stinks for children, but there are worse things, like being homeless because your dad gambled away everything and your mother's company downsized.

Following up about the kids. I'm a child of divorce, sort of. My parents divorced when I was 21. It was shocking. But, knowing my father wouldn't be coming home in a mood was such a relief. We all could relax for the first time ever. Holidays are a pain in the tushy, much more hectic and stressful, but now I have a good relationship with both my parents.

I'm divorced. It was hard on the girls. It was also hard on the older daughter when B and I would fight. Our year or so together, I stopped giving in on things that were important to me, so he yelled more. Scary yelled. It was bad, and the OD still remembers it.

After 4 years, they have really adjusted. Except for the usual logistics and some resentment that they are spending the 5th Thanksgiving in a row with their father, they are good.

The chances of your children divorcing if YOU divorce are ten fold. Do the right thing. Fix yourself. The fix your marriage. Do it all with God's help. The sky will be the limit

I'm not perfect, but I don't think I'm the one that needs fixing. It seems you have not read much about my post here about my h been a cheater, gambler, etc...

Thanks for your advice anyway...

i do not believe that love is unconditional. it is on the condition that you don't cheat, you don't beat, you don't abuse, etc... there are boundaries in love. the only love i have that is unconditional is for my children. i will love them no matter what. but my love for a spouse or anyone else has conditions.

i think most of us are like that. to say unconditional i do not think is true. i loved my husband. but that love left when he started getting very verbal and cheating one right after the other. and crossing my boundaries. my love for him was on the condition that we had an equal and committed marriage.

mlhb

Thank you everyone for all your inputs, comments, suggests and recomendations. It has helped me in more ways than one. I never thought I would write so freely about my life and my situation to strangers, but I did and I'm glad I did. As hard as it is, I'm glad I'm not the only one facing this problem. Although if I can wish it away, I would wish it all away so no one else would have to go through what I went through.

Onward Faith, it is not the divorce of the parents that increases the risk of children divorcing--it is the bad relationship habits and dynamics the parents patterned in front of their children. If both parties don't adress and change those dynamics, the risk of divorce is only slightly minimized, and the risk of a bad, unhappy marriage remains.

Green, agreed 100%. But the ACT of divorce is an act of abandoned faith, not an act of perseverance. It is a powerful message to young impressionable minds that abandoning one's hardships is a viable option in the face of adversity.

Flower's hardship is real, I am not oblivious to that. I recognize her HUSBAND [I think people should get out of the habit of referring to their spouses as "H" and "W"--btw] has been less than stellar, and has caused her and her children great distress. My wife caused myself and my kids (and my family) great distress, too. In fact, she did things beyond cheating that I would not even mention here. And like Flower, I repeatedly said, "I am not the one who needs fixing!" I was convinced at one time that I was ethically superior to my wife, and she was the one with all the issues... until..

I prayed to God to show me my sins. I asked that he expose MY weaknesses to me so I could reconcile with him. I finally came to terms with the fact that I should no longer be concerned with my wife's salvation, and instead be focused on my own. I prayed to God NOT to bring my wife home, but instead to bring my wife to HIM. When I stopped praying for her to come home and to get her life right, and started praying for her to be saved by God, EVERYTHING changed, including her.

I wholeheartedly DISAGREE with anyone who says God can't force someone to change. While there may be free will, there is God's will first. It was written that he can and DOES intervene when he sees fit. His parting of the red sea is a prime example of how he intervenes. To say he can't change a heart that HE created is complete blasphemy IMO. Such a notion completely undermines his power and supernatural abilities.

WE can't change people. I could not change my wife, Flower can not change her husband. God CAN. But first Flower's husband must be saved. And hence, her prayers, and ours, must seek the Lord's intervention to SAVE her husband, not bring him home. Once he is saved, he will come home, not just to Flower, but to God.

I pray for Flower and her husband that they may reconcile their lives with God and seek FIRST their salvation, above all else.

OWF

What about the powerful message to young impressionable minds about solving adversity and rising above your hardships? God does help those who help themselves.

Or acknowledging mistakes when you marry someone who wasn't honest or faithful or even decent-hearted? Because you made a mistake and married the wrong person, you should teach your kids to just 'live with it' and start praying umpteen hours a day and expect a miraculous change, and in the meantime live in misery?

I'm glad it's working for you, but IMO you are doing a disservice telling someone that prayer will fix their problems, and if the miracle they've been praying for doesn't occur, well, too bad. Prayer offers peace of mind, but telling a cheating, dishonest spouse that you are going to pray for them until they are born again instead of finding proactive ways to fix the problem is ridiculous. And hurtful to the poster.

OWF,

While Moonlight_Flower's husband does need to be saved and does need to fix what's wrong with himself and God can work miracles in His life and hers, and she is not without faults of her own, though they have nothing to do with his cheating, lying and wasting the family income, she does not have to stay in the dangerous position she is in and wait patiently for God to act and continue placing her children in further jeopardy in order for God to work His miracle.

Don't forget that the way God tends to intervene is by bringing the unrepentant to repentance. He does this by allowing them to have things their way, often removing His protection and grace from their lives to bring them to a state of brokenness and to the end of themselves. Your example of the parting of the Red Sea has nothing to do with Him forcing our free will to be submitted to His will since He did not give the waters a free will and they do His bidding without being offered a choice. Bad example at best, twisting of scripture at worst since it does not apply to changing the will of Men.

He does not, as far as any biblical example I have ever found, intervene by forcibly changing someone's will to be in line with His. HE desires for us to seek Him, but does not MAKE us do so. If He wished to do so, He could and it would have been His right to make us so that we always seek Him and His will. But that isn't how He made Man. He gave us free will so that we could choose to obey Him and seek His presence. By doing that, it gives Him even greater joy because we make that choice for ourselves.

If he desired for us to be conformed to His will at all costs, and simply "forced" us to conform to His will, all would be saved and none would perish. But it would make Him a liar since HE has said that we have free will and that we must choose. All would repent and there would be no sin in the world any more because He would simply cause it all to happen, but that is not His will for mankind, to be conformed by His might, but by His love, which He offers and we are free to accept or reject.

I'm not saying God can't change her husband. On the contrary, I believe that He can. I also believe that the consequences of His actions need to be owned up to by him before God can even begin to work in his life. God does not shield us from the consequences of our actions, but rather lets those consequences show us the error of our thinking.

The word "repent" literally means "to have a second thought" or "to think again" and implies a change in the way we think and believe. It means to stop following our own way and begin to consider that the devil's lie that we can be like God to ourselves, deciding what is right and what is wrong, is not true, but that we can only give that decision to the One who rightfully has that authority, our Maker, the God of the universe.

So God's goal is to change the way a person thinks, rather than simply to change their actions. He could force the issue by causing circumstances to never exist that would let us be tempted and thus prevent us from ever sinning, but that isn't the way He works in our lives. Instead He allows us to suffer the consequences of our choices and in so doing allows others to suffer as well in some cases until such time as we come to the end of ourselves and turn our back on our own selfishness and toward His will for us.

But because He does not wish to see others suffer for our sins, He generally gives those others an option of not having to be continually hurt by our choices and in the case of continued adultery and I believe other marital unfaithfulness He leaves open the option of termination of the marriage since He does not desire for the abandoned and abused spouse to continue to suffer while He awaits the adulterous spouse coming to a decision to follow Him.

It is even possible to reconcile after a divorce, once changes have taken effect in the adulterer's heart and mind.

But at the same time, I think that if it is a matter of further "training" of the wayward spouse that is required to make the marriage safe for the betrayed spouse, then separation might be required until such time as the wayward spouse undergoes those changes.

What is at stake here is that the marriage is important, but the life and well being of the wife, in this case, Moonlight_Flower, is equally important. And the reason changes are not being made by her husband is because he has been shielded from the consequences of his choices and actions. Until he suffers some of those consequences, he does not have to change because he can have his cake and eat it too. He does not have a problem at all. The problem is his wife's and what needs to happen is for people to help her to help him have a problem so that he can address it.

And while it would be nice for us all to have sufficient faith to say to a mountain "be gone" and have it removed from our path, not everyone has that kind of faith, and God does not demand it from us. It is because He knew that we do not all have that kind of faith that Jesus gives us His exception clause in MATT 19:9.

If you would like to debate this further, feel free to email me (addy is in my profile).

What we have here is a case of Moonlight_Flower's husband saying he wants the marriage to continue, but he is not willing to make any changes in himself that would make her want to stay married. My recommendation would be to separate until such time as his actions line up with his words. Even that might not tip the scales and cause him to do anything beyond saying he is promising to change without doing anything at all to bring about those changes. In that case, it might be necessary to actually file for divorce and let him see that his actions have consequences and those consequence include the very real possibility of losing his family.

But more to the point, while I too would like to see this lady work on her marriage and her husband come to the point where he turns his life around, gives it all to God and becomes the man and husband that God expects him to be, I do not think she must go through the hard work of recovery until he has shown remorse, repentance and a willingness to actually fix what is wrong with him so that he can become the husband she needs rather than an immature selfish child that can't keep himself out of trouble and expects his wife to stand by and let him do it. Real recovery is one of the hardest things there is to do, IMO and that is why I believe Jesus grants us the exception in the case of ongoing, unrepentant marital unfaithfulness.

Mark

Sometimes, retreat is the best way to survive to fight another day.

I'm willing to bet that anyone who's been on MB for more than a month, and files divorce didn't abanndon their marriage. They either didn't have a marriage to begin with, or their partner left it first.

Peronsally, I hated to admit I made a mistake. I used to hope I'd get a call from the police telling me my then H had a car wreck and was dead. Not all the praying in the world could make me feel differently. The marriage was a HUGE HORRIBLE mistake I made. God sent me all the signs in the world that I should put it off, and I went ahead. My marriage went down hill after about the third month. Downhill fast. It was never a realy partnership, or a joining of two. To continue to stick it out would have meant one of us ended up dead or I ended up in the insane assylm. Not good for either of us and certainly not for the children.

i also think it is a bad example to set for your children to stay with someone who is cheating, etc.. and is not willing to stop. you are sending the message that #1 cheating is fine in a marriage and #2 that it is ok to put up with it.

i made darn sure my kids know what their father did was WRONG and against god's plan for marriage. they saw me do the best i could and they saw me try. they also saw me cry and hurt and be in pain. they saw what the infidelity did to me and to us as a family. they have told me already, at the age of 10, that they would never want to do that to their families when they get married. i think we must be very careful what we teach our children and how we teach it.

mlhb