My world was rocked when my husband began an affair with a married woman. Clearly both parties lack morals and a relationship with the Lord. After years of standing for my marriage (and the built their financial nest egg) they both filed for divorce.
She has never had children, we have 4 small children.
She is moving to our state in 2 weeks, they bought their dream home, and my children will spend 50% of their lives in a house of sin.
I don't know if they will marry and if I hear one more time that it won't last I think I will lose my mind. He spent 4 years lying about her and gaslighting me - telling me I was the crazy one and there was no affair.
Logically I want to trust the statistics and think they will implode and my children will be free from watching this lifestyle, but emotionally I feel if they made it 4 years, she is relocating to a new state and they took on a mortgage together... maybe this is the real thing. Can anyone share wisdom or experiences?
Its petty I realize, but I'm weary of suffering all the consequences for their sins and it would recharge my soul to see them having natural consequences at some point.

Hello How, welcome to Marriage Builders. Yes, it is a "real thing," as you can see. All affairs are very real. The question is if they last or not. About 95% don't last longer than 5 years, but 5% do. Even so, you are not a statistic, but a very real human being and you have to make decisions based on the reality of your own life.

Is this your husbands first affair? You said he carried on this affair for 4 years. How did that happen? Does he have traveling job? Was the affair ever exposed to both families?

Affairs thrive on secrecy, so the longer an affair is kept secret, the more likely it is to thrive and grow.[as you have learned the hard way] This is why we advocate a) snooping to find the truth and b) exposing the affair as early as possible. Exposure sometimes immediately ends affairs and if not, will hasten it's death.

Exposure will help you a great deal. The crack house is not quite so much fun when everyone you grew up respecting comes to watch in horror.

You're already watching the worst consequences possible. An affairage in the crack house. It doesn't actually help to watch.

As for your children, exposure will help there too. You're right that contact with infidelity is concerning for them, but you are capable of guiding them on the rights of the matter. Don't cover this up for them, let them know it's wrong and let them know the dangers of infidelity can prey even on people they love or respect, like their father.

Children who've been exposed to infidelity with guidance are actually more armoured from infidelity in the future. Like Dr Harley himself. There are people like me, who have no infidelity in my past at all who were simply unprepared and unaware of what it looks like. And there are the many who had affairs normalised for them, who become wayward themselves.

Dr Harley says: "My experience with the positive outcomes of hundreds of families where an affair has been exposed to children has led me to encourage a betrayed spouse not to fear such exposure. In fact, to mislead children, giving other false explanations as to why their parents are not getting along, causes children to be very confused. When they finally discover the truth, it sets an example to children that dishonesty is sometimes acceptable, making them the judge of when that might occur."


Try this article:
Infidelity the lessons children learn:
https://www.marriagebuilders.com/graphic/mbi8112_lesson.html



Also check out the step by step guide written by Melody Lane:
http://forum.marriagebuilders.com/ubbt/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=2566583#Post2566583