This is my first time posting but i have been reading for about 2 months now and first of all I'd like to say how i truly feel that God has led me to this place, where prayers are being answered and intercession is taking place. You all are so warm and kind and it shows how much you care for one another..God is good..all the time! I'm 24 years old, and this is my second marriage... My questions is this...Is it God's will for me to make my current marriage work if this was a marriage that came about as the result of an affair. I was previously married and started an affair with my now husband, however my ex-husband is still hoping for a reconciliation, He is a good man and honestly I still don't know the reason why I did what I did, What I do know is that my ex-husband and I were best friends before we got married, and there was never any real physical atraction towards him, I guess i married him becuz we were the best of friends and my family loved him and he had always been there for me but I was never "in love" with him.. I'm very much in love with my new husband however I find myself sometimes wishing he had the good qualities of my first husband such as being sensitive, unselfish, giving and considerate, and I hate that when my husband and I get into our little arguments I find myself wishing I could talk to my first husband, and he could make it all better. The other day my hsuband and I got into a really bad argument and I said I was leaving so I started packing my bags and he just laid there (it was around 9:00am) and tried to go back to bed, didnt even try to talk with me or work it out and it just made me feel like i made a big mistake marrying this man who can be so cold sometimes... well i didn't leave, i wasn't going to let the devil get the satisfaction but i did call my exhusband, he basically said that I needed to stop comparing and accept whoever I was with for the way that they were..He also said he still loves me and will wait for me forever. He cried and begged me to come back "home".. he knows i'm with the man that i cheated on him with, what he doesnt know is that we are now married, this would kill him. This is so hard sometimes, there are alot of details I'm leaving out but i would be typing forever. I love my husband now and I really want to be with him and make this work, but will God bless this marriage or is he angry for marrying this man..does he want me to reconcile with my ex-husband... I'm so confused and i'm a new christian so i'm not real sure on how the Bible clarifies this.. Thanks in advance for all your prayers and replies... Please know that I have realized i made mistakes and my life has been messed up becuz of that but I believe God has forgiven me and no matter what happens, all i ever want to do is His will, I want to be a good wife but this emotional rollercoaster ride has me anxious to go "home" and be with my Lord and savior forever, which is my true reward anyway..God be with you, grant you peace and i'm praying for all of you

I don't have a quick answer but I will pray for you to be enlightened. I believe you have to love a person's soul and the rest can come. It sounds like your first husband is a great man.<P>The important thing is to read the Bible and go to church. Surround yourself with Christian friends so the Lord can reveal His will through them as well. Does your current husband try to prevent you from praying or reading the Bible?<P>What I know from the Bible is that you commit adultery when you get married the second time. So I would think you were better off with your first husband. God will lead you though. Read the Gospel of John. You have come very far, it sounds like - don't be anxious. Just keep praying and pray for your will to be His will and it will all be clear and relatively easy for you then.<P>Jesus, please enlighten Brency as she walks ever closer to Your Sacred Heart. She needs You and Your forgiveness covers her today.Your mercy is forever. Lead her to do Your will in this and in all things. I ask this through Your Holy Name, Jesus Christ of Nazareth, Son of the Living God and Savior to all. Amen.

Trying, thanks so much for your words of wisdom, My first H was a good man and as I said, there really wasn't any real reason for the affair. My ex-H and I had just moved to his hometown about 8 hours from my friends and family and I was really homesick and lonely. I guess i kind of felt like he wasn't being sensitive becuz he would hang out with his friends or family (his mother abhorred me!) so I would just stay home and cry and feel sorry for myself I guess, until I met my new H at work,..He made me laugh and forget all my sorrows and I think that is when Satan snuck his way into destroying my marriage and before I knew it, I was in a mess...My ex-H never had a real relationship with God but all his ways were good, he was honest, faithful, so giving..My current H talks about being a preacher and since we've gotten involved in our church he has become like a sponge soaking up the Word and I'm so very proud of him, although sometimes he can avert to his old ways..he can be so cold and unaffectionate and insensitive, I shouldn't be surprised he was like that the whole time we dated but I guess i believed in him becuz I knew deep down he meant well. He says alot has to do with his childhood (both parents passed away when he was 7) and going from foster home to foster home made him be the way he is today..He calls it "survival" i call it "plain cold hearted". I ask that you pray for my patience and that no matter what happens in my life, I want God to be glorified...Sometimes I have the attitude.."who cares what happens in this life or who loves you or who doesn't, your real reward is in heaven so do what you have to do to get there!"...I want you to know, trying, that I'm praying for you and reconcilation between you and your husband..may God bring your husband back to the companion of his youth (you) and may he despise evil and refrain from even the looks of evil or temptation..may it be like ashes in his mouth. Did your husband move out? I want you to know I sympathize with you..I read the problems on this forum and I'm so blessed becuz my husband is faithful (i believe) and he is still at home and he sometimes tells me he loves me and for the mostpart he's a good man, and I'm still whining like a baby, maybe i ask for too much..Forgive me. Just know that the evil that has taken place in your marriage is NOT God's will for your life and he can and will restore it..prayers always for you and your family

This is my first time posting but i wanted to suggest a book to you that might help its called Help Me I am Married by Jocye Meyers. God Bless and just trust in him and he will show you the way.

Brency, under the circumstance's it sounds like you have a wonderful ex husband and have confused being in love with being in lust with your second. Ive been seperated for 3 years and this is my wife;s second marriage, and she had an affair with me, so im not going to judge you. However my wifes ex was not a christian and didnt care weather she left or not and he got immediatly remarried. My wife and i married soon after. Ive payed for my sin dearly. Ive reaped what ive sewn but the Lord is full of grace and mercy and can now restore. But here's what ive learned along the way. My wife and i are in Love again in ways i cant explain, and not like it ever was before. Ive have stood and prayed for our marriage to be restored for 3 years now and my wife fought me and at time's hated me along the way. She also had many affairs. and God has honored my tears and prayers and is restoring us and we are on our way to getting back together. She's in a treatment home for drugs and mental illness right now. I believe if a christian mate trusts and believe's God will restore a marriage, Gods going to restore that marriage and i dont believe He can honor the second, under those circumstance's. It sounds like the Lord is already doing His work in you. You dont feel much peace in this marriage it sounds like. As far as being in love with your first marriage, i believe God is going to change that. If you find your second marriage getting worse and the holy spirit is telling you something, as it seems by you reaching out here, then the Lord will direct you and give you the strenth to make the right descion according to his will and plan for your life. Sometime's its so hard to listen to the Lord, when we are not living as we should. Go somewhere alone and really pray hard to the Lord, and ask him that you are willing to hear the truth and repent no matter what the outcome is, and when you hear the answer, you will find peace, although things may not look like you would want them too. I hope this helps you. I pray the Lord gives you a heart to hear His voice and the wisdom to act according to what He is telling you, and the strenth to carry it out. In Jesus Name, Amen<BR>Mark

Mark, thanks for your reply, you are confirming things that I have felt in my spirit but was unsure..should I divorce my husband and reconcile with my ex-H??? I thought 2 wrongs don't make a right?..So much has taken place and the wounds i have inflicted on my ex-h are deep..and his family now hates me (they are aware of my affair)..My ex-H and I are still really great friends and there was a time when we separated my ex moved back in with his mother and I went by there to take him some of his belongings and still literally attacked me with a bat and broke windows in my car and threatened my life, said "she would go to her grave before her son and i ever get back together" what really hurt is that my ex- really didn't defend me...he is sooo terrified of his mother and has always been a "mama's boy" and she has always had a problem with me. after all this had blown over i asked him about why he didn't really do anything to stop her and he said it was a respect issue..she was still his mother. Now i wasnt asking that he physically attack her and curse her just to, look what goes on between my wife (we were still married) and I is our business, we're adults and we will handle this between ourselves..anyway, I tell him that would be one of the reasons it would never work between he and I.. he said that is an excuse I hide behind, maybe he's right..Also when he and i were together, we used to do drugs (cocaine) together and we never even talked about getting to know or have a relationship with God, yet despite his drug use, he was still a wonderful husband, never cheated, never abused me in any way, in fact he spoiled me tremendously, didnt want me to do anything, cook, clean, and at first i thought "how sweet" but tehn i started feeling, "well what am I here for if i can't perform the "wifely duties" and i felt like i wasn't needed. He later said that he didnt marry me becuz he wanted a maid and it didnt bother him that i didnt do these things, he was very much happily married to me. after the affair, he acted out his anger and hurt violently, he did become physically abusive, raped me, made me walk out in broad daylight with no clothes on, and wrote obsence words all over my car with black marker.. at first i hated him for this, then i realized he was never like this when were together and was just acting out his hurt, he would never physically harm me, just becuz. There are so many other things, at one time he arranged a meeting with my new husband (my lover at the time) and they both went out for drinks like best friends, he said if he was going to lose me, he wanted to at least meet the guy who would take his wife away from him. I thought, this is crazy!, later he said, my "lover" was fake and didnt really love me, he could tell by the conversation, who knows what was discussed. ..Mark, you are right, it started out as lust between my H and I, but as we got to know each other, there were things Iliked about him, like his desire to know the Lord intimately, the fact that he has never abused me or called me names and trust me there were times I have pushed his buttons but he has kept his cool. When my H and I first started seeing each other, there were lots of lies, we were seeing each other for about 5 months when I realized he had a girlfriend he had been living with the past 2 years!!, That is a whole other story!.. but I have made a committment to him now and i believe I should honor the marriage now, i have learned my lesson about cheating and I never want to go thru that stuff again!. Also, my H has a 5 year old son, that i have grown so attached to, ( i don't have any children of my own) and I want to be a good example to this little boy who has seen his father go from woman to woman, I want to be stability to this child who loves me and I love him dearly!..I hate to talk all this negative becuz I believe this is a sin, but I just want the people on this forum to know waht I've been up against, its a battle...mark, i want to say I have read some of your posts and my heart goes out to you. You are a true prayer warrior and God will bless you.. Sometimes I like to remind myself, "who cares about who loves you or who doesnt love you here on earth" the true reward is in heaven anyway where My Jesus loves me more than I can ever imagine and teh things He has done just to get a message to me is a miracle..I love my Jesus today!, he is good all the time! and I rejoice in times of sorrow becuz it draws me closer to him.. He is Awesome!

sometimes we all struggle with our hearts and our heads, they pull us in different directions, but you need to take your hand off the door knob and realize that no matter how your marriage came about, it is a committment before God, there is no use looking back and wanting what you can't have. Deal with what you have today and stop looking over the fence and wanting the one you don't have, that is how this started, wanting something or someone else. <BR>

Dear Brecy, we do have similar situation in some ways. My wife has an evil mother and has had a hard time cutting the cord. She is really trying now. Her mother has got her in fear. Her mother hates me with a pasion and during our first seperation of 6 months my wife finally broke and wanted to come home. Her mother beat the hell out of her. Her mother has also threatened to put a hit out on me and i do take it seriously. My sister is no better. My sister has my son cause i asked for her helpand made her guardian when my wife went off the deap end and now my sister will stop at nothing to keep my son and is now trying to allinate him from me, but it wont work. He loves me and despises her and she gets angry over that. My sister is also now conspiring with my wifes mother againts me. My poor wife is just recovering from manic depression and meth abuse and is in a treatment home and just wants our family to be restored. She has turned her heart back to the Lord and me. I know what its like to have all of hell againts you. The devil hates families being restored and stops at nothing to prevent it as ive seen. I believe the Lord allows it to test us to see if we believe God can do the impossible as His word say He can and thats who He is. The God of the impossible. Nothing isto great for the Lord. You divorcing your now husband and returning to your ex isnt two wrongs. Its eliminating one and calling the other adultery, which the Lord will forgive you for. My story is a long and hard one, and yes there was a weak moment when i gave up and had a fiancee and was going to finally divorce. Then my wife shows up and and calls me from a treatment home, because she overdosed and almost died and she turned her heart back to the Lord and i left the woman i was with. I lost my job over that also, so it was Gods way of telling me i didnt trust him. I didnt think my wife would make it, seeing she became a junkie and was on a suicidal mission, but i keeped praying for her and was honest with the woman i was seeing, that i met at work. She asked me if i still loved my wife and i said yes, but i didnt think she would live to see another year. Manic depression and meth aabuse gives a person a 95% chance of ending up dead. Well i still keeped praying for my wife and the Lord heard my prayers. We have been seeing each other for 8 months now and we are in love with each other again and plan to allow God to restore our family. Still there are so many forces againts us, but im still going to trust in God to finish the work He started. My wife saidshe was glad we didnt divorce and we have been seperated for 3 years now. Even though we are still married neither one of us acknowleges it and we will remarry if only to rededicate our vows to start over and Gods way. I hope this helps. Your not alone.<BR>Mark

Testing Faith, I appreciate your recommendation, I hope to get this book by Joyce Meyers this weekend and dive straight into it, hopefully it can give me some insight and light on my situation, God bless you <P>Toni, out of most of the replys i received on this forum, you are probably the only one who sounds sure that I should stay committed to the marriage I am currently in. This makes my heart happy becuz I love my H and I guess I just really want the affirmation from people and most of all God that this is where I should be..Okay I'm sorry about the sins I have committed towards my ex-H, but I don't want to look in the past anymore. When I experience feelings of doubt about my current marriage, I tend to negotiate with God and say "...but God, my new H loves you and is so faithful to reading his bible and daily prayer and meditation with you and longs to be in your Will and feels he has a call to ministry, no, he is not as sensitive to my needs like my ex-H, but my ex-H did not even consider a relationship with God to be a priority..so I start saying "didnt you say, not to be unequally yoked with unbelievers..then at that time another scripture comes into my mind..If your husband or wife is an unbeliever but does not hinder you from having a relationship with God in any way, be patient with them for thru your salvation they are saved"....<P>Yesterday I left my window open to my car and I was getting off of work and walking to my car and on the drivers seat, there were 2 bags of pistachio nuts (my favorite snack) and I started to cry becuz I knew they were from my ex-H (he was always doing sweet romantic things like that) and yet, I wanted so badly for it to be a gift from my current H!..I told my H about this and he was really angry and said something to the effect of.."you're my wife but you will always be HIS wife"....I'm sure he said alot of things out of insecurity and when I talk to him about meeting my needs for affection and affirmation and conversation, he says "this is me, why can't you just accept me for me..or, "let God change me"...I hvae seen some improvements and I'm sure God is working in his life, the changes are evident and only God's changes are lasting. <BR>Anyways, I emailed my ex-H and let him know that I would always love and care for him becuz he has been so much to me and done so much for me, even still. but we could no longer communicate..I suggested he move on with his life becuz if he kept waiting for me, he would only end up being hurt by me, although now i never want to hurt him intentionally..It hurt so bad to speak with my ex becuz i hear the hurt in his voice and i know, i did that. How I want to make his pain go away, yet I know if he ever found someone else, the pain I would feel, becuz whoever she is would be a lucky woman. All I can do is pray that God surround my ex and just put peace and a renewed sense of hope for the future, to ease his pain and know that he is a wonderful man and has so much to offer the right person, i just don't beleive I'm that person...Right now my heart is heavy...<P>mark, How do you stay so strong? ...Faith..Hope...??? Do you still communicate with your ex-fiancee? did it hurt to let her go? even when you didn't know the outcome with you and your wife?..You are an inspiration and encouragement to me..thanks

Brecy, it takes more faith and strenth than i have to make it thru this. Thats why Im hidden in Christ. No i dont have any contact with ex girlfriend. It was very hard to break it off, and i asked God to help. God did help. I lost all love inside for her like overnight. No, i didnt have any guareentees my wife would come around or that things between us would turn around. My wife told me i shouldnt of left ex, yet was happy. My wife was unwilling to make a commitment up until 3 months ago when she told me that she didnt just love me, but without a doubt was totally in love with me. Im very much also in love with my wife. The bible says unequaly yoked with none believers, not believers. My wife is a believer. I was under the impression that your ex was a believer. Have you asked him if this situation has turned his heart to the Lord in a big way? It does to many people. I dont know Gods will for your life, and you are forgiven for your sins also. I think you need to really get on your knees and ask God what he wants you to do. You seem to be looking for answers from people and thats not good. People will tell you what you want to hear. God may or may not, but the outcome of Gods plans is always the best and gives him the most glory. I pray God gives you a clear direction and the wisdom to see what His will is for your life and direction. In Jesus name, Amen<BR>Mark

Hi Brency - <BR>I just wanted to tell you not to misunderstand my post. I don't know what is right for you (I don't know what's right for me, let alone anyone else!) <BR>From what I understand, it's best to stay with one husband, the first one. Each Christian denomination reads/interprets the Bible a different way. I don't know what your denomination is and what your beliefs are. I'm Catholic and we don't allow divorce; however, if the marriage is considered to be "illegal", it is considered not to have taken place: it's "annulled", as though it never existed. This can happen in a few defined circumstances. We believe that the Church was given the authority to forgive and to "hold bound". This includes the authority to teach and the authority to forgive sins in Jesus' name and the ability to give the sacraments (marriage, baptism, Holy Communion etc). (The authority was set forth in the Bible: "Peter, you are Rock and on this Rock I will build my Church" and "Whatever you hold loose on earth shall be loose in Heaven, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in Heaven.")<BR>What I am trying to get at is that according to my belief, the best authority is the Church. I can't interpret the Bible by myself because I don't know enough, to be honest. Even in my own case, I feel like I don't know enough to determine what to do under the circumstances. I talk to a priest who knows my situation and he gives me guidance. That's why I suggested you talk to someone - a minister would be good. The fact that your first husband isn't a believer does change things, I think, but again, I'm not an expert. I do pray for you and hope that you feel peace inside about whatever path you choose. The most important thing is that you are trying to obey the will of God and God sees that.<BR>Jesus, please help Brency to see clearly what it is You want for her. Help her desire to do Your will and make it easy for her, natural and easy. I ask this in Your Holy Name. Amen.

You are in a very difficult situation because you had an affair and are feeling guilty<P>The problem is how do you know you have not caught a sexually transmitted disease and can you imagine<BR>sleeping with your first husband after you have <BR>come into unity physically with this man<P>I think you must seek a minister and talk to him very seriously about this because you are hurt, your husband number 1 is hurt and husband number 2 is with you and hurting too<P>So professional counselling is the only answer<P>Go and find a minister put away your guilt and <BR>find professional guidance<P>You need a human being to talk to<P>Advice in columns are nice and comforting but your need needs to be handled by a minister who can focus on you and your problem and bring it right so you can be in Union with God and in the light of His Will which is so important<P>Carol<BR>