We are examining problems in the marriage bed in this series, and today we will touch on the results of the unfaithful husband. The saying goes, “Hell hath no fury as a woman scorned!” I believe it also applies to a woman whose husband has cheated on her. In Bible times infidelity was punished by stoning, these days it is punished by other means: divorce, bitterness, revenge, hatred just to name a few. To complicate matters, being unfaithful is no longer restricted to the actual act of adultery; it is applied to the husband who engages in masturbation while viewing computer or video pornography, goes to strip clubs, has lap dances, hires exotic dancers and so on. As the ability to access immoral material and immoral people increases so do the chances that a spouse will be “unfaithful” in this manner.
When a wife finds out her husband has been involved in porneia (sexual immorality including harlotry [including adultery and incest]; figuratively idolatry:—fornication[1]) it affects her to her very core.
Some men do not understand the depths of pain they have caused their wives by their use of pornography. Here are some things women have said when they discovered the secret:
“Why does he want to look at other women? Am I not enough for him?”
“I have always tried to be a good wife and not deny him sex. Why would he do this to me?”
“I feel so used. How many times has he had ‘her’ in his mind when I thought he was making love to me?”
“I am embarrassed at my body now. I can’t compete with those women on the screen.”
“Is that what he wants?”
“I am inadequate as a woman.”
“When I think of how I opened myself up to him, giving him my all and holding nothing back…to know now that he has been using pornography behind my back…I am speechless with grief and humiliation.”
I have heard it enough to know that no matter how much a man tries to assure his wife that she is not the problem or the reason he views porn, telling her that it is not her, that he is not comparing her to those people on the screen or in the magazine, she is very hard pressed to believe him.
Ladies, as much as he may want to minimize viewing porn he cannot right now because he is enslaved. And I know that to you it is equal with literal adultery. He is watching others in the sex act and to some degree he is participating in those things – if only in his mind. Wives knows that their husband watches it to become aroused and thinks, “Why doesn’t he watch me and become aroused?” She knows he watches it for sexual gratification and thinks, “Why isn’t my body enough to satisfy him?” She may be aware of the perverse nature of the sexual acts people do in pornography, the world where literally anything goes and she wonders, “Does he really want those kinds of things?” She feels inadequate as a woman and a wife, and she knows that she can never righteously do most of what goes on in pornography, and nor does she want to.
She feels he has betrayed her and sometimes women think her husband has violated the marriage covenant and asks church leaders for permission for a divorce.
If a husband has a literal affair with another woman many of these responses are the same- hurt, betrayed, angry etc.
Both of these means of unfaithfulness carry a heavy burden.