To forgive yourself for ruining your marriage, follow these steps: 1) Be determined to start a journey of self-love and find peace and forgiveness. 2) Acknowledge that what you did is wrong. 3) Find the real reason behind your mistakes. 4) Learn from your mistakes. 5) Make amends then move on and never look back. 6) Take responsibility for your actions. 7) Speak using “I” statements. 8) Increase communication with your staff. 7) Self-forgiveness may increase relationship satisfaction for both partners. 8) Seek support from friends, family, or therapy to aid in the process of forgiving yourself. 9) Forgive yourself for having an affair. 10) Don’t treat your husband as the culprit every step of the way. 10) While forgiveness may help others, it first and foremost can help you. 7) Write down three ways negative emotions have impacted your marriage. 8) Be aware of negative emotions that you have not yet processed.
📹 I Destroyed My Marriage (Can I Forgive Myself?)
I Destroyed My Marriage (Can I Forgive Myself?) Send John your questions. Leave a voicemail at 844-693-3291 or email …
What is the root cause of resentment?
Causes resentment. Resentment can come from being treated unfairly or humiliated. Common sources of resentment include being publicly humiliated, feeling like an object of regular discrimination, feeling used or taken advantage of, having achievements go unrecognized, and feeling envy or jealousy. Resentment can also come from other people hurting you. This can be emotional rejection, deliberate embarrassment, ignorance, putting you down, or scorn. Resentment can develop and be maintained by focusing on past grievances or trying to justify the emotion. Thus, resentment can occur as a result of the grief process and can be sustained by ruminating. Resentment has good and bad sides.
How do you move on when you can’t forgive?
If you’re having trouble forgiving someone, practice self-compassion instead of being hard on yourself. It’s normal to struggle, but you can get better at forgiving by forgiving regularly. It’s not as hard as you think. Forgiveness can help you move on with your life. When someone wrongs you, you might feel you’ll never get over it. Even after you calm down, you might still think about the betrayal. This is normal. Not forgiving can hurt you more.
What is something you could never forgive in a relationship?
Don’t forgive someone who has hurt you physically. If your partner has hit, kicked, slapped, or punched you, leave and never go back. If they did it once, they’ll do it again. Next time, they might hit you harder and you might end up in the hospital with a broken bone or worse.
Anything that hurts you counts as abuse. You should never put up with it, even if you love this person. It’s hard to leave an abuser, but you need to do it for yourself. If you’re being abused, remember it’s not your fault. You don’t deserve to be punched. You deserve a healthy relationship.
What are the 5 R’s of forgiveness?
So, responsibility, regret, repentance, reconcile, restitution. I’ve thought a lot about forgiveness. I have thought about the people I have hurt. I’ve thought about when I haven’t forgiven myself. Maybe it’s because I was raised Christian, I try to understand forgiveness and how to accept forgiveness from others. I believe in a God who forgives, and I accept it, but I still wonder if I deserve it.
Do feelings of resentment go away?
If you asked me if it’s possible to rebuild empathy in your relationship, even when resentment is present, I’d say yes. If you asked me if there are ways to rebuild the empathic bond in your relationship, I would say yes. Yes, you can try. If you want to know if it’s possible, you have to try. If you don’t address resentment, it won’t go away. Resentment is like cancer. It spreads and makes it hard for a healthy relationship to survive. What should I do? Couples should set an intention to rebuild empathy in their relationship. This helps to start with a conscious decision. You might want to deepen intimacy or trust, or maybe just ease resentment. The intention can be different, but it’s important to agree on a desire and be willing to address the issue. Sometimes one partner is not willing to set such an intention because of resentment. Even if that’s the case, you can set an intention on your own. It won’t be ideal, but it can still bring positive results. Once you’ve set an intention, I suggest making a deal to start fresh in your relationship. You can make this a new anniversary, the day you started again without the past. Mark this restart date in some way that makes it real and sacred. A restart date means you’re starting over. When you express your feelings to your partner, they matter because they exist, not because of something that happened in the past. Pressing the restart button means you start over. You are innocent and entitled to kindness and support. This one step can open a new field for meeting, loving, and taking care of each other.
How to forgive yourself when you messed up in your relationship?
To forgive yourself, do: Forgiveness is letting go of anger, resentment, and wanting revenge against someone who wronged you. You may be generous in forgiving others, but harder on yourself. Everyone makes mistakes, but it’s important to learn from them, forgive yourself, and move on. Learn why self-forgiveness is good for you and how to do it.
Forgiving Yourself. Self-forgiveness isn’t about letting yourself off the hook. Forgiveness doesn’t mean you’re condoning the behavior. To forgive yourself, you should:
What is the golden rule of forgiveness?
Forgiveness is the golden rule (Matt. 7:12). Forgive even if it’s repeated. Peter asks Jesus, “Lord, how many times can I forgive my brother?” Up to seven times? Jesus said, “I don’t say up to seven times, but up to seventy times seven.” Jesus forgave those who crucified him, but they were not forgiven until they repented (Luke 23:34; Acts 2:36-39). If someone won’t repent, they are to be regarded as a heathen and a tax collector (Matt. 18:15-17).
What are the 4 R’s of self forgiveness?
Take responsibility. Accept what happened and be kind to yourself. Guilt and remorse can help you change your behavior. Restoration: Forgive yourself and others. Learn from the experience and grow.
We provide support. Bilal got in touch because he felt guilty about drinking alcohol to cope with some difficult news and his depression. He tried to reconnect with his faith but felt unworthy of forgiveness. We talked with Bilal about his feelings and how he could stop feeling guilty and depressed. We suggested he do things he enjoys to improve his wellbeing. We also helped Bilal find a counselor for his depression. Forgiving yourself and getting the support you need is a vital step in moving forward. Like many people we talk to, Bilal told us it was freeing to talk to someone else for the first time. We helped Bilal by listening to him and not imposing our beliefs on him. This helped him to explore his emotions and find solutions that worked for him.
How to forgive yourself for being a homewrecker?
Forgive yourself for ruining a relationship. Fix what you can. … Apologize. Take your time. Think positively. … Talk about it. … Be honest. … Let go. … You have to accept it. Why is forgiving yourself important in a breakup? What can you do to forgive yourself and move on? 15 ways to forgive yourself for ruining a relationship.
How to let go of resentment and forgive?
If you’re stuck, practice empathy. … Think about why the other person acted the way they did. … Think about when others have forgiven you. Write in a journal, pray, or use guided meditation. … Forgiveness is a process. Has anyone not been hurt by someone else? Maybe your parents criticized you, a colleague ruined a project, or your partner had an affair. Or maybe you’ve been abused by someone close to you. These wounds can make you feel angry, bitter, or resentful. But if you keep that pain, you’ll suffer the most. Forgiveness brings peace and hope. Forgiveness can lead to physical, emotional, and spiritual well-being. What is forgiveness? Forgiveness means different things to different people. Forgiveness means letting go of resentment and anger.
Does forgiveness mean letting go?
Forgiveness means letting go of negative feelings. It doesn’t mean you have to be OK with what happened. Forgiveness means moving on and letting go of pain. Your idea of forgiveness is influenced by your religion, culture, and moral code, as well as your life experiences and mental health. You can practice forgiveness in many ways. One is the REACH method, developed by Everett Worthington, a researcher on forgiveness.
What are the 4 types of forgiveness?
There are four kinds of forgiveness: divine, religious, social, and self-forgiveness. These are all connected and needed for a full experience of forgiveness.
📹 How can I forgive myself for ruining my Marriage????
Intro …
I can understand feeling overwhelmed to a degree that fits this description, but there is NO chance this person was working two full-time jobs AND homeschooling a special needs child AND doing all of the housemaking AND having multiple affairs at work conferences. There are not enough hours in the day.
She was volunteering “everywhere”🤦🏼♀️ Zero accountability. And when she said that the guy wasn’t married. I guarantee all three were married. I have no respect for a woman that cheats when she knows the man has a wife. It is the worst in the world to be on the other end of that. My husband did it to me three years ago and to say I was devastated is an understatement.
I’m married, and I take my vows as serious as one could – to commit adultery three times is a bad person. One time can be called a mistake, at your lowest and you gave in to temptation. To do it twice more after that screams pleasure-seeker, dishonest and self-centered and someone who shouldn’t have entertained a marriage. This isn’t holier than thou talk either – I firmly believe divorce is much better than forever scarring your partner.
She sounds very narcissistic and maybe worse. I can tell by how she speaks to John that she’s a seductress. She uses her sexual prowess to get her way. She’s trying to charm John, she hasn’t taken a breath during her explanation of excuse making, and I personally find her to be really annoying like she’s trying to fool me and con me into something. She doesn’t feel sincere to me at all. I feel like this call is just somehow part of her manipulation tactics. This woman needs to stay away from men period.
I just listened to 20 minutes of this and I already know this woman is not only in denial that her whole life is in shambles but I also believe that she knows automatically that the man that she’s currently with is also going to leave her for somebody else. You know the old saying the way you get them is the way you’re losing. Not to mention that she already knows and it’s probably petrified of the fact that she’s about to be a single mom of two children one of them is potentially special needs or both of them are potentially special needs and working two full-time jobs being a homeschool teacher and I guarantee it within 2 years she’s going to be so burned out that her ex husband it’s going to take her to court before custody. Another thing that people don’t want to have a conversation about is how she really just checked out when things got hard think about it she’s working two full-time jobs he’s working a full-time job she’s homeschooling the kids and I guarantee it she didn’t want to give up those two full-time jobs and more. She could easily gave up one of her the full-time jobs went to counseling went to therapy and tried to make the marriage work before she started cheating. But she wanted to take the easy way out and it ended up burning her in the tail big time. There’s also a part of me that feels like she wants to get back with her ex husband my question is are they still legally married or are they divorced especially since she left him to be with the other dude. You can hear it in her voice that she knows that she wants somebody to say what she did was not okay but it was reason enough for her to learn from it and move on as if it never happened.
Wowzers! I was Sherry! I totally messed up and went and did a similar thing for similar reasons. It was a super long journey with some really bad stuff that happened, but here were my takeaways: God saw all of it and I couldn’t hide God brought me back to him and forgave me, even when I felt unforgivable! (He’s amazing! ) He punished me severely, but not as much as I deserved. I felt his grace as he slowly brought me back! I was a coward: I stepped out of the marriage instead of bring the meeting to order and confronting the terrible things that were going on. When you cheat, it’s like twisting the knife. People have a lot of emotions that come up when they see someone going through a marriage break up, (we all have some kind of experience with this) and they all tend to come out. Don’t assume your situation is the same as everyone else’s. Cheating makes you feel SUPER guilty. There’s hope and healing when you turn to God and repent. Yes, I’m a bad person, but God redeemed me. And he can redeem you as well.
Affairs take lots of planning, lies, and gaslighting. I’m guessing once she crossed that line it was easier for her to continue the behavior. If she doesn’t take responsibility she will continue this behavior in her next relationship. I hope she isn’t one of those people that never take responsibility up into her older years. She needs to realize that what she did was no one’s fault but her own. Affairs aren’t mistakes.
Wow she is a TERRIBLE person. I couldn’t even imagine not having one….not two….but three affairs and then acting like a child and blaming everyone and everything else for my actions. I feel bad for the person she’s with now, she’s probably going to cheat on him too, and the poor children affected by her actions.
I can definitely sympathize with the situation. I was in a marriage almost like this. I had to work two, sometimes three, jobs because my ex-husband basically refused to earn a living. And we had a son who had special needs like the caller. Despite this I had to do all the work around the house and everything else. He just refused to be present and refused to take any responsibility. And I admit I thought about cheating all the time. I never went through with it though. I felt (and still do feel) unappreciated and unloved. I never did it but I still feel guilt to the state even about the thought of it. I understand what they mean about feeling alive. I did feel dead inside. Still do a bit.
Here’s how karma works, she will meet the ‘love of her life’ and karma will come, and ask for interest. Marriage is a sacred covenant and just because you’re overwhelmed with life, it’s not an excuse to cheat on your partner. Lastly, cheating is a process and a choice, meaning the time you’re given to deceive, should be used to communicate and reconnect with your partner. No excuse.
I am glad for your intuitiveness during this call, John. Ironically, just as Sherri found a fantasy in online conversations, we can put on an illusion during a 15 minute phone call with someone we don’t know or have never spoken to. Everyone’s feelings are valid from what I’ve seen, but that doesn’t fully explain gaps in understanding we don’t have.
This was a very good call, though I have never been there as our caller but I do understand the situations. Sometimes as humans we are just 1 to 2 steps away of doing things we think we will never do if we don’t take active continuous steps to ensure it does not happen. I do not condemn this caller at all. I greif for those hurt by bad decisions but Dr delony did great in identifying the important of taking ownership of the bad decision and being honest with yourself. I have found that as humans we like to be dillusional in out thinking. Great call. Life is like that
I’m not throwing rocks. God have mercy for all the heartbreak that all of our mistakes cost. I hope you can own your past in your letter, and feel those hard feelings, but only hold on tightly to the feelings of Honesty, of Hope for a better life, of Conviction to change. It’s hard to do the right thing but it’s worth the fight. God help us all fight for what’s right, and live in grace, and integrity, and peace.
I want to start out by saying that I appreciate Delony’s ability to have and show empathy. As a new fan of his show and listening to a lot of the past YT vids, I’m having a bad feeling about how easy it is for him to have “the hard direct in your face” talk with men vs women. I can just imagine this caller as a guy “I’ve been busting my balls insanely busy, my wife and I had all these active plans and she just stopped caring about them, I’m a super dad with a hand in everything, I didn’t feel cared for at home at all anymore, etc, and these aren’t excuses its just explaining the buildup and then I had 3 affairs”. What would Delony’s response be to him? It would have been the same message “you need to take accountability and ownership over what you did and start new”, but it would’ve come with the heat needed for the caller to get the point. I understand that its easier to get down and dirty with our brothers to drive a point home, but our sisters need that same energy, too.
I hate when a cheater minimizes the damage of their behaviour to their spouse … say what you did and say how sorry you are to the people you hurt … stop finding excuses for why you cheated … you lacked integrity and character you screwed up now make amends and get some professional help so you know what went wrong … infidelity destroys families 😡😡😡
Wait if she was literally doing all of those things cooking, cleaning the whole house, kids, car maintenance, AND volunteering how the heck did she have the time to cheat in the first place 😐? Like dang, does she have more hours in the day then I do. (Edit: fix some terrible voice to text errors in the last sentence 😅)
I celebrate that Dr. Deloney understood her better than she took responsibility for herself in the beginning. I celebrate that Sherry gets to make these healthy changes, and a significant other that she speaks so well of, and I celebrate the generosity she’s received. Jesus still loves you. Thank you for sharing. Go and sin no more.
Cheating multiple times does not sneak up on you. Notice she said I had a lot of guy friends so I thought nothing of it. So you have to be mindful when you have a mate of having a lot of friends of the opposite sex, esp. if these aren’t best friends that you’ve known for years and you’ve never been intimate with, but just random dudes you meet and now label them as “friends”
Before I accepted God fully, I was confused, somewhat selfish, and incredibly insecure. I was vulnerable to many sins that I am fortified against now. The more I identify as a child of God, the better off I become. I am praying that this woman discovers her identity in Christ, too, so she can go forward and “sin no more”.
Cheating at all is bad. Cheating in your marriage is inexcusable… It’s one thing if things were not going well at home and you happen to make a connection with somebody outside of the home and make a mistake once. Or even just with one man… But to cheat with three people and then STILL have excuses. I feel like you just have to own it at that point… If you’re that unhappy with yourself or in your marriage, at that point you should just leave. For everyone’s sake
I’m glad John saw through her bullshit. Essentially she couldn’t handle the responsibilities of the relationship, got attention from some other dude which made her forget about her responsibilities and cheated. What’s worse is she’s going to do the exact same thing in her current relationship because she’s always needed male attention. She clarifies that fact when she said she’s always had male friends.
I found her feeling bad for what she done almost comical, and I have my reasons! Blame, blame, blame, except for herself! My ex done that to me. And from everything I hear, she has been miserable for many years, got to hate that! She thought she found a man with money, but then after I caught her and we divorced, she found out the dude was broke. All while I started my very successful businesses and life has been awesome. Even got a comment from her years ago, “if you had started your businesses earlier, we would have never split”, NO, “if you had not been doing other dudes, we would not have split up”! And of course, she ran around on the dude I caught her with!
Embrace the guilt. There is love for yourself and others there! Guilt is a loving guide—-not only there for AFTER mistakes but to stop you BEFORE mistakes in the future. Brain imaging shows this is the function of guilt—a guide that pops up BEFORE wrong actions (in the best case scenario)…. Other times, guilt happens AFTER a mistake and then if that guidance is taken to HEART, you won’t be repeating the error because it will pop up beforehand as a warning. Listen to guilt~It’s a loving guide to help you be better to yourself and others… Ignore shame that says you can’t change. It’s a liar that wants you to repeat your errors and never grow.
It all comes down to priorities. You can put in the time and effort to try to make your marriage better and fix what’s wrong or put it into flirting with someone else and make all your problems worse. As my grandmother once told me. Marriage isn’t 50/50. It’s 100/100. Both people have to put 100% of their effort into it to make it work.
I learned that the truth was i was the villian in my own story – and no matter how i tried to rationalize my choices they were my own . My personal truth was my best advice, my choices were my own and nothing done to me made me make them. Affairs happen because the feeling of new is exciting but old has accountability. Do not cheat -love and respect your partner
I pray she sees this but…Jesus died for your shame and guilt. Acknowledging our rebellion against God (Sin) and recognizing our need for God’s Grace and Forgiveness and turning away from our Sin. That is what true repentance is. You are not too far gone or “too bad” to have a relationship with God, but only through His Son Jesus Christ you are forgiven. Jesus is the true savior ! I pray for your healing journey and your relationship with God and thank you for being brave enough to come on here.
I am the LAST person to defend a cheater & agree she must take more accountability for her actions. There are 2 sides to every pancake. She is no victim – no doubt she contributed to the state of her bad marriage before the affair. And she is 100% responsible for cheating & needs to OWN it. You can NEVER be responsible for someone else’s sin. In the beginning of the call she did say she has guilt and shame for what she did. She is calling in to set herself straight and she is trying to become a better person. What she did is REALLY wrong but she is redeemable. God doesn’t like what she did but He still loves her because she is STILL His child. 💕
She will never be happy. She will never upgrade from her husband. Of course her affair partners gave her peace they didnt have to deal with her in the household. In my opinion he was too easy on her. Guaranteed her husband will remarry and she will become single. Once the honeymoon period ends she will feel the same way about her current partner we all know it. I love Delony but we need a bit more shame in our current society.
Flirting should be reserved for your spouse. It’s too easy to get into getting dopamine hits outside your marriage. Making your mind up that fidelity is all in, no funny business; dealing with the battle in your mind, stopping the fantasies has to do done mercilessly. Finding other healthy ways to bring joy, and get dopamine high other ways that don’t rip people’s souls out. Just guessing, but most likey she has cptsd perhaps SA and needs to get healing. It’s a fight worth fighting to get healing Making a commitment to Jesus is a good start. You really cheat yourself first when you do this.
I dealt with this stuff all the time on a professional level for over 40 years. I think Dr. John gave excellent advice IF she follows through and actually takes his advice. I’m doubting that she will. I think she has serious mental and emotional disorders. To jump from one affair to another affair almost immediately is not normal even for a serial cheater. Another thing that would be very interesting would be to examine the relationship she had with her father. My guess is that it was dreadful and a part of the reason that she can’t seem to get enough male attention. In psychology it’s often referred to as the “Daddy Complex”. This is also very often true of women who date and/or marry a man who is 10 years or more years older than them. I know of many women who haven’t dated a man close to their own age since their high school sweetheart. In every case of that I’ve dealt with the woman had a horrible relationship with her father.🤔
Listen to how she describes her new relationship. She just told on herself. She says she’s done a lot of bad things in her life, and this current guy has saved her. That’s basically code for her telling you that she was in one of her borderline manic cycles and finally feeling some type of shame or she got caught. I’m sorry, but how do you find “the one” during an affair? I can almost guarantee that she said this about every guy she’s ever been with. She uses men’s tendency to want to rescue a damsel in distress to her advantage. I know we aren’t supposed to diagnose people, but she screams borderline to me. I know this is my second comment but I really just don’t like this caller, and I don’t trust her. I wish John was harder on her.
I read some of these comments, and it makes my heart sad, I guess I expected more from listeners of this show, maybe a little more empathy. She admitted on air her mistakes, you can hear she’s broken and has lots of issues that she needs to work through. Until someone has lived her life, you can’t judge and bash her. The world is an ugly place, be nice.
Volunteering, 2 full time jobs, busy with kids, homeschooling, and has the time to meet men. Something is not adding up, and Dr. John must have noticed too since he didn’t go into his usual blame the husband thing. He actually said your husband will probably tell me you never listened to him and he checked out. Then the caller admitted the husband took the news of the cheating kindly. Yea lots of things going on in this story. My reaction to this call is that she doesn’t regret cheating at all but she now doesn’t know who she is b/c she thought she wouldn’t do that. I think she is afraid she will easily cheat again on this new guy she likes a-lot as soon as something does not go her way.
If the caller reads this…know that I heard you differently than most people in the comments. I heard you be honest, I heard you disappointed in yourself, I heard you own up. We’ve all made bad choices. It doesn’t define who you are… we learn and we move forward and not make those choices again. I hope you’ve found peace by now. ❤
Within 2 minutes, I knew she was lying. 2 full time jobs means 80 hours a week. And, yet she homeschooled her disabled child, and volunteered at her church??? And, she had multiple affairs? There are 24 hrs a day. That leaves 8 hours of her day to homeschool her child and to sleep, eat, cooking, take car in for repair, AND volunteer at her church, AND she has these affairs???🥴🥴🥴🥴🥴🤣🤣🤣🤣🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔
It’s easy to bash someone who cheats until you’re in the same situation and feel exactly what that person was feeling. Then when you mess up you actually get it. You understand how that person you thought was so bad got where they got to. It’s obvious she’s not proud of herself for what happened. I hope she can be free from that shame 💕
I understand she was overwhelmed by work, kids, housework, husband, and life problems, but I don’t understand the affairs part. If you stop loving your partner, talk about it, get divorced, heal yourself first, take time to process the divorce, and then you can look for a partner again. She cheated 3 times????? I’m sorry but I don’t understand. Instead of fixing her life, she was adding more problems, and she doesn’t take responsibility. She needs to grow up and go to counseling. She needs help.
She might have been running an MLM if she had time for 2 full-time jobs (80 hrs a week) and homeschooled 2 special needs kids. Not one but 2. And both are special needs. She gave reasons/excuses as to why she cheated. We werent connecting because i was too busy. She made time to be intimate with an affair partner despite the 2 fulltime jobs and homeschooling 2 special needs kids. She made the choice to be intimate with other men. I have guy friends and they stay guy friends because we respect each others boundaries. It seems she needed someone to believe in the fiction that she’s an overly hardworking mom. The husband knew better.
I love listening and learning from Dr. John but this is a good example of how vastly different John talks to his female and male callers. He handled her with kid gloves and let her continue on with the ‘reasons (more so excuses)’ as to why she was cheating. Being married, it was hard to listen to this woman. She did everything to excuse her behavior, while somehow saying, ‘it’s context.’ Another thing – she gave the great cop-out, ‘hard to trust myself,’ and John was in agreement with her in a way that was sympathetic. I understand, for some (including myself), men need stern, direct feedback. But, not always – sometimes we want a caring ear, not a drill instructor.
Wow! I don’t even know what to say. I’m speechless! So basically caller says she had multiple affairs committing adultery on her husband and she’s currently with one of those men she had affairs with but now she’s feeling guilt and wants to know how do she get over it. Someone please explain to me how I’m seeing this wrong.
The negative comments people have made are disgusting. Get off your high horses. Men cheat all the time and they don’t get half as much attack. Not to mention, they sure as heck don’t dwell on it years later. She has a moral compass, she has remorse and regret, and she is a child of God. People cheat for 2 reasons. 1) they genuinely done care. 2) unmet needs. She had heaps of unment needs, a completely disconnected husband, and enormous responsibilities. For all the people saying she was not being truthful about all the stuff she had going at the time – just because it’s not something you could handle, doesn’t mean it’s not true. You have no idea the amount a person can carry. I’ve seen it first hand, and also experienced it myself (minus the marriage and cheating). This show focuses on mental health and relationships. If you’re not here in support of those things, not here in support of the wellbeing and heart of others, then just go to another website and make your judgmental, negative, bullying comments there.
She doesn’t sound broken. She is in self justification mode. As a “Christian” she should know that she is in a state of adultery and secondly, there is no forgiveness without repentance. It’s going to get worse for her because her choices and mentality is unrepentant. She speaks about finding the strength to forgive herself. What about those she wronged and defrauded?
I think the best summary of why people cheat is I have seen is from Esther Perel. People build these lives that don’t really reflect what they want they are ‘this is what you are suppose to want’ lives. Then they look up and don’t like who they have become. So they cheat in order to become someone else. It sounds to me because all the things she was doing were the “right things”. Homeschooling, looking after her special needs child, volunteering at church – she afraid to say I didn’t want to do that. That sounds like a really difficult situation to be in.
The problem is living in the idea that some other person makes you alive other than Jesus Christ. Other people are very interesting, but they don’t complete me in the slightest. They make me better in some ways for sure, I enjoy them for sure. No one is necessary as tied as I am to them, and yet I will love them in my own way without needing their love.
I’m reading some of these comments and I’m getting disgusted because I think a lot of y’all missed the point. This woman is definitely not off the hook for everything she’s done and John even kindly called her out on not taking full ownership and accountability for what she’s done. In fact, the sad part about this story is that she became who she used to despise and got to see how it all played out. This is not about making excuses, this is about anyone being capable of making poor choices in unfortunate circumstances and carrying the weight of well-deserved guilt. She KNOWS exactly what she’s done and I’m not gonna make excuses for her behavior because yeah…she became the person she always hated and that’s a tough pill to swallow. In her defense, she is human like the rest of us and she CAN learn from this if she so chooses to. You can trash a person all day for their mistakes or I’d like to say poor choices, and shaming people left and right doesn’t always ignite the fire to change, in fact, it can make it worse. I think John did the right thing here and let her know that she still has power and that’s the power of choice. I’ve never been cheated on, but I do have a difficult person in my life that I’ve been struggling to love because of everything he’s done. The abuse was real and yet he refuses to take full accountability and it hurts that he won’t, however, to go on hating him is slowly turning me into a little monster. This is where boundaries come in with me and him. Things will never be the same because I see him for who he is and still choosing to be whether he’s conscious of it or not.
Really zero need to forgive herself at this point. Right now she needs to figure out why she did it and work on herself. And feel bad about what she did. Because she SHOULD feel bad about it. It’s OK to feel bad about doing something terrible. She’s with one of the guys now? Wtffff. She needs to end that now, immediately. Cut contact. And she needs to do some serious hard work on herself and stay single for a long, long time. She is full of excuses and justifications but really, SHE IS THE PROBLEM.
She complained about being too busy to have intimate communication with her husband, yet she found the time to invest with someone else. I am not trying to harshly judge, but pointing out a fact so we look at our own relationships and understand there is an avoidable slippery slope of justification. Remember the campaign “Have you hugged your kid today”? Have you hugged your spouse?
Her guilt is eating at her. That seems like justice. She broke her sacred vow. She knows she’s a bad person. On Top of that she’s delusional for thinking her current man is healthy for her. I really feel for her ex-husband. He seems like a really good person even after the fact. He deserves better. and he deserved better.
Honestly what that sounded like was a woman who is more concerned with what everyone thinks of her than she is worried about the damage she did to her family. Bet she told all her friends about this call to prove how sorry she is. I’ve listened to a bunch of his calls and many of them sounded genuinely sorry for their own behavior, she just sounds sorry for the consequences to herself.
Cheating is horrid. Yes it is but it’s horrible as a father and husband to leave EVERYTHING on your wife. She was a married single parent. ALL the Cooking, cleaning, laundry, home schooling, working and on top of all that having to care for special needs kids ALONE. Ive been in this situation where I was hospitalized, having break downs because I was overwhelmed. Constantly begging for help. He helped for a few days after i got out of the hospital and then back to a lazy bum. Then, if something breaks, she’s gotta figure that out. Ummm this dude was useless and worthless. I would have left this bum far before an affair.
I was cooking, cleaning, laundry, raising kids…. Yea lady, that’s just called LIFE. Almost everybody especially women and especially stay at home moms have to do that. Those are the bare minimum things. That’s just LIFE. You have a guilty conscience because you haven’t REPENTED. Repent of your sin. You chose to sin. YOU CHOSE THAT. Nobody made you cheat on your husband. No one held a gun to your head. It doesn’t matter how overwhelmed and stressed you were, as Christian’s were called to OBEY Gods word and their aren’t exceptions for sin. Now that doesn’t mean we don’t stumble and fall and make mistakes but to actively cheat on your spouse requires A LOT of premeditation. Your heart hasn’t been regenerated and I would even go as far as to you question your salvation because you don’t seem to understand the seriousness of your sin and what that fully entails. I really hope this person is no longer serving (at least for the time being) at their church and I hope and pray she experienced true salvation and sanctification, instead of playing the “homeschool Christian, volunteer mom” act. It’s all an act.
“I had too much on my plate” … so you decide to invest massive amounts of time and energy towards scheming and cheating? Huh? “It was refreshing to have someone to relax with” … like you could have with your husband? If this woman had spent all that time communicating in her marriage, she might’ve still been a wife to this day. She is pathologically playing the victim this entire call. No mercy for cheaters.
See it like John. This is not about forgiving herself, this is about at first taking responsibility for what she did to her husband and kids and herself WITHOUT excuses. Straight up owning it. She did not do that and she certainly did not do that in this call. Until she is not capable of doing that from her heart there will be no forgivness because it will always be a superficial paint job on her dishonest self evaluation. She still has a book of excuses for her infidelity. I would not trust her at all in a relationship at this point. That is a call were I would have loved to hear out the ex husbands side and quite possible hear a very different story. Until she doesn face up her coping mechanism wont change.
Im going to bet her actual husband did not want her to go beond or above. From what she said she was expecting that from her husband and he failed. She said she went to church but there is no evidence of her knowing God. She needs God first and dor most, second dont need to be in a relationship where adultery is how it started but she will understand that when she knows God
Sherri, if you read this please know that nothing you have done has surprised and disappointed God because his acceptance of you is based on the finished work of Christ. He has forgiven you already, accept God’s forgiveness and the rest will follow. If God can love you and forgive you surely Sherri can trust God’s opinion of her.
two full time jobs, 16 hours in a day or she was cheating both her jobs by working them in the same 8 hour time frame. Then she has to take care of kids and the house? I don’t see how the time exists. To me it seems she had this dream and it was taken from her by not making as much money, have a kid that always will be a kid, and began looking to blame someone for her picture being crumbled up and tossed. I’m willing to bet her husband has a totally different story to hers that might make all these pieces fit together a little better so the story can be understood.
I see many on here Judging her but Mistakes are only lessons, given sometimes huge lessons. as long as she learned from it that will determine what kind of person she is Imo. As for what she did WE’RE ALL HER in one way or another. We’re all dirty rotten humans. “Let he without sin cast the first stone” Jesus
The problem with this lady is very clear. And she’s not smart enough to understand Her affair partner, that she is with right now, had a front row seat to her, being deceitful and dishonest and manipulative. He knows exactly what she is capable of, and she had a front row seat, perusal him being deceitful and dishonest and manipulative. Each one of them will never trust each other 100% because they know what they are capable of in cheating and they had a front row seat perusal both of them be convincing liars in order to have that affair that they had behind their partners back. She is fooling herself thinking that they are going to stay together as a couple that she that cheated.
There’s no excuse to have multiple affairs. obviously, she knows nothing about commitment. You can run a house and do what’s required without having multiple affairs.She lacks accountability. She is the one who cheated.She was trying to justify what she did on the call. She also used her own kids as an excuse to cheat. She will cheat again.
Cheating is a decision, no one can make you do it. She made that decision multiple times. She took the time to text, lie and meet up with different people. Sure there can be problems in a relationship but that doesn’t mean you should hook up with another person. That just shows you don’t have any values or respect for your partner.
I gotta say… she had a choice to end it before it got to the point of cheating. The 1st time. She wants more communication yet sought out that alive feeling from others before probably communicating that she needed it from her husband. She’s a grown up? That’s on her. I don’t feel sorry for her that she met a version of her she doesn’t like. Because I hope she learns from it that maybe taking all that on was a recipe for low communication and probably high resentment. Maybe people pleasing and being all things to all people is impossible – for humans. Maybe she needs to learn to stabilize and support herself instead of hoping if she only does enough for everyone else… maybe somebody might return the favor she is silently begging for – for her. She got to provide that for herself. She gets to learn boundaries and being honest with herself. She can make new choices, now. If she takes this pain for the lesson it presents. But cheating is never cool no matter how many responsibilities you took on to justify the affairs. Blah. You hated it? Well, you made your bed. You accepted all that responsibility only to resent it and use it to cheat on your man. Next time you want communication, try saying – out loud to your partner, “hey, I’ve taken on the brunt of responsibilities for us and I need some more support than I’m getting. I want to be wanted, not just needed – and that’s what these affairs give me – the feeling I’m wanted…” You are with a guy you cheated with. The trust there is not likely to last long term.
She wants to be innocent in this (because of the dozens of “reasons” she mentioned. The irony is, when you’ve done wrong, the healing comes in fully admitting guilt… in taking full response-ability. Guilt is a guide—-a loving one. Guilt says what you did was wrong. Shame says who you are is wrong. Guilt is a loving guide… that wants you to return to Love and doing what’s right. Guilt holds self-forgiveness. You will always carry the information from your guilt to guide future actions—-but this is a good thing! It’s not your loving guide if it discourages you from bettering yourself.
This story is 100% gaslighting. She is telling the story where the husband was all the problem and she was trying to justify her actions. I would love to hear the ex’s side of the story. It is way too easy for a woman to walk away from a relationship thinking it is too hard, and ultimately finance her future with the assistance of the family courts
She is in her masculinity in her marriage and doesn’t sit right with her. When she is with other people, she feels more like feminine and receiving. She can feel like she is treated like a princess. She needs to take a few steps back in her marriage by not doing everything at home. She needs to learn “how to do NOTHING.” For example, if her husband doesn’t help washing the dishes after she asks, then eat with paper plates. She said, her husband took the car that is working, then ask him to drop her off at work or pick her at work. Next day, let him know that she will be taking the car and ask him to fix it.
There is nothing to justify infidelity. This person has gotten involved in multiple affairs which indicates that there is something broken inside of her. Her loneliness is a state of mind and it is so important that you watch what you feed your mind because it affects your mood and then your actions. Multiple affairs indicate that she is selfish, an attention junkie and she desired and felt alive when she was getting attention from men. She make less of the seriousness of what she had done by listing all the things that she was involved in. She is not taking accountability. This woman is manipulative and difficult to trust.
I’m just going to say it, the guilt that she feels right now is called the consequences of her actions. I think she has come to realize her husband wasn’t the problem and I think to this day the way she talks about it. She is deeply regretting and still loves her ex husband. The guy she is with now she is finding out is even worse. Her husband probably wasn’t perfect but I heard nothing horrible from him. I think both were overwhelmed and the husband went through the exact stuff she did, the problem is she took the easy way out. It was actually simple to save her marriage all she had to do was quit 1 job and stop all the volunteering and focus on her family her husband would have gave her all the attention she wanted. It is 100% on her
No judgement, but only jealous: I envy her! She has 2 full-time jobs, special needs kids, volunteering, managing household AND STILL HAD ENERGY TO DATE AND HAVE 3 AFFAIRS! I work one full-time job and zero energy after workday 😅 Gladly, I don’t have any kids and I barely find energy to do yoga 2 times a week! 😂 OMG! If I only had such energy!