This is a question and answer article centering on the issue of recovery from a husband’s adultery with prostitutes. May it minister to your situation!
QUESTION Concerning Prostitutes:
I’ve only been married 4 years. I just learned my husband committed adultery on at least 2 occasions with prostitutes. He says he is sorry and wants to salvage the marriage. I have conflicting emotions from moment to moment. If we as Christians are supposed to forgive others for their sins, why does God allow for divorce when a spouse is unfaithful? I find it hard to believe that a marriage can survive infidelity. I’m wondering how one ever trusts their spouse again after this type of betrayal? We are both Christians. He was saved 3 years ago, no religious upbringing. We don’t have a Church home and share no Christian friends.
We sought counsel from a Christian and that counselor told me that I had approximately 30 days from discovery to either remain, forgive and never speak of the adultery again or divorce. He says that the 30 days is biblical. I’ve never heard of this nor have I read it in the Bible. I think if I choose to stay within the marriage it should be based on my spouse’s behavior. I appreciate any information you may have. Thank you for your time.
Answer in Reply Concerning Prostitutes:
I am so very, very sorry for the pain you are experiencing. Your conflicting emotions are totally normal and to be expected.
The biggest thing you need to know is that there is a difference between forgiving someone and trusting him again. They are not the same. When we forgive, we release the other person from our desire to exact revenge on them for hurting us. We let go of their sin against us into God’s hands so that He can deal with them. But broken trust is another matter; it needs to be earned back, and that takes time-a good amount of time, consisting of one faithful, responsible, caring choice after another.
In order to understand God’s allowance for divorce, consider what the Lord Jesus said in Matthew 19:8 “Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. But it was not this way from the beginning.” The Lord allows for divorce as a matter of love and grace for the one being hurt by a hard-hearted spouse. In the case of infidelity, when a spouse is repentant and truly wants to mend the marriage, God’s desire is that He glorifies Himself in the marriage by demonstrating His power and grace in the relationship.
Rebuilding Trust?
There are many spouses who will attest to the fact that there is indeed trust after betrayal if the unfaithful one truly repents and commits to faithfulness. But it takes time, like I said. Probably close to a year minimum.
I disagree with the 30-day ultimatum. I see nothing in the Bible that says that. However, I do agree that if you choose to stay in the marriage it would depend on whether your husband shows remorse, demonstrates repentance, seeks accountability and is willing for his whereabouts to be checked on at all times. People who are hiding nothing have nothing to fear from accountability.
Offer of Help
We recommend you visit the Midlife Dimensions website Midlife.com. It offers help and resources for dealing with an affair (by putting “Affairs” in their search engine, or going to “Free Resources” and clicking onto “Sex Addict”). I am concerned that you two are not plugged into a church home and therefore do not have any support system. This is going to make recovery unnecessarily difficult.
I would hope that one way your husband could show you he’s serious about mending your marriage is to find a church home and get connected to other people who will help support your marriage. God never intended for us to be “Lone Ranger Christians.” His intent is for us to be knitted into the body of Christ for support and as a way to receive His various kinds of grace.
You are cheating yourself and yourselves to not be connected to an important source of life and strength. I want to strongly suggest that you make this a priority.
I hope you find this helpful.
Sue Bohlin
P.S. You might also poke around the New Life website Newlife.com and educate yourself on sex addiction. If it were me, I would want to know what drove my husband to prostitutes. I would also want to know if my actions played any part in it. (For example, this is one reason the apostle Paul tells married people not to deprive each other sexually.) It sounds like you have an opportunity to each look at your own “stuff” and see what you can both do to build the marriage, as long as he’s serious about it.
© 2006 Probe Ministries
Author:
Sue Bohlin is an associate speaker with Probe Ministries. She attended the University of Illinois, and has been a Bible teacher and conference speaker for over 30 years. Sue serves as a Mentor Mom and speaker for MOPS (Mothers of Pre-Schoolers), and on the board and as a small group leader of Living Hope Ministries, a Christ-centered outreach to those dealing with unwanted homosexuality. She is also a professional calligrapher and the web mistress for Probe Ministries; but most importantly, she is the wife of Dr. Ray Bohlin and the mother of their two grown sons.
What is Probe?
Probe Ministries is a non-profit ministry whose mission is to assist the church in renewing the minds of believers with a Christian world view and to equip the church to engage the world for Christ. Probe fulfills this mission through our Mind Games conferences for youth and adults, our 3 1/2 minute daily radio program, and our extensive web site at Probe.org.
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— PLUS, on this Issue of Prostitutes —
Anne Bercht, from Beyondaffairs.com explains a bit more when you’re dealing with Prostitutes. Please read:
• Extramarital Affairs and Sexual Addictions Involving Prostitutes
And lastly, here is an additional article that you may find very helpful as you read:
• How to Find Trust After the Affair
Filed under: Surviving Infidelity
I know my husband picks up hookers. I will forgive him but I will leave him. I want to know is there anyone out there that leaves every story I read about those women who don’t leave? Why you could get a disease and those men including my husband are sick. Anyways please give me a place I can go for support to get out of this mess.
I am in a similar situation. My husband of 15 years has been going to prostitutes for the past 5 years. When I found out I felt used, neglected and abused by the person I trusted with my life. He was also arrested and bailed by the police for viewing images of child pornography. The sad thing is, his selfishness has torn our family apart.
In my view he has broken the trust in our marriage and if he gets prosecuted his name will be in sex offenders register, he will also loss his job. But what breaks my heart is my daughter will grow up without a father.
On the positive side I have a group of church Christian friends that love and supports us. It is not easy most of the time but when I am scared I cry out to my Lord Jesus, I put my pain, hurt, anger, fear and frustration on the feet of Jesus.
Wait! Did this lady just blame her husband’s sexual addiction on the wife? That is very hurtful for the wife and sad that someone would do that. I am sure his addiction problem has nothing to do with her. That is like blaming the wife for an alcoholic husband. Not very professional. Remember if someone has an addiction, no amount of sex will satisfy him. He/She will always need more! Hence the word….addiction. Please do your research and put up sound advice that will help, not hurt people.
A woman I confronted today admitted three years ago she was involved with my husband that way. He denies it and yells at me like he’s is the victim and says she is a liar, and threatens me with a divorce. What do I do?
Dear Lost, Do you have additional reasons to believe what this woman says is true? Is he a faithful type of man and is she the type of woman who is not a trouble-maker with her own agenda?
If he is threatening you with divorce then most likely he is guilty. You must make him feel that you will not judge him as long as he tells you the truth but that honesty is the foundation of marriage and you need to keep it honest in your relationship with him.
Dear Lost, and others on this site, I am a husband married 36 years with 2 adult children. We have both been Christians since before we were married. While I haven’t had direct experience such as that described here, I can say that God, in His mercy, has turned around several situations in our own family which I found virtually impossible.
Even when one partner trusts God fully for a marriage in dire straits, that God can, and does, accomplish the impossible. His Word tells us, “All things are possible for him (or her) who believes,” and “With God all things are possible.”
Perhaps the following 2 websites will be enlightening:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ekq_TXQ7eDM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQUMFYNe8sk
WP (Work in Porgress)
I’ve been married 23 years. My husband is in Thailand and all he does is pay for sex. I’m so depressed it hurts.
You just told that woman she should look at herself, you shouldn’t be a pastor in any sense of the word. Marriage is about commitment and open, honesty. Her husband put her life in danger and guess what God grants that divorce baby girl. You take what you can from tbos marriage and run as fast as you can. Can a zebra change it’s stripes or a snake grow legs and walk? No! Past behavior is the best prediction of future behavior.
He is a born again Christian, I would beg to differ because when you know better your suppose to do better. If we was really serious about turning his life around and had then he would not have betrayed you, himself or more importantly God. Yeah forgiveness is good for your own well-being but that doesn’t mean you are obligated to remain married. In the Lord’s eyes he has broken the vows you made and he will not hold paradise or anything else from you. In fact your husband broke your vows when he lusted after another in his heart, so what do you think God thinks of the act?
I hope you or anyone else reads this because people treat us the way we allow them to and if you allow him to get away with these actions, he will just be more cunning and not get caught next time. You need to get a backbone and take back your dignity.
There is a real possibility that the Lord has been doing some miraculous things in my husband. On August 2nd he confessed to me that he has been hiring prostitutes every other week for the last 15 years. We have been together for 35 years. Prior to the prostitute confession – there had been multiple times we battled through porn issues and there were two other extra marital affairs. My heart is broken but despite it all I feel as though the Lord has given me two assignments. To pray for him and tell him I will not leave him or forsake him – even if he fails again. God, it seems, has used this approach to show my husband the kind of love that Jesus offers.
My husband seems genuinely repentant and so I am trying to trust God and obey my two assignments. It is a very difficult and lonely place I am in. There is so much shame and guilt with my husband and so I am being very careful to not share this info with anyone who knows us personally. I feel God is helping me and yet there are so many areas where I lack trust in this situation. I am in a lot of pain and am cycling through grief. I pray that the Lord helps me with my unbelief. I have been trying to build myself up in the word on how to trust God in difficult times. I am confused and torn between two worlds – one is a world in which I see my husband experiencing unconditional love and grace from me in hopes he will be restored and come to know Jesus in a most powerful way and will turn our marriage into an incredible testimony of God’s miraculous working power.
The other world is one in which I want to simply use my head, make all the hard but practical and reasonable choices to move on and deny that God has asked me to stay even if he fails again. A world where perhaps I am just simply co-dependent and delusional and using God as a crutch to avoid looking at and facing the facts. A world where I feel responsible for his feelings and the outcome of his life. If there is someone out there who has a similar story as mine I would love to hear from you. I need some unbiased input. Thanks!
How do I survive 41 years of marriage to discover my husband at 64 is not only paying a 27 year old for sex, sexting and phone sex. He actually has a friendship with her. My 25 year old is getting marriage in 7 weeks. I am blind sided. I don’t think this marriage will survive. I can’t see how.
Not only did my husband seek prostitutes, he also carried on long distance relationship with a woman 25 years younger, was the daughter of a former girl friend from nearly 40 years ago, they may or may not come together as he claims. I see the other side from their comments on “Messenger” texts. He currently watches porn regularly, he pretends he is watching sports with the sound off, does it when I’m out of the house. I’m seriously considering divorce if he doesn’t seek counseling.
What if after eight and a half years you find out your husband spent hundreds of hours trolling for prostitutes to give him a bj and if he didn’t find his right fit went to a strip club for lap dances, then a massage parlor for a happy ending at least three times a week? What does an independent strong hard working woman do with that?
Terri, SO sorry you are suffering from this betrayal! I can’t tell you what you are to ultimately do, but I can tell you one thing and that is that you can’t allow this to continue. Who knows what diseases he can bring home to you–not to mention the way this shreds your heart? He has to have a “come to Jesus” moment where he completely turns from this type of behavior. Plus he has to truly know that it is wrong. Even if he wasn’t married–it’s wrong. He’s objectifying and using women in degrading ways (even if it was with their permission). And the fact that he’s married makes all of this worse–so much worse. Again, so sorry this is happening to you and your marriage. You both have some very difficult and life-changing decisions to make. There is NO WAY this behavior can continue within your marriage.
I pray the Lord wakes your husband up–and he completely changes in all this. And I pray the Lord gives you wisdom to know how to deal with this and heal from all the horrible images this betrayal throws at your mind. Please know that “The LORD is near to all who call on Him, to all who call on Him in truth.” (Psalm 145:18) I hope you will call upon Him for direction, comfort, and help.