I’m sure every single betrayed spouse has wondered this. I know I have. I’m sure you have too. The question becomes more devastating the longer you’ve been married. The longer you’ve been married, the more likely you are to wonder how many years of your life you’ve wasted on this unfaithful person and this marriage.
I’ve heard this question countered with something like this: “No! Your marriage was not all a lie! There were many times when it was true!”
But which times? How do I know? How do you know?
Before countering this question, can we first take a moment to to understand why a betrayed spouse would think this? Why did I think this way?
When someone finds out that their spouse was unfaithful most of their marriage, we are deeply traumatized. Trust is severely, nearly irretrievably broken. We don’t know what is true anymore. We don’t know who to trust anymore. You could be lying to us too, for all we know! We not only lose trust in our partners, we lose trust in people in general.
Because of this, we feel that the marriage certainly was all a lie. Our unfaithful spouses took vows to be faithful, and they weren’t. We don’t know what parts of our marriage is true and what is not. For all we know, none of it was true. When you hear someone asking this question, what they really mean is, “My trust in someone special to me has been broken.” And we need to appreciate how serious and devastating such a betrayal is!
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