Infidelity & the Church: The Night I Caught My Husband Cheating
I hate that I feel like I need to open up my story with a disclaimer. But I do. So here it goes. I am about to get vulnerable here… Like really really vulnerable… I am about to spill the tea of all teas on my own life, and that feels incredibly scary. I am sharing for one reason and one reason only: If one day you find yourself walking a similar journey, I want you to know who to reach out to. And if you find that you have a friend or someone in your church walking this road, I want you to be equipped on how to minister to them effectively. And I want you to know that no one is ever too far gone. Nothing is ever hopeless. Because Jesus. He is the REDEEMER. The RECONCILER. And in Him nothing is impossible. Be cautious not to judge.
So, I had just returned from an incredible mission trip to Mexico with a team of SoKM grads. Something felt very off about my husband when I got home. He was distant. Cold. He listened to my stories, but I could tell he was uninterested. I chalked it up to him being tired from working long hours for his job and taking care of the house and kids in my absence. It was August 16th, 2018. We had just gone up to bed. He fell asleep rather quickly like he does most nights. By this point, I had been home for a few days and found it strange that he had shown no interest in reconnecting intimately. It hurt my feelings. As I lay in bed that night my thoughts bounced between processing the intense experiences from my trip with the emptiness I was feeling in my marriage. Hours passed by, and I couldn’t shake this nagging feeling in the pit of my stomach. I kept hearing a voice tell me to check his phone. This voice was paired with feelings of anxiety, and I told myself that this voice was the enemy trying to rob me of my peace. I tried to drown it out by watching youtube videos and scrolling social media, but the voice persisted. I questioned myself as to why I would even think there would be anything to find on his phone. My mind raced back to a few incidences in our marriage when I suspected my husband was struggling with pornography. I never found any proof of it (and he always denied it), but maybe that would explain his lack of interest in intimacy? I can’t talk myself out of the increasing persistence of this voice telling me to check his phone. So, I slip out of bed and swiftly and quietly take his phone and head to the bathroom to take a look.
I go through his web browser… Nothing of concern.
I look at all of his text messages and emails… Nothing to worry about.
I check his Facebook messenger… Nothing.
I reassure myself that I was just being paranoid. We were just in a funk, and life would go back to normal soon. I walk back to our room to put his phone back, and just as I am about to plug his phone back in I hear the voice again. This time it says “You didn’t check everything.” I freeze. What did I miss? Before I can give myself time to think I race back to the bathroom, and this time, I ask the Holy Spirit to show me what I need to see. I open his phone, and within a minute or two, I find a folder on his phone that was labeled as a game folder but when I flip to the second page, I quickly realize that it was actually a dating app folder. Shock and horror wash over me as I begin to realize that my husband is involved with many other women. After I’m done looking through the devastation that is now my life, I have the good sense to send some screenshots of what I found from his phone to mine. I put his phone back and crawl into bed. I lay there plotting what to do. I plan to pretend I am sleeping when his alarm goes off at 3 AM to get ready for work. I decide that I am going to get up after he leaves and pack up the kids’ and my belongings and then leave when they wake up… without saying a word to him.
But God.
He had another plan. He wasn’t going to let me run away like that. He didn’t expose this darkness so that I would run away from it. No. He exposed it to send the darkness running. He didn’t want my family destroyed. He wanted it made whole.
My husband wakes up way before his alarm and asks why I am still awake. My plan to run away silently goes out the window. I find myself confronting him with what I had found on his phone with a boldness I didn’t even know I had. He spends the next hour as he gets ready for work lying and trying to minimize what I found. As he is about to leave for work, I tell him that he had better figure out who he is because I know who I am and I am not going to tolerate any more lies. My heart was completely crushed that night. But I also had the smallest inkling of hope. Years before this my husband had confided in me that during his childhood he had experienced a childhood trauma that impacted how he experienced intimacy. I began praying for him to find healing and breakthrough at that time. As I lay in bed strategizing how I would run away, I could feel the Holy Spirit saying that as terrible as this night was, he was exposing all of this darkness as an answer to my prayer. It all had to be exposed so that real healing could begin. I wanted to run, but I also wanted to see how He was going to heal all of this brokenness and I knew that meant I had to stay. As soon as morning comes, the first person I know I need to call is my friend Ashton.
Why Ashton?
Because a few years before this all happened, she had the courage to share her story. The story of catching her husband cheating on her… The story of how Jesus healed and redeemed it all. And at that moment I needed hope, hope that maybe, just maybe… Jesus could heal my mess too.
I will be continuing my story as a series on the blog. My hope along the way is that I can offer you the wisdom I have gained from this journey on how to navigate the rough waters of infidelity within the church. And I hope to be a beacon of hope to those who are either going through something similar now or for those who are to come.
Cassie Shaffer
The Vineyard Church // Urbana IL