When it comes to God, one of the most beautiful things about Him is also what I find most fascinating about Him --- He simply won't change. He doesn't budge and He is who He says He is. Yesterday, today, forever.
God does not keep office hours or change His mind on a matter. He won't get bored and He sure isn't fickle. His compassion will never end. He will never tire of hearing or listening to our broken hearts.
For all of us trying to sort out the mess of our lives created by infidelity, change is perhaps the most difficult thing to absorb and comprehend. None of our lives will ever be the same. I don't know about you, but it has been really painful to accept that the landscape of each of our lives is forever altered. Our marriages no longer look or feel the same. If your spouse is still with...
Samuel discusses how to prioritize our own individual healing while discussing a major struggle couples in recovery face.
Today Samuel shares five keys to personal and marital recovery work.
Hope Rising 2019 is a one-day event for betrayed spouses to be inspired with hope, practical strategies and resources as they navigate healing from infidelity. Gather with other betrayed spouses as experts, past participants, and author Shelley Martinkus speak truth into what it’s like to heal from infidelity. Find new life with a community who truly "gets it."
Shelley Martinkus, 2019's Hope Rising Keynote Speaker, would like to extend a personal invitation to YOU:
Shelley Martinkus's world changed forever when she found out about her husband's sexual addiction. God used Jason's betrayal as a catalyst for Shelley to take ownership of her own life and start to mend all the broken pieces she saw staring back at her. Shelley and Jason are now 15 years into their journey and she likes to say that her...
How did you have the good fortune to come across Affair Recovery?
I found AR while I scoured the internet for help. Post D-day, I did what I have always done when there is a crisis in my family---research.
To be fair, first I cried.
I cried and cried and cried. I simply could not believe my husband could do such a thing; the person who was one half of the golden couple of our college. One half of the couple all our friends envied. The guy our female friends called such a wonderful husband. "He's so affectionate. He washes dishes! He is so nice to us. He likes all the stuff you like. He's so handsome. He's so funny." Yes—he is. He is also deeply wounded by life.
Perhaps God intervened in a special protective way molding our human nature when he made man from the mud and woman from man's rib. He made us to deny atrocity. We deny the truth when the truth is simply too painful to handle.
During...
Today I am going to share the biggest mistake that I made since my last affair, and how it almost cost me everything. It was, in my opinion, even worse than my infidelity. That mistake was my inability to reach full disclosure the first time. For six weeks, I held on to secrets about my behavior and I continued to lie about what I had done.
Our world started crumbling down on our wedding anniversary two years ago. Every single detail of the disclosure process is awful, but it really stinks when your D-Day is also your wedding anniversary. That was the day I admitted to my husband that I had been unfaithful to him and I had developed feelings for someone else. But I omitted any other details. In my delusional mind, I somehow at the time was convinced that an emotional affair sounded "better", so I withheld details about the...
Today, one of our EMS Weekend therapists, Leigh Ashley, continues her discussion on codependency and how to navigate it's complexities.
Today, one of our EMS Weekend therapists, Leigh Ashley, discusses a key component in recovery work: codependency.
When I received my first contract to publish in 2006, I never imagined the path of the next decade. The biggest 'high' of my life ended with the biggest low. For the first time in my life I'd ventured into a pursuit completely of my own making, my own dream. The story I'd spent six months crafting was considered enviable, a work worth taking the risk a publisher takes every time they invest time, money and effort into a new author. I'd accomplished what few aspiring authors would: a book publishing contract.
Maybe this was God's way of preparing me for the absolute devastation that would follow a decade later when my husband assembled my adult children in order to shame me. He announced in levity that he'd spent a decade sexually engaged with my brother's ex., a further seventeen years as 'Just Friends'. He wanted to make me look the...
Research shows that there is a growing number of unfaithful women. Exact numbers are hard to come by, and I expect that will always be the case. If unfaithful spouses are lying, why would they be honest in research? Regardless, I think we can all learn qualitatively. And I feel called to put a voice behind the myths and questions out there.
One of the biggest fears we have had to overcome was the notion that when a wife has an affair, this means she wants out of the marriage.
I can only speak from our experience and the fellow unfaithful women I have the privilege of walking alongside, but this is simply not true.
What I believe is more true, is that I just gave up on the...
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