And I saw, when for all the causes whereby backsliding Israel committed adultery I had put her away, and given her a bill of divorce; yet her treacherous sister Judah feared not, but went and played the harlot also.
-Jeremiah 3:8, KJV
What I find especially troubling is how some people will call some affairs “exit affairs” and thereby minimize how devastating these affairs are to faithful partners.
An “exit affair” is generally understood as a the final act of a cowardly cheater who is leaving a “troubled” marriage. In other words, the cheater leaves the marriage via committing adultery.
As you may have guessed, people tend to focus upon the “troubled” part of the marriage over the actual treacherous cheating as what doomed such marriages.
It is a version of the old lie that says adultery is just a symptom and not a sin.
This “exit affair” thinking is madness. Even if the affair was the last act of a cowardly cheater in the marriage, that does NOT mean it was insignificant as to the marriage’s end.
Let me explain via analogy:
Say a shooter enters an oncology unit at a hospital and starts killing cancer patients.
Is the shooter less of a murderer because his victims had cancer?
Do we need to go into the full medical history of one of his victims to figure out what killed one of his victims–i.e. the bullet through the heart?
The same idea works here with “exit affairs.”
Going into the marital history is like taking the medical history of the deceased gunshot victim and suggesting such is necessary to determine cause of death.
Such behavior is an engagement in willful blindness towards what obviously killed the marriage–i.e. the infidelity.
Let’s stop minimizing the damage of any adultery!
There is no such thing as a noble “affair!”
The cheater who ends her marriage via an “exit affair” is acting in a destructive and wicked way. It only takes one adulterous affair to destroy a marriage just as it only takes one bullet to kill a human being.
Please, pastor and fellow Christian, stop ignoring the obvious and support the real victims of this unilaterally chosen marriage murder!
*A version of this post ran previously.
My XW unilaterally decided to end our marriage, not because it was troubled, at least not from my perspective, and not from the perspectives of those who saw us as a happily married couple. She decided she wanted to pursue sexual interests outside of our marriage; she wanted a man she could control for her own gain and pleasure. She knew she had to do something so vile and so profound to end our marriage, there would be no way to restore it. She actually told a marriage counselor, “Once I decided to end the marriage, I knew I had to do it in a way there would be no going back. This was too difficult for me to do on my own. So I associated only with those who supported me in what I intended to do.”
Some would call this an “exit affair” as she chose to end the marriage, engaging in an affair so that she would simultaneously bring an end to the marriage and have someone else lined up in my stead. For me, this term gave a name to what she did as I had never heard of such a vile act. As least I did not have to face too much of the “What did you contribute to end of your marriage?” questions.
In my experience, I would expect MORE people blaming the faithful spouse than less when the “exit affair” label is employed. Glad it was the opposite for you!
TBT 👍:
After having called, many times, upon the so-called Christian church for Godly counsel and support during my marriage to cheater (now ex-husband), I was often given the “Cold Shoulder”. They, the church, told me to get over it and move on. Then, after the divorce, the so-called Christian church said to me: “You’re living in the past. You need to forgive and forget, because he’s (ex-husband), is not worried about you. He has moved on with his life”.
They don’t get it. We have to live with the effects of the adultery trauma well after a divorce. It means processing complicated grief. Such a response is like telling a rape victim to get over it. Adultery is soul rape, after all.