“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs which indeed appear beautiful outwardly, but inside are full of dead men’s bones and all uncleanness.”
-Matthew 23:27, NKJV
I have noticed a common phenomenon with cheaters and their families of origin.
Often times, they come from families that have an appearance of wholesomeness and godliness. These families are good at putting on a “show” for those on the outside.
The “whitewashing” of their “houses” make them look very good to those who do not know better. However, once you enter the houses, you start to see the skeletons inside.
Cheaters who come from these backgrounds are tortured people.
They have lived their lives with dissonance. Cheaters from these worlds have had to live lies to keep their families “house” looking good.
Sadly, Cheaters project this “demand” upon the faithful spouse that they have wronged.
The only hope I see for these people is to confront the lies of their past. They need to break from a life patterned to appearances over substance. It is a hard matter of repentance for them.
Sadly, this is hard road often not taken by such cheaters.
So, they remain trapped in this cycle of wanting to be righteous but unwilling to do the work to do so. It is sad. They have chosen to remain in the tomb with those bones.
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*A version of this post ran previously.
Boy does this hit home DM! My family acknowledged the dysfunction and chose to do nothing about it. Traitor Ex’s family? What dysfunction? There’s no dysfunction here! Not one speck of dysfunction! Nothing nada zip zilch zero. Beautiful home and bulletproof social masks on the outside, raging domestic violence, profound active alcoholism and codependence on the inside. After leaving our family, Traitor Ex snapped right back into his FOO role, polishing and promoting the shiny faux candy coating outward appearance of his FOO. It’s as if he never left, and fascinating in a scary way. Your observation makes a LOT of sense to me and I think it is brilliant. Good work, Pastor Sherlock Holmes! 👏👏👏👏👏👏👏
My ex’s dad was an alcoholic (not sober), he was aside from that verbally abusive to ex’s mother. I witnessed that a few times after we married, and before FIL suddenly died.
Ex had given up his own drinking and was seemingly not repeating his dads actions, but alas…
What I aw up to the last couple years was a husband working by my side and us building a life. Yes I knew he had a selfish streak, but I reasoned I had my faults too. What I didn’t know was he was for many years living a double life.