I ran into a friend in a coffee shop today. I hadn’t seen her in a couple years but I knew that she had had her second child since I last saw her. We chatted briefly about our lives and our kids and I asked if she was back to work as her second child is now over a year old. She answered me that she was taking a leave.
“You haven’t heard?”  Â
“Rob* left me,” she replied simply.
Trying not to pry but wanting to express my concern for her I tried to ask how she was doing. She filled me on how Rob had picked up and left just 6 months ago, when she was still on maternity leave after having their second child. “He’d been having an affair for over two years, but somehow managed to get me pregnant again in there,” she says with a twinge of bitterness in her voice. “I’ve been hoping he would come home and we could work things out but he just bought a house with this woman. So I’m going to start the divorce process.”Â
My heart goes out to Deanne*. Her parents went through a messy divorce and I know it’s the last thing she would have wanted. When they got married ten years ago, these two were pretty sincere evangelical Christians. People who claim to take their marriage vows as a sacred promise before God. What the hell happened? I am shocked. If there was ever a couple that I wouldn’t have expected this to happen to, it was them. Rob was a great guy and the type you expect to be rock solid in the fidelity department.  Deanne is an attractive, friendly woman. She has a career and has had two children with Rob. Where did this affair come from?Â
Bastard, I think. Deanne is a great woman. You two were good together. You have two beautiful children. Wherever you are, you probably complain that it is hard for you to be away from your children and yet you are the one who couldn’t choose to make your marriage work. You chose to leave. You chose this other woman. You chose to inflict a wound from which your soon to be ex-wife and children may never fully recoveÂ
As I’m driving home after this encounter I start thinking. If this can happen to them, who’s to say it can’t happen to me? What if my husband up and left and I, like Deanne, never saw it coming? How would I cope? What would I do? What would I tell my kids? My gut twists up just thinking about it. My husband has never given me any reason to question his faithfulness and yet, the consequences of this other man’s affair are far-reaching. Every time a person cheats, it causes the people around them to question the loyalty of their spouse or significant other. I know not everyone would take things that much to heart, but I suspect some women are like me. These thoughts roll around in my head. Sorrow for Deanne and her kids, anger at Rob, and a tiny corner of fear that something like this could happen to me.
Later I call my husband at work. I have to tell him about this chance meeting. When I explain what happened his first thought is the same as mine was. “Bastard,” he says.  “She’d better be getting child support from him.” My fears are instantly silenced. My husband is not Rob. I have no need to fear. He sees Rob’s actions as a terrible betrayal as I do. We are on the same page. We finish the conversation and I heave a sigh of relief as I hang up the phone. I’ve been thinking about my marriage vows today. We designed them by picking and choosing from vows we found in books and on the internet. These words are important to me. If a moment ever comes when I am tempted to cheat I hope that I will remember these words:
“I accept you as my husband, with your strengths and with your weaknesses, I will be loyal to you in health or illness, to share what I have and who I am, to love enough to risk being hurt, to trust when I misunderstand, to weep with you in heartache, to celebrate life with you in joy…”
It was important to me to say “I accept you” rather than the more traditional “I take you” because marriage is not a taking, it is a giving and the corresponding acceptance. I can’t take what I want and leave the rest. And acceptance is a daily ritual.Â
My husband is not particularly hard to get along with but we all know how it is. We all have our moments.Â
My other favorite part of this is the part about loving enough to risk being hurt and trusting when I misunderstand. Loving is a risk. A spouse may not love you the way you expect or want to be loved.  Sometimes it can hurt. Sometimes hearing the truth can hurt, even when it’s spoken with love. But our marriage vows created a choice for us. We can choose to love even if it hurts sometimes because the reward for that pain can be a greater intimacy. And we can trust the good we know in each other even when we feel we are being slighted or hurt and we can be willing to sort out the misunderstanding.Â
We have wept through heartache and celebrated life with joy in the past six years. Marriage is a risk. It is to love enough that it will hurt like hell if your spouse cheats or turns his or her back on you. Any less would be a betrayal. But I think the risk is worth it.
I don’t know what I would say to Rob if I saw him today. It’s not like we are close friends. I certainly wouldn’t tell him that I think he is scum for leaving his wife and kids, even if that’s how I feel. I think I feel more sad than anything because he has traded something that was extremely valuable, even in its most difficult or boring moments, for something cheap. And he is starting all over again, and this time with a statistically poorer chance of succeeding, than the first time.Â
There is a quote about marriage that was given to us when we were engaged and it has become a bit of a mantra for me. I read it over a lot. On first reading you may find it makes marriage sound unromantic, but after years of reflection I have found that it creates safety and stability. Because love isn’t always enough to carry you through. There are moments, days, sometimes weeks, or possibly years, when it is a promise that sustains a marriage. That can be an act of love as well. And I believe that when the love returns it will be enhanced by the memory of the promise that upheld it and gave it another opportunity to ignite.
“I didn’t marry you because you are perfect. I didn’t even marry you because I loved you. I married you because you gave me a promise. That promise made up for your faults. And the promise I gave you made up for mine. Two imperfect people got married and it was the promise that made the marriage. And when our children were growing up, it wasn’t a house that prtected them; and it wasn’t our love that protected them – it was that promise.”
*Names have been changed.
