Could You Be Committing Adultery?

How does a committed Christian woman end up in an adulterous relationship?

Our image of this brazen, licentious woman is not the responsible married woman with strong morals who is barely concerned with satisfying her fleshly appetites.

When life's pressures mount, where does the ideal woman seek relief from an unsatisfactory family life and a cosmopolitan environment that now offers so much more?

Her Christian heritage endows her with the strength of character that sheltered her from the wiles and schemes of her wayward teenage peers.

The scripture union and fellowships were her sanctuary where she easily practiced temperance because this way of life is so familiar.

Her zealous defence of truth and integrity makes her a sure choice for the prefect Christian leader who is exemplary in all her endeavours.

Is it any wonder that while her acquaintances are making wrong choices, God rewards His faithful daughter with a great job, a wonderful husband, and lovely children?

What could go wrong with this wonderful story? For this paragon of virtue to step outside her marriage with someone's husband, she was surely bewitched. But you see, our public lives do not always correspond with our private ones.

The strong moral training, supportive relationships, and divine grace often keep our baser desires in check but if we face one too many stresses, eventually the real you will emerge.

Thus, as this lovely woman expends all her energy to balance her family life, work and church responsibilities, unless she deliberately spends time with God and on herself, her stress will keep accumulating.

As her children, husband, and those she is mentoring rely on her to meet their needs, her emotional and physical resources are depleted.

Having always been successful, she has probably never learnt to sit back, relax, and take things in stride. She is always on the move, always tackling one project or another while the woman inside is crying for attention.

In her most quiet moments, she experiences a deep loneliness that she quells with numerous activities and the authentic woman who has weaknesses and limitations never emerges lest she loses her reputation.

All it takes is a casual encounter with an old friend or co-worker who appreciates you in a way your husband and children do not.

The nostalgic working /friendly lunch reminds you of the freedom of yesteryears.

Soon under the mistaken impression of deepening your friendship, the two begin exchanging emails, text messages, and phone calls.

Talking to this man becomes the high point of her life and enables her to go home, face her dull husband and her demanding children with ease.

His jokes make her feel young and pretty and his admiration improves her self-esteem.

Her heart pounds as she responds to his emails because she knows instinctively she is living dangerously.

She ignores the needling feeling that the relationship is wrong because her friend is a responsible married man with children.

After all, his internet profile exhibits pictures of his wife and children and shows him wearing a wedding band, thus proving he has no ill intentions.

To assuage her guilt, she casually informs her husband about him without revealing the depth of their correspondence. She steadily transfers his email messages to a secret account to keep her husband from discovering them because after all she is entitled to her privacy.

With each passing day, the phone conversations get longer and the closeness grows.

Gradually, she spends less time in God's presence to escape His prying eyes.

She is learning so much from this man's experiences and perspectives on life especially when her own husband is so unsupportive that God will surely not want her to end the liaison.

She conveniently forgets she has become emotionally intimate with someone else's husband and irrespective of her good intentions, this is wrong.

She might even establish a casual friendship with his wife to reinforce her noble intents.

However, even though she might not be having actual sexual intercourse with this man, this is a real affair.

With each passing day, her feelings for him become stronger and her mental battle continues. How something that feels so good is evil is a constant source of worry.

If God was displeased with her, why is she still a source of inspiration to other people?

Even her relationship with her husband has improved because she is happier.

She cannot imagine ending this friendship and she is constantly stifling thoughts about pursuing a divorce and marrying this wonderful man or worse still imagines an accident claiming both their spouses to clear the way for the two lovebirds to unite.

This woman has two options: she can carry on the relationship and deal with the eventual public blowout or she can confront her humanity and seek help.

First, she needs to end her friendship with this man however painful the experience might be by ending all correspondence with him.

This might necessitate a change of jobs and other small decisions to reduce the temptation to resume the relationship.

Throughout the redemptive process, she will need to admit her culpability and her humanity like the rest of us. Hopefully, she will learn to stop trying to do it all and learn to depend on others for help.

She might need to confess the wrong relationship to her husband if her counsellor believes it will aid the recovery process.

She would need to take a step back from many of her social and Christian responsibilities to allow her emotions to heal.

Even though the experience will scar her, it will strengthen her too and her increased humility will help her sympathize with others who have failed too.

She will subsequently be more cautious about accepting too many responsibilities and careful when embarking on new friendships.

Our inner being wants to be authentic and as we resist the urge to relax, take stock of our lives, and accept our human limitations, we are liable to react by engaging in those practices that could destroy our orderly lives.

Credit: Yela Awunyo-Akaba (Through My Looking – Ghanaian Times)