Many moons ago, when I was a young christian wife and I believed my husband loved and cared about me and our then little family, I believed life would be better because he chose to stay with us after his affair.
His affair.
Did you say it to yourself? Ok I'll say it: Stop being naive. Stupid. Wishful thinking.
Hindsight is 20/20. Growth changes you. Or it should. I no longer believe in marriage is forever any more. Hell, I don't actually believe in marriage any more. Definitely not traditional marriage, anyway.
If I were going to take a marital vow today, it would go something like this:
"I promise to love" - well, maybe not love, because that word means different things to different people.
Maybe something like, "I'll do my very best to acknowledge you as a human being, see you for who you are, listen to your words, spoken and unspoken, hope the best for you, be there for you, and call you on your bullshit. I'll do all of this for as long as I feel in my soul that we are to be in each other's lives, for the betterment of each other's hearts and souls, and as long as this relationship doesn't violate anything within myself.
And I will expect the same from you."
If I were younger and planning on or hoping for children, I would add in something about "raising them together, equally, to be free from our opinions, to become who they are, always with their best interests at heart" and put a time stipulation to reevaluate our parenting often.
As it is, I plan to never marry again. I plan to love fiercely, without holding too tightly, and not violating my own conscience when it comes to staying or walking away.
My ex-husband may have loved the woman he cheated with... nah, bad example. He only truly loves himself. A man, or woman, who finds another outside of their marriage may truly love the person they've chosen to go against their marriage vows with. Their marriage may be dead, as mine really was. They may have "fallen out of love" as the saying goes. And what's wrong with that? Nothing. But let's be honest about that, even inside of marriage vows.
Just be honest.
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