“If my husband ever cheated on me, that would be the end of it.”
“He ever hits me, and he’s on the sidewalk with divorce papers in his hand.”
I often hear women make comments like these, and I completely agree that infidelity and abuse have no place whatsoever in a marriage. If these elements have come into your relationship, they should be rooted out immediately. However, I then wonder, is there a boundary between what does and does not entitle a person to stay married? Is there a line that, once you’ve crossed it, you must get a divorce?
Each person must decide for themselves what their own deal-breaker is, but I really feel that it has to be taken on a case-by-case basis. For instance, I know that I would never tolerate being abused in my marriage. But what if, for instance, he struck me once, and then earnestly sought counseling and never did it again, and our marriage ended up stronger because of everything we learned in the process? At the same time, what if he cheated, and I forgave him, and he went ahead and kept on doing it?
I believe it’s impossible to know, right now, before we’re faced with the situation, how we will and will not react. I know of a situation where a man is on his way to jail for heinous crimes, and while he was on trial, his wife conceived and had a baby. He pled guilty, and yet she loved him enough to continue that relationship with him. How can we know how we will feel, how we will react, and how we will forgive until we are faced with the situation?
I strongly feel that we should do whatever we can to preserve our marriages, while at the same time knowing that some marriages are toxic and should be dissolved, if they cannot be healed. But I do encourage each of us to keep our hearts open and to be willing to deal with each challenge as it arises, being willing to forgive and to listen to what our spouse has to say, learning to be flexible without being pushovers. Even things like abuse and infidelity can be overcome if each spouse is willing to put forth the effort and sometimes the long hours of counseling and reconciliation. A deal-breaker doesn’t have to be a deal-breaker if there’s a real desire to change, but only you and your spouse can make that call.
Related Blogs:
The Day I Really Thought about It
Ask a Marriage Blogger – Leading Causes of Divorce