He took exception to what I said to a man who cheated to get even with his wife’s adultery. He said, when his wife cheated on him, his counselor told him if he needed to cheat to even the score it was okay.
I said:
I am not a counselor and I don’t pretend to be.
What you missed in the article was that the man writing to me was supposedly working on repairing his marriage. He had his “revenge affair” to show his wife how he felt, and now he is confused why his wife wants a divorce instead of just forgiving and forgetting.
Any time we do something that we know will cause another person pain, we must be ready to accept the consequences of the other person’s reaction. Was his wife supposed to say to him “Oh, honey, now I know how much I hurt you?” Perhaps another woman might have, but his wife didn’t see any love in his action, any attempt to move past her mistake, any attempt to strengthen their relationship.
If he had been able to work through his own pain without doing to her what she did to him, maybe the marriage could have been repaired. But he couldn’t and the marriage is ending.
I don’t have a problem with revenge affairs. If they help “even the score,” and repair the damage, that’s fine. Do I think they help to restore and repair a marriage that has been damaged by adultery? No, I don’t. This is definitely a classic case of “two wrongs don’t make a right.”
If you thought about a revenge affair but didn’t go through with it, you’re made of stronger material than the man who wrote.