By Meiling
My Happy Marriage Destroyed by My Husband’s Betrayal
Ever since I was a child I have enjoyed watching romance series, and I had high hopes for love and marriage. I hoped that once I grew up, I would be able to spend my whole life with the person I loved, that we would never be apart, and that we would care for each other in our old age. When I turned twenty, my colleague introduced me to my husband. He was handsome, tall, made every effort to take care of me and look after me, and it seemed we had endless things to talk about. Though I was certain that he was my other half and I wanted us to be husband and wife, my parents were deeply opposed to us being together. I disregarded my parents’ opposition and married him anyway. After that, my husband did all that I asked, and the love between us grew. Before long, I gave birth to a child and our lives became even more wonderful. I felt that my initial choice had been correct, and that there was no greater happiness than a life with someone who loved me and who I also loved.
My husband was a driver, so he often went out drinking, to karaoke, or to play cards with his colleagues. At first I didn’t mind—I felt it was normal for him to have fun with his friends. But slowly, he began to stay out the entire night, and I couldn’t help but become concerned, “My husband is out all day at those entertainment venues, and he doesn’t come home after work. There couldn’t be another woman, could there?” But I quickly denied my own thoughts, shaking my head and thinking, “It can’t be. We’ve maintained our mutual affection since meeting each other, and our love has only grown. My husband is very considerate toward me; he wouldn’t do something like that to me. I’m probably worrying too much.” Once I thought of all those things, my concerns gradually subsided.
I never thought the day would come when what I feared most actually happened. At the time, I had just given birth to our second child, who wasn’t even a month old, and it was another night my husband didn’t come home. When he returned the following day, just as I was about to question him, he said to me solemnly, “There’s something that’s been causing me a lot of pain, and I don’t want to lie to you anymore. I’m seeing another woman, she’s pregnant with my child, and she is going to give birth soon. But she’s going abroad after the child is born….” The news hit me like a bolt of lightning. I was left dumbfounded. As tears streamed from my eyes, I said furiously to my husband, “How could you do such a thing? You’re utterly shameless!” While saying this, I hit him with all my strength. He didn’t strike back, and said, “I know what I did was wrong, and I’ve let you down. I feel very guilty. But she’s going to leave after she has the baby, and once she’s gone, our life can be like it used to be. I promise I’ll make it up to you, and I swear that nothing like this will happen again. Please give me another chance.” I hated that my husband was capable of doing something that was so hurtful, such a betrayal of me, but I thought of the prospect of my children being fatherless if we divorced, which would disadvantage them growing up. In my pain and helplessness, I suppressed the anger within me and repeated these words over and over to console myself, “What’s done is done, so let’s take it one step at a time!”
After that, my husband went frequently to care for that woman, and all of the home’s burdens fell on me. I worked and also looked after the children; the physical weariness on top of my psychological wounds were a weight so oppressive I could hardly breathe. I spent my days unable to eat or sleep. As soon as I closed my eyes, all I could think of was my husband’s betrayal and cheating. My heart was never at peace, and I would often gaze at the ceiling as I moaned, sighed, and wept silent tears. I grew thinner with each passing day, dropping from 55 to 46 kilos. I constantly found myself thinking, “No matter how well a broken bowl is glued back together, it still shows cracks. Can a broken marriage survive? Can my husband truly give up this woman in his heart?” These questions continued to circle in my mind, and I became so distraught that I began to contemplate suicide. But I realized that if I were to die, my two children would be without a mother and my parents wouldn’t be able to take such a blow either. So, all I could do was put aside my thoughts of killing myself. I constantly asked myself, “Is this really the man who pledged his eternal love to me? The promises of being for eternity, of growing old together, of loving me forever were just lies to deceive me …”
Several months later, that woman gave birth and then she really did go overseas, but my loathing for my husband didn’t abate. In our daily lives, if my husband did anything even slightly displeasing to me, I would seize on it, exaggerate the matter, and mock him sarcastically. Venting this way didn’t make me happy at all. On the contrary, I became even more troubled and distressed. I felt increasingly depressed, and I didn’t see any hope for life in the future.
Putting Aside My Hatred of My Husband Thanks to the Guidance of God’s Word
Where man ends is where God begins. Just as I found myself at a dead end, God’s salvation of the last days came to me. One day in 2009, a friend shared God’s gospel of the last days with me, and I read this passage of God’s words, “When you are weary and when you begin to feel something of the bleak desolation of this world, do not be lost, do not cry. Almighty God, the Watcher, will embrace your arrival at any time. He is keeping watch by your side, waiting for you to turn back around. He is waiting for the day you suddenly recover your memory: when you realize that you came from God, that, at some unknown time you lost your direction, at some unknown time you lost consciousness on the road, and at some unknown time acquired a ‘father’; when you realize, furthermore, that the Almighty has always been keeping watch, waiting there a very, very long time for your return” (“The Sighing of the Almighty”).
As I read God’s words, I couldn’t stop the tears streaming from my eyes. His words were like a current of warm water that thawed my frozen heart. It turned out that God had been by my side all along, waiting for me to turn back to Him, but I was too numb. I had been drifting in the world for so long, yet God had not cast me aside. At a time when I had lost hope in life and had nowhere to turn, God sent a friend to preach the gospel to me and used His words to console my grief-stricken, tormented heart, giving me the hope and courage to go on living. At that moment, I was like a lost child finally returning to their mother’s embrace—I felt so secure, so cared for.
After that, I often took part in church life, where I fellowshiped on God’s words with my brothers and sisters and sang hymns of praise to God. When my brothers and sisters learned what had happened to me, none of them laughed at me. Instead, they fellowshiped on the truth with me and helped me with compassion, allowing me to become stronger. I felt the genuine love among my brothers and sisters—this was very moving.
At one meeting, we read two passages of God’s word, “In truth, out of the myriad things in God’s creation, man is the lowest. Though he is the master of all things, man is the only one among them that is subject to Satan’s trickery, the only one that falls prey in endless ways to its corruption. Man has never had sovereignty over himself. Most people live in the foul place of Satan and suffer its derision; it teases them this way and that until they are only half alive, enduring every vicissitude, every hardship in the human world. After toying with them, Satan puts an end to their destiny. And so people go through their whole lives in a daze of confusion, never once enjoying the good things that God has prepared for them, but instead being damaged by Satan and left in tatters. Today they have become so enervated and listless…” (“Work and Entry (1)”). “Born into such a filthy land, man has been severely blighted by society, he has been influenced by feudal ethics, and he has been taught at ‘institutes of higher learning.’ The backward thinking, corrupt morality, mean view on life, despicable philosophy for living, utterly worthless existence, and depraved lifestyle and customs—all of these things have severely intruded upon man’s heart, and severely undermined and attacked his conscience. As a result, man is ever more distant from God, and ever more opposed to Him. Man’s disposition becomes more vicious by the day, and there is not a single person who will willingly give up anything for God, not a single person who will willingly obey God, nor, moreover, a single person who will willingly seek the appearance of God. Instead, under the domain of Satan, man does nothing but pursue pleasure, giving himself over to the corruption of the flesh in the land of mud” (“To Have an Unchanged Disposition Is to Be in Enmity to God”).
Through the revelations of God’s word and the fellowship of my brothers and sisters, I came to know the source of my husband’s betrayal, and I understood the origin of my suffering. After being corrupted by Satan, we all live under Satan’s power, and we had all been infected and poisoned by Satan’s evil ideas such as “Don’t ask for eternity, be happy with now,” “Having a wife or husband at home but also taking a lover,” and “Without a mistress, a man has no zest for life.” People advocate evil and pursue so-called love in the belief that love is not a sin and that a perfect love affair is something people should pursue. This leads to the complete breakdown of boundaries between men and women. People no longer respect proper marriage, but instead indulge their carnal desires and pursue one-night stands and extramarital affairs. People’s thoughts have become increasingly vile and decadent, they no longer consider ethics, morality, or honor, and even less do people consider duty to family, they have lost their humanity and reason, and live in a morass of sexual promiscuity and corruption, to the extent that unhealthy trends and vile practices such as extramarital affairs, keeping mistresses, and maintaining a lover become fashionable throughout the entire society. Countless families have been destroyed and broken up for this reason. Some who couldn’t endure betrayal by their other half ended their own lives, while others whose love turned to hatred sought revenge on other party, and tragic killings occurred. I thought of my husband, who had also been poisoned by Satan’s evil thought and followed the evil trend of seeking an extramarital affair, and even had a child, without the slightest consideration for my feelings, and without giving any thought to the great harm that such conduct would bring to his children and this family. It was only now that I understood that this was the bitter fruit of mankind following Satan’s evil trends!
I saw that I myself was also unendurably tormented because I lived the mistaken notions imbued in me by Satan. From when I first began to understand things, I was drawn to and moved by romantic stories in television dramas and novels, through which I was inundated and influenced by such ideas as “Love is supreme,” “The lovers finally get married,” “Devoted husband and wife growing old together,” “Lovers never apart, love unchanging until death.” I believed possessing such love and marriage was the only possible happiness in life. So, I strenuously pursued a purely imaginary love, paid no attention to my parents’ opposition, and insisted on marrying my husband in the belief that he cared for me in every possible way, and that after our wedding we would certainly have a happy marriage like the characters in the romances. The result was that when my husband betrayed me by having an affair, the dream of love I had been pursuing was destroyed, I lived trapped inextricably in torment, believed that there was no meaning in life, and even considered suicide. It was only when I came to realize these things that I could see that the ideas and views with which Satan inundates us are the ways and methods it uses to corrupt and harm mankind. The reason my husband and I lived in such torment was also Satan’s corruption and harm. If we humans lack the truth, how can we resist Satan’s evil trends and being inundated and corrupted by its mistaken notions? When I understood these things, my hatred of my husband faded a great deal.
Finding a New Direction in Life
Later on, I read this passage of God’s words, “If people have a genuine understanding of God’s disposition, and can give heartfelt praise to His holiness and righteousness, then it means they truly know Him and possess the truth; only then do they live in the light. Only once a person’s view of the world and of life changes does one undergo a fundamental transformation. When one has a life goal and comports oneself according to the truth, when one submits absolutely to God and lives by His words, when one feels peaceful and illuminated to the depths of one’s soul, when one’s heart is free of darkness, and when one can live entirely free and unrestrained in God’s presence, only then does one lead a genuine human life, and only then has one become a person who possesses the truth” (“How to Know Man’s Nature”).
The word of God pointed out a clear direction and goal to pursue for me. It made me understand that in life, only we pursue the truth, pursue knowledge of God, gain the truth, and live by God’s word can we escape the bondage and constraints of Satan’s ideas and views, achieve fear of and obedience to God, and fulfill the duties of a created being, which is the most meaningful possible life, and which people ought to pursue and achieve. Through my experiences during this period, I truly experienced that the love of characters in romance who go through thick and thin together simply doesn’t exist, and is just a lie created by Satan to deceive people. Only God’s love of man is true love, and we can only resolve our problems and difficulties with the word of God, which points out a clear direction for us and allows us to live in the light. I thought about how after my husband’s betrayal, when I was so tormented that death was preferable to life, it was the word of God that warmed my heart and made me wish to go on living. When I met with my brothers and sisters to read the word of God, without being aware of it I began to understand some of the truth, and I had some discernment of Satan’s methods of corrupting and harming people, I understood the source of my own pain, and only then could I live without such depression. When I thought of these things, it confirmed even more the value of the truth and God’s word, and I wished to practice according to God’s word and let go of the mistaken pursuits and views in my mind. I could no longer sully myself with purely imaginary love. I wanted to read more of God’s word, fulfill the duties of a created being, and repay God’s love. Once I understood these things, my mind was much calmer, and I felt a relaxation and release that I had never had before.
Not long after, that woman wanted my husband to go overseas to live with her. When I heard this, I was somewhat unhappy but then I thought it over, “If my husband decides to go live with that woman, I can’t change anything. Even if he were to stay with me physically, his heart wouldn’t be mine. I should seek the truth from God’s word, view the matter according to God’s word, and entrust this matter to God.” So, I prayed to God, “God! In this matter, I no longer wish to live by Satan’s thought and views, nor do I wish to struggle for or chase after some perfect love. Regardless of whether my husband stays or leaves in the end, it’s his choice and I won’t interfere. My only wish is to focus on seeking the truth, live according to Your word, and deal with this matter correctly.” Afterward, I said to my husband, “If you really want to go, then go. I won’t stand in your way. You can choose for yourself!” When he heard that, my husband looked at me in astonishment and said, “You’ve really changed. I wouldn’t have thought such words could come out of your mouth.” When I heard my husband say this, I silently thanked God! It was entirely due to the strength given to me by God’s word that I could calmly face this matter. It was only because the word of God had changed me, and given me correct goals and direction in my existence that I was able to live in release and freedom.
In the end, my husband remained with me. He also changed slowly. In the evenings, he made every effort not go out socializing, and he often helped out with the chores and looked after the children of his own accord. My relationship with my husband improved a great deal, our life became peaceful, I felt much more at ease, and I slept much better than before.
Every time I think back on this experience, deep emotions well up within me. If God hadn’t saved me, I would have continued to be corrupted and ruined by my satanic mistaken ideas. When I was inextricably suffering such torment due to my husband’s betrayal, the guidance of the word of God allowed me to see clearly the reality of Satan’s corruption of man, to see through Satan’s tricks, and to emerge from this torment. As I was experiencing this, I deeply experienced that seeking the truth and knowing God are the most meaningful things in life. We can only have a road to follow and any real happiness if we live according to God’s word. Departing from God’s word and falling under Satan’s power can only bring unendurable torment. I thank God for saving me!
