She Came to Me – Part 5: Infidelity
Read the previous parts of the story here:
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Saturday, we were lying in bed, and I was massaging her feet.
The need to know about her weekend infidelity fifteen years ago became overwhelming, so I asked her why she went away to have sex with another man.
She was calm, relaxed, and told me she was simply tired of feeling unloved and neglected, and that she wanted a way out. We spoke for about an hour. I apologized for ever creating an atmosphere in our home where she felt that was the only escape, the only way forward.
We kissed. I prayed. I told her that asking these questions did not mean I did not love her. I needed us to understand each other’s pain so that we would not build our future on lies, because lies, left unattended, will always find a way to divide.
The next morning, Sunday, she had to have blood drawn for her chronic illness. I took her afterward for her favourite coffee. Then I asked her to sit in a camping chair while I single-handedly cleared half of the pantry, something she had complained about for years and struggled to manage alone while I had ignored it.
Later that day, the world exploded.
She suddenly accused me of weaponizing her vulnerability by ambushing her with questions about her infidelity. She said she believed I was already at peace with what had happened, that we had moved on over the past week. She was furious.
I looked her in the eyes, smiled gently, and reminded her that for fifteen years she had made me believe she cancelled that weekend after I saw the text messages. But last night when I asked why she went, she forgot to keep the lie. She told me she had spent the weekend away while I was trying to build our financial future, and that another man had taken her repeatedly over those days.
And she had lied.
I told her I always knew something was wrong. I needed the truth so that we could move forward without shadows, without something waiting to tear us apart later.
In that moment, she realised she had never actually told me that she had sex with another man while we were married.
The shock was overwhelming. Devastating.
I stood up and told her that my love for her was not in tension with what she had done. I loved her unconditionally, no matter what. The past weeks should have shown that. The last few days had shown it. I knew she had not cancelled that weekend. The truth had been pressing against me for years.
I smiled and walked away.
I did not yell. I did not shame her. I was not angry. I was not resentful. But the truth had been exposed, and the lie collapsed, creating an existential moment between us. I believe she feared I would stop loving her. She could not understand how the man who once yelled and shamed her could now love her without conditions. She does not believe it.
As I left, she told me this was why she feared sex, because vulnerability was always used against her. I was left dumbstruck.
The rest of the day was polite, but distant. We did not shower together on Sunday evening.
Monday morning, I yearned for her. I desired her. I asked if I could take her hand and lead her to the loft. She said yes.
We stopped at the stairs. I asked if she was okay. She said she was.
At the top, I held her. I kissed her.
Her body went rigid. She slipped into full panic. She began to hyperventilate. She shook violently.
I held her gently and told her she was safe. I moved my body aside, clearing the stairway behind her, and held her as she cried tears of anguish.
After a few minutes, my computer chimed. My first meeting of the day had begun.
I told her to wash her face. I had to work.
I was deeply confused.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Later, I went downstairs and asked her if I could help her with anything, knowing she was not in a good place. She told me she needed a lot of love and a lot of hugs.
My heart broke. I told her I could give her love, but not hugs. I could not touch a woman who felt such fear being with me, not even my wife.
I left. She cried as I walked away.
Later, in the early afternoon, I made coffee and sat with her on the patio. She was distant, not showing much affection. I took her hand and told her that we had spoken about this, that we had prayed together afterward. I asked her why she was still so upset.
She explained that on Sunday morning she realised she had never told me the truth, that she had never said she had sex with another man. That realisation caused shame, anger, and devastation to come rushing back all at once. She told me she did not want to live anymore. It was too much. She could not believe the monster she had been, that she wanted to hurt me.
My heart broke for her.
I told her I had suspected she lied. Over the past weeks, I did not know with certainty, but I knew. I would not call it divine revelation, but I knew. I asked her if she truly believed I would pursue her with all my heart, my mind, my body, my entire being, if I had not already forgiven her. She explained more about the weekend, non-graphic details. I did not care. I loved her. I needed her. But she had to overcome her own fear.
Later that afternoon, when I made her coffee again, she asked me if I would really end our marriage rather than be with her if she felt unsafe. I told her I would rather end our marriage than stay with her knowing my touch caused severe trauma responses. Not in the moment of intimacy, but later, when her mind drifted. She told me she enjoyed my touch, my passion. I replied that pain experienced afterward is abuse, and I would not do that to her.
We sat in silence.
She was upset by my physical distance. She tried to sit closer. I looked at her sharply and moved away.
I made more coffee.
When I handed it to her, she looked up at me shyly and asked if I liked it when she “shaves down there”.
Damn it.
She is a master manipulator, make no mistake. I love her female bush, so womanly and proud. But the thought of the soft skin of her folds, exposed, open, clean, soft under my lips—
She asked if I could help her shave. She said she could not reach all the way.
I decided to hold to my no-touch boundary. I told her that under no circumstances would I allow an opportunity to touch her so intimately, to hide my desire for her behind something that looked practical.
Her eyes lit up.
Damn it.
I crumbled. I was too weak to hold my ground. I failed. She was drawing me closer into her womanly web of love, and I was powerless.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
My meeting started, and I had to rush to attend it.
About an hour later, I suggested we go shower, explaining that I needed to decide what tools to get to “sometime” shave her. I tried to be clinical.
We went to the shower. I stepped in first. She lingered behind for a moment. I ignored it and continued washing.
She joined me. Shyly, she asked me to look down.
I nearly choked.
She was open, soft. She had shaved while I was in the meeting, something she explained later. She looked lovely, smooth. I wanted to taste her right there, bend her over, take her in the shower, make her mine.
I resisted.
When there was enough blood back in my brain, I held her and asked if she was okay. She said yes. Again, she apologised for breaking my trust, for having sex outside our marriage boundaries.
I told her the only anger I had was that she did not make a video. I would have loved to see it. She did not find that very funny, but male fantasies are and will be.
I told her I had already answered her before: nothing except broccoli would disgust me. Everything else was welcome, even preferred.
She rolled her eyes, clearly catching my innuendo. So much for romance.
She felt so soft. She ignored my fantasy remark and held me. She asked if we could maybe sleep in the loft that evening.
As if I would say no.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Later, I prepared the bed in the loft, laying out enough towels. I intended this to be an evening of my desire.
She came to me, walking up the stairs in a very short pink nightdress, the fabric blending with the skin of her folds. It did nothing to hide her pussy, soft, bald, glistening in the low night light.
She asked for some background music. Only later did I realise I had put on my *Bible in Folk* playlist, a gospel selection. Hardly what I thought appropriate for what I was planning to do to her.
We talked. She apologised again. I assured her that I loved her. I had not pursued her for the past six weeks just to be offended now by what I already knew to be the truth.
I undressed her slowly, my eyes never leaving her body. I touched her skin, caressed it. I was hungry with desire. Moonlight danced over her breasts, intoxicating me. I asked her to turn around and lie on her stomach. Her back had been neglected.
As my hands moved over the backs of her thighs, she pushed herself back toward me. I withdrew. She was hungry with desire. I denied her.
I asked her to lie on her back. She was gorgeous. I told her God made her perfect, that she was my wife, and that she was made good.
I reached for the essential oils and realised I had added peppermint for a slight sting. I hesitated, afraid to spoil the moment.
I held it out to her and told her she must first check if it was okay. We once had a moment long ago where she discovered alcohol burns on sensitive skin.
She took some oil and reached for me. I stopped her and told her that for me, the peppermint would only be exciting, but she had to make sure it did not burn her. She poured a generous amount onto her hands.
I did not realise she misunderstood me.
She shifted her body, placing her head at the end of the bed, her glistening pussy a breath away. She reached for herself and, instead of testing the oil, attacked her clit with a vigour that was unbelievable to witness.
I wanted to tell her I wanted her for myself. I wanted to take her.
But watching her head fall back, hearing her ragged breathing, I could not stop the moment. The vixen was here. She was alive. She was unashamed.
After the day we had endured, I suppressed my own desire, coated my finger with oil, and entered her with it.
Her eyes flew open in shock, pleasure, surprise.
She looked at me with the desire of a woman in need.
I told her how beautiful it was. I begged her to come for me.
She said…
She had a leg cramp.
Damn.
I massaged her lower leg, my body slightly turned away from her. After a while, I turned back and asked if it was better.
It seemed like it was, because the vixen was there again. She was masturbating, legs spread, free, safe.
I entered her with my finger once more. She moaned. I withdrew, though her folds tried to pull me back.
I coated my fingers with oil again. I slid my first finger inside her and slowly, gently, joined it with another. I felt her muscles tighten around me, drawing me deeper.
She looked at me, straight in the eyes, and said she was going to come. She was so close. Her language was out of place, urgent, raw. She is usually so gentle.
Her orgasm overtook her. Her body shook.
I thanked God.
She looked up at me in confusion.
And in that moment it struck me: there she was, riding the waves of her orgasm, two of my fingers inside her, her body open and unashamed, gospel vocals filling the room. And without realising it, out loud, I thanked God for what my eyes were witnessing. Not an exclamation. Not an “oh my God.” A true thank you, spoken from my heart.
I was confused.
How could I call on God’s name while being in this position? Sex is supposed to be dirty. Are we even allowed to praise God while doing this?
Something shifted inside me. I felt it immediately. I lost some of my vigour.
She brought me to climax. It was not unsatisfying, but I was disconnected.
I took her hand and prayed for our marriage, for the fruit of our love, for the consummation of our union.
When I opened my eyes, my seed was drying on her glistening skin where her pubic hair used to be, whiteness crusting her folds. And there I was, praying for the privilege of being with her, of sharing myself with her.
This may not have been erotic in the way stories usually are. But it was love. And confusion.
Do we truly seek the Kingdom of God first, even while giving in to the carnal desires of our flesh?
It felt wrong. Dirty. My prayer felt empty, almost mocking.
The fantasies of my mind clashed with my faith, opposing each other, mixing like water and oil. And yet, it felt right.
A day later, I am still struggling to integrate the acts of the flesh with my faith. I am reminded of the Song of Solomon. Is this what it means? To be truly one with your wife before God? To not be ashamed of desire? To call on God’s name at the height of pleasure, not cheaply, but in gratitude, in privilege, for a marriage resurrected from the dead?
What are your thoughts on this? Because I remain unsettled by the moment.
My dear brother.
You are tormenting yourself. What you are doing to your own heart mind and body (not to mention soul) is devastating.
You don’t want to leave her. This is fair. But, stop serving her needs and stop giving in to her in all these ways, and she will leave. Boundaries create safe spaces from unhealthy people.
Boundaries also create the space an opportunity for bad behaviour to become good behaviour. Right now, there does not seem to be that opportunity. The worse she treats you, the better you treat her. What motivation is that?
It’ll get worse before it gets better, but I think we both know this is not sustainable.
All the best, brother.
@GL
I've been busy and haven't had the chance to read through this whole post yet, but I'd encourage you to read KnowMe's comments on the other 4 parts of this series, if you haven't already. They provide a lot more context to this couple's story, and where further growth has occurred after the events of Part 5. I think the author is well aware that his relationship with his wife is not yet in a healthy place over the course of this series, but as previous parts of the story and his other comments make clear, they are very newly on a journey of healing after many years of a bad relationship. I think a season of handling such a journey imperfectly is not just understandable, but to be expected. But from what I hear, they're definitely making progress in building a renewed and healthier relationship!
@Gratefully_Longing — Thank you for your heartfelt message and your concern. This chapter was hard to write, and your words deserve a longer response than a quick thank-you.
I would like to add some perspective — maybe you will see the other side as well. (I will leave @Mistress Vixen to add more if she chooses.)
What these stories do not tell — because they were written from my injured self — is the years I was an alcoholic, and the years I verbally and emotionally abused her. That never retroactively gives approval or permission for either of our actions in the past. But it does ask: who is really the victim — me, her, or maybe both of us?
They also do not tell you that two years into our marriage I kissed another woman — nothing more, but a breach all the same — and that I later asked her for a more open arrangement: exploration, threesomes, a loosening of exclusivity that made sense to me then and that she did not want (and did not happen). I name that not to balance scales on a ledger, but because my retelling in Part 5 can read as though the harm flowed in only one direction. It did not.
This is not me defending her actions. It is me saying that something like this, in a marriage like ours, was not one-sided. It was two people hurting each other — not from malice, but from their own hurt — for nearly three decades. From my retelling I may seem like the victim; from the outside, and if Mistress Vixen chooses to add her voice, you may see that this was not only me being betrayed, but me spending years causing emotional pain and burden to the one I should have protected, cared for, and built up.
Let me be plain: I am not approving of any of our behaviour. What we each did was unacceptable. None of it excuses the other. Her choices did not cause me to yell, neglect, or abuse; mine did not give her permission to lie, to hide, or to break faith in the ways she did. At no point did either of us *have* to respond to the other’s wrong by choosing our own. At any point either of us could have filed for divorce instead of staying and compounding the damage — and neither of us gets to treat the other’s failure as a licence for our own. That does not erase the real wounds. It still raises the question — who is the victim? — but I have come to believe we are each, in the end, the primary victim of the actions *we* took, and the people we became while we stayed.
There is one truth in your message that I fully agree with: a man must first be able to be himself — alone, in his own identity. Not father, not husband first, but man — alone, confident in himself. For me that happened nearly five decades too late. For others it never happens. For some who grow up in a healthy household, where father and mother take care, it happens in their teens — and I hope my son will be one of those.
I made a vow to her before God, and I was the first to fail in how I loved, held, and cared — in sickness and in health — long before the worst chapters you read here. Again, that does not excuse anything on either side. But it does make me ask: at what point should I blame her for situations I helped create — the dysfunction we both lived in our marriage? Sometimes life is not only about victimhood, but about patterns we both fed over a very long time.
Remember: this was written in the time when it happened — my feelings of hurt, betrayal, and pain — before the time of removing the log from my own eye, before I try to remove the speck from another’s. As Jesus said: *“Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? … First take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.”* (Matthew 7:3–5, NIV)
And to what point do we forsake our wedding vows? We should not suffer in a relationship where there is no hope — but at the same time, you cannot set your own world on fire and then complain because you are burning.
On your counsel that if I stopped giving in, she would leave: I hear the concern behind it. What I live with now is almost the opposite surprise — that she stayed as long as she did in a marriage where I, for years, was often the one doing the harm. I do not say that to recruit pity for myself, or to imply she ought to have left sooner or stayed forever. I say it because the picture of a one-sided victim and a one-sided perpetrator does not match the marriage we actually had.
@Mistress Vixen — if time permits, maybe you would also respond, about the world you lived in, removed from my retelling of how I was the victim.
Thank you, KnowMe and @GratefullyLonging.
To everyone: In my relationships, I have failed both in family and in marriage. I have taken accountability, counted the cost, and re-examined my understanding of faith, love, and relationships. Yet throughout that journey, I never received guidance that was both deeply compassionate and firmly grounded in reality.
Too often, pastoral guidance has been shaped by Calvinistic and Lutheran traditions, legalism, and institutional frameworks rather than by the compassionate heart of the Gospel when ministering to married couples. Likewise, both patriarchal and matriarchal systems can become stumbling blocks when they are driven by pride, control, or human agendas rather than God's design. In this, the true meaning of Ezer Kenegdo is often overlooked.
As it is written in Romans 14:13:
"Therefore let us stop passing judgment on one another. Instead, make up your mind not to put any stumbling block or obstacle in the way of a brother or sister."
Therefore, dear brothers and sisters, do not allow ego, prejudice, unresolved trauma, or personal bias to determine what is true and what is not. Practice introspection. Take accountability and responsibility within your relationships. Seek to understand the truth behind the Ketubah covenant. Study, heal, and grow without being led by ego-driven assumptions or misguided perceptions.
It has been a profound revelation for me to see how certain doctrines and interpretations can damage beautiful, passionate, and God-honoring unions. Many marriages promoted in modern culture bear little resemblance to the vibrant, faithful, monogamous covenant of love that God intended and authored for His children.
May we seek truth with humility, love with sincerity, and relationships with wisdom, grace, and healing.
I'm just a bit confused about how you are saying you did not want to touch her at times, you said you could not hug her, or help with shaving even though after that you had sex. I am not understanding that part.
And I just want to chime in about your questions at the end. It is a very good thing to bring God in the bedroom! That is what I intend to do when I get married. I want prayer to even be a part of lovemaking. I want God there enjoying our fun lovemaking. He designed it for you both and he wants to be invited to every part of our lives. Including sex lives.
@J-stud36 She was very upset that morning, and I explained to her that I did not want to be intimate with her, or even touch her, while she felt unsafe. In my own mind, I was trying to keep some distance so she would not feel pressured.
But when she asked me to help her shave “down there,” that changed the moment. It was not me pushing past her fear; it was her inviting me into a very vulnerable and intimate space. My careful internal narrative of keeping distance did not last long after that, because she is my wife, and she is a woman I deeply desire.
When we got to the bedroom, I was also thinking about Scripture and the place of desire inside marriage. Psalm 37 speaks of God giving us the desires of our heart, but Proverbs 5 says it more directly in this context: “rejoice with the wife of thy youth” and be “ravished always with her love.”
So I was not trying to ignore her feeling unsafe. I was trying to be careful with her, while also learning how to receive her invitation, her vulnerability, and my own desire for her as something good within our marriage.