Adultery-the 7th Deadly Sin

I call adultery the seventh deadly sin because it’s the seventh commandment or the seventh out of the tenth list of don’ts.

A good way to sum up adultery would be the willful violation of the marriage contract by either partner through sexual intercourse with a third party.

The New Testament says whoever divorces his spouse and remarries commits adultery, except in the case of sexual infidelity.

With no fault divorces the order of the day and these type divorces and remarriages exploding, few give the topic a second thought until they’re on the receiving end.

However adultery is so much more than the sum of the physical act, the consequences can be enormous and last a lifetime.

The term ‘broken home’ became more familiar overtime as divorce rates skyrocketed with families headed by one parent the norm, but with adultery the cause and effect there’re even more issues.

To be clear I’m referring to both physical and emotional adultery here.

When an ongoing affair leads to a reversal of allegiance and affection for an existing spouse it’s devastating especially when there’s a family involved.

The best case situation is when the affair’s just physical and despite initial trust issues the couple manage to move on.

If not the marriage’s over with divorce just a hop, skip and jump away.

But people should realize the risk of physical and emotional fallout when starting a sexual liaison.

The result of the worst case situation may not only involve divorce, but can be abandonment of the family and life-long estrangement for the children.

To say nothing of the betrayal and bitterness it leaves in its wake.

Some of the worst effects for kids are major trust issues with adults, drastic personality changes for example from extrovert to introvert and vice versa, a warped sense of romantic love that may affect them in adulthood and a lack of confidence in their own judgement.

Or some become hapless people pleasers who place other people’s needs and desires above their own.

The side of adultery no one mentions

There’s probably a good reason adultery’s placed after murder in the Ten Commandments line-up.

Its murder of the spirit because it turns victims into living ghosts, haunted by a past they’d rather forget but can’t, as the memories linger……..

So does regrets because everyone has them regardless of who’s at fault.

But there’s another living ghost in the machine, the one responsible for all the woes that happily moved on reducing the status of the ex-spouse to an exile with an upside down life, while leaving the wounded with a past that if not dealt with, will eventually deal with them.

While wronged spouses strive to put as much distance between themselves and their past as possible the kids only know the past and if it’s any predictor of the future it won’t inspire confidence.

This difference in outlook’s the reason for the friction between the parent trying to build a new life and the children who can’t just put the past behind.

Everybody’s heard stories on the internet by those in some type of romantic relationship or friendship complaining they were ghosted.

Basically it’s when someone ends a personal relationship without explanation severing all communication, but adultery is the worst form of ghosting.

Before the no fault divorce

We know no- fault divorces made the ending of marriages freer and easier but then its forerunner, the fault divorce, sometimes veered too far in the opposite direction making the divorce process difficult for those who really needed it.

With the fault divorce spouses had to have valid grounds for a divorce such as adultery or cruelty.

The trouble was it led to people fabricating reasons so the change to no-fault was seen more honest.

Prior to no-fault some divorces weren’t even approved by the courts because the other spouse could offer a valid defense against allegations that arose.

Or the court could rule that one spouse’s reasons for seeking a divorce amounted to insufficient grounds.

One main benefit of the no-fault divorce is it’s less dehumanizing and demoralizing to both parties because fault doesn’t have to be established.

Without a doubt fault divorces had some ominous unintended consequences for innocent parties.

Like when spouses committed adultery and abandoned the family leaving the ones behind to sort out the legal mess of instituting divorce proceedings.

The humiliating job of justifying the divorce in a court of law then fell on the shoulders of injured parties.

Probably the reason The New Testament spent so much time on the topic of divorce and adultery was because it was such a big bugbear at the time with men in adulterous relationships keen to ‘put away’ their wives to remarry without even the decency of divorcing them releasing them from the relationship.

Some things just never change.