After an awkward breakup with Soji, my ex-boyfriend of four years, I met a married man with three kids. We worked together – what a cliche! I’d always seen him at work but we didn’t really start talking until I’d split up with my boyfriend and started going out more with people from work. He was completely upfront about his marriage because we were just friends in a large group of work colleagues, but he professed his love and his willingness to leave his wife for me.

I was so upset from the break up that I wasn’t thinking straight. My married colleague gave me many gifts and money, and also paid me a lot of attention when I was feeling particularly low and at first I found it easy to pretend that his wife didn’t exist and besides, the secrecy really made it more exciting.

His wife was away working about 2 weeks of each month so I thought nothing of going to his house. I spent most of my time waiting for him to call and ask me to go over, as we could never make plans because obviously she would come first. I even found myself cancelling plans with friends just in case he’d call.

He only ever came to my house once, after inviting me over and I refused. An hour later he was at my doorstep but first thing the next morning, he couldn’t have left any quicker.
One day, I went to his house while his wife was away, we watched a movie, had dinner, went to bed. We woke up to the sound of the front door closing because she’d come back early to surprise him. I was absolutely terrified and grabbed my clothes but he wouldn’t let me out of the room and made me hide behind the door just before she walked in. He managed to convince her that they should go out for breakfast and I left after they did.

On the way home, he called me apologizing profusely and I finally summoned up the courage to ask him never to contact me again, and he never has. I wasted two years of my life to nothing. Some mutual friends later told me that I was only one in a long line of women he’d cheated on his wife with.

Daniel 11:32 says ‘those who do wickedly against the covenant he shall corrupt with flattery; but the people who know their God shall be strong and carry out great exploits.’ With every decision to compromise the word of God, we shortchange our destiny and blessings – the prodigal son lost access to his inheritance because of fleeting pleasure – every step outside the covering of the covenant leads to problems.

Affairs are (initially) exciting. As the married man can only make time for her sporadically (depending on when he can steal away from his family), the other woman doesn’t take him for granted.  There is passion and lust. Proverbs 9:17 says ‘stolen water is sweet and bread eaten in secret is pleasant’. In many cases what is so attractive about the man is his unavailability. The sense of conquest makes their illicit union sweeter and, if he was single, he might be less attractive.

For various reasons; be it growing up in a broken home or previous bad relationships, women who continually date married men are often scared of the idea of marriage. They do not really want a committed relationship so they sabotage their chances of finding one by going after men that belong to another. Oh she might outwardly bemoan the fact that he hasn’t left his wife yet but at the end of the day this woman enjoys being this man’s escape from reality. When he is with her, he’s charming, attentive and romantic; she doesn’t have to deal with the reality of him on a daily basis; she doesn’t have to cook for him, clean up after him or tiptoe around him when he’s had a bad day at work.

Even if the other woman believes he will someday divorce his wife, the honest truth is that this is unlikely to happen, because she is just a temporal distraction. More importantly is the wickedness being done against the covenant of marriage and the scriptures cannot be broken; those who do not know their God will be abased.

Galatians 6:7 says “Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, that he will also reap”. Proverbs 22:8 puts it like this: ‘he who sows iniquity will reap sorrow,’ Why plant a bad seed? It will germinate and you will definitely reap a harvest. You may say, “ooh, life is not being fair”, but the reality is that you get from life what you determine to put in. Determine to do the right thing, knowing it’s a seed you are sowing and that your harvest is sure.

God will bring YOUR OWN man – don’t live with an indecent proposal!