Title:  Definition of an Affair

   Hilde Houlding, coordinator of the Calgary Family Service Bureau's counseling division, describes an affair in this way:

      An affair is often an attempt to find a little bit of
      paradise on the side, pursuing the belief that if one
      just finds the right sexual partner there will be instant
      happiness and everything will fall into place. An affair is
      often able to fulfill this myth until it itself becomes a
      relationship that has to be worked at and looked at in a
      long-term light.

   Seen in this way "paradise" soon becomes a prison.

See:  Prov 5:1-23; Prov 6:23-29

Title:  Another Man's Wife

   The young preacher was shocked to hear the well-known evangelist utter the words, "I have spent some of the happiest moments of my life in the arms of another man's wife. Yes, I have spent some of the happiest moments of my life in the arms of another man's wife." Then, following a pause, the evangelist added, "That woman was my mother."
   "I've got to use that!" the young pastor thought to himself. A few weeks later, as he was speaking to a civic group, the phrase leapt into his mind and he exclaimed, "I have spent some of the happiest days of my life in the arms of another man's wife." Then, after another long pause, the young man muttered meekly, "But for the life of me I can't remember who she was."

See:  Prov 5:15-20; 1 Cor 6:18-20

Other Topic/Subtopic/Index:
Marriage/1620-1621

Title:  Camelot

   Probably no story better illustrates how the sweet, stolen water of adultery turns invariably sour than the story of Camelot. In this epic tale, the relationship of King Arthur and Queen Guenevere is trespassed upon when Arthur's most renowned and trusted knight Lancelot gingerly slips his toe across the marital boundary. It started with a look -- an innocent look, without premeditation or evil intent. But it was a short, slippery step from a look to lust, from infatuation to infidelity. The look eventually led to a touch. The touch sometime later led to a kiss. The kiss, to adultery. And adultery, to tragedy.

See:  Prov 9:13-18

Other Topic/Subtopic/Index:
Temptation/3584-3595

Title:  Adultery

   Returning from Sunday School one day, where the Ten Commandments had been the topic, our young son asked his father, "Daddy, what does it mean when it says, 'Thou shalt not commit agriculture'?"
   There was hardly a beat between the question and my husband's smooth reply: "Son, that just means that you're not supposed to plow the other man's field," an answer satisfactory to both of them.

   -- Reader's Digest, July 1979, p. 87.

See:  Ex 20:14

Other Topic/Subtopic/Index:
Fidelity/565

Title:  Diary of Deceit

   On May 3, 1987, the story of Gary Hart's fling with blond model and actress Donna Rice finally erupted into a national scandal.
   As it unraveled, the tale included accounts of her visit to his townhouse in Washington, a boat trip to Bimini, off the coast of Florida, as well as assorted reports about the promises he had allegedly made to her about their future together.
   Gary Hart showed no remorse.
   On May 5, he admitted he'd made a "big mistake" but insisted he had done "nothing immoral."
   On May 8, Hart announced he was withdrawing from the Presidential race.
   On May 25, Hart's picture with Donna Rice sitting on his lap appeared on the front page of a national weekly -- along with an account of their overnight trip to Bimini.
   On Sept. 22, Hart told Ted Koppel on ABC-TV's Nightline that he had not been "absolutely faithful" throughout his marriage.
   On Dec. 15, Gary Hart announced he had decided to re-enter the Presidential race.
   On Jan. 9, he told a newspaper in Des Moines, Iowa, that, if elected, he "wouldn't be the first adulterer in the White House."
   By Jan. 13, he had received almost $1 million of taxpayers' money for his campaign.
   On Jan. 15, at the Democratic Presidential candidates debate in Iowa, he maintained that "there is a difference between public morality and private morality."

   -- The Star

See:  Rom 16:18; Gal 6:7

Other Topic/Subtopic/Index:
Adultery/55
Nation/2525-2568

Title:  Wages of Adultery

   The woman who made a new life for herself after starring under the name Linda Lovelace in the pornographic movie Deep Throat needs a transplant to survive a liver disease, her book collaborator said yesterday.
   The writer, Mike McGrady, said that if Linda Marchiano succeeded in getting the life-saving operation, she later would have to have her breasts removed for problems caused by silicone injections she had when she was in the porn business.
   Reached by telephone last night at her Long Island home, Mrs. Marchiano, 37, said she was too ill to speak.
   "She needs a liver transplant pretty quickly," Mr. McGrady said. "It's for some form of hepatitis -- not cancer." Mr. Grady said the liver ailment was discovered by doctors examining Mrs. Marchiano to see if she could undergo a double mastectomy to treat problems caused by the breast-enlarging injections she had in the early 1970's.
   In Out of Bondage published earlier this year, Mr. McGrady and Mrs. Marchiano describe her life since she went public with her story and became an anti-porn campaigner.
   Mrs. Marchiano, now the wife of a plasterer and mother of two children, ages 10 and 6, said in her book, Ordeal in 1980 that she was coerced into prostitution and pornography by her first husband. Deep Throat came out in 1972 and she broke away from the business the following year.

See:  Psa 107:17

Other Topic/Subtopic/Index:
Sin/Impairments of/4171
Adultery/55
Evil/Activity/31-33

Title:  Too Many Wives

   It was about nine o'clock at night. A man dashed into the doctor's office in a highly nervous condition and explained to the doctor that he had been in a very bad state all day. The doctor, in his best professional manner, asked if anything had happened to shock or upset his nerves. "No," the man answered, "unless it was a letter I received this morning." He showed the doctor a letter which stated in part, "If you don't stop running around with my wife, I'm going to blow your head off." The doctor answered, "Well, that's a comparatively simple matter. Why don't you just stop it?" The patient's face fell as he said, "But, Doctor, the fool forgot to sign his name!"

See:  Psa 31:9-13; Eph 5:11-13

Other Topic/Subtopic/Index:
Anxiety/Forbidden/199
Adultery/55

Title:  Commitment to Marriage Costs

A North Carolina jury ordered a man to pay $234,000 for stealing the love of another man's wife. The verdict was not about money, legal experts say. Instead, it's a way for a scorned spouse to send a message that cheating isn't fair or appropriate.

In August, another North Carolina jury awarded a jilted wife $1 million. North Carolina is one of the few states with alienation-of-affection laws still on the books. Most states abolished such laws when no-fault divorce laws became popular.

Said Scott Altman, law professor at the University of Southern California, "Even though fault-based divorce is abolished, most people still regard infidelity as wrong and feel terribly hurt by it. So for someone to want a remedy when they feel so aggrieved, and for a jury to be sympathetic, doesn't strike me as shocking."

--USA Today (9/19/97)
 

Other Topic/Subtopic/Index:
Marriage/1620-1621

Title:  Adultery or Divorce

   Our Sept. 30 cover package on adultery ("Infidelity in the '90s") elicited responses from the parties typically involved in betrayal: cheaters, cheated-ons and cheated-withs.  Not surprisingly, a majority condemned adultery as immoral.  One reader wrote that it also demonstrates "dishonesty, immaturity, selfishness, insatiability and disrespect."  A handful of letter writers, however, suggested that the ethics of adultery were not so clear-cut.   One "church-going" woman reported that her five-year affair with a married man was saving her marriage.  "I am not sure which is the lesser of two evils," she wrote, "adultery or divorce."

   -- Newsweek Magazine, October 21, 1996, p. 18.

See: Exodus 20:14; Job 24:15; Prov 5:15-23; Matt 5:27; 1 Cor 6:9

Other Topic/Subtopic/Index:
Unfaithfulness/1233-1234

Title:  Jim Bakker

   I knew that what I was doing went directly against everything I believed as a Christian. I had never cheated on my wife in all our years of marriage.  Jessica Hahn, however, seemed quite comfortable with the situation.  I simply abandoned myself to the moment.  We did not make love; we had sex. When it was over, I quickly left the room, and in a daze, hurried to the elevator and pressed the button marking the eighth floor.  The winter afternoon sun was already beginning to slide down on the horizon as I stepped inside my room. I was horrified.  Oh, God!  What have I done?  I had not considered the consequences of my absurd attempt to make Tammy Faye jealous.  I had not even paused to think of the potential ramifications of my actions while I was giving in to the temptation of having sex with a woman other than my wife.  I had simply reacted. I had opened the door to attack on the ministry I headed, my family, and me personally.  Worse yet, the devil had not made me do any of it; I had done it of my own stubborn will. I disrobed and immediately stepped into the shower, turning the water on as hot as I could stand it.  I never felt so dirty in all my life.
   Maybe if I make the water hotter, it will wash it all away, I thought.

   -- Jim Bakker, I Was Wrong, (Nelson, 1996), p. 21.

See: Psa 51:1-4; Prov 6:32; Prov 9:17; Eph 4:22; James 1:13-15

Other Topic/Subtopic/Index:
Temptation/Worldly Snares/3592

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