My Unfaithful Husband Says He Repents, Can I Trust Him Again?

Reader’s Question: “My husband and I are both Christians, but my husband had an affair with another woman. When I found out, he said he would repent and cut off all communication with her. I am in so much pain, can I really trust him again?”

Reply: I am so sorry to hear that you are going through something so painful! Emotional and relational betrayal is one of the most painful things that people experience, and can often feel much more painful than physical betrayal and thus harder to accept. May the Lord himself comfort you and strengthen you!

We don’t know if you can still trust your husband just from the few words that he said, but if you do hope to be able to forgive him some day, and to give him a chance to repent and to rebuild your marriage, there are a few important things that would worth your time to consider, meditate and pray on, and seek the Lord for.

1. Trust that the Lord Will Not Disappoint You

Although we don’t know if you can still trust your husband, we know that there is One whom you can always trust – the Lord Jesus Christ who became flesh for you and died for you.

Human beings are all sinners and will be tempted and influenced by sin every day even after we have believed in God, and so cannot become perfect in this life. Therefore, even when we are determined to become holy and have good wishes, we are still living in our flesh continuing in our struggles, fighting against the world and against our own sinful desires. However, Christ is the Lord, who became flesh and died willingly on the cross in order to redeem you, bearing the death penalty of sin in your place, reconciling you back to God, making you a beloved child of God. He loves you and cherishes you very very much, and it grieves Him deeply when you experience such pain in your life. But know this, beloved, that Jesus is with you, and He suffers together with you; more than that, He will give you strength, and help you to endure this trial and to overcome it relying on Him. This might take a long time, but He is different from human beings who disappoint you – He will never disappoint you.

We are all sinners, including your husband who has disappointed you and may disappoint you again in the same things or different things in the future. This is a hard truth to take, but recognizing it is very important for your healing because if we put our hope in human beings who keep changing and who keep sinning, then we will be disappointed sooner or later. Only the unchanging, completely holy, just, and gracious God will never disappoint you with His love.

John 2:23-25 tells a little story: When Jesus was in Jerusalem at the Passover Feast, many believed in his name when they saw the signs that he was doing. But Jesus on his part did not entrust himself to them, “because he knew all people and needed no one to bear witness about man, for he himself knew what was in man.” Jesus knew that people were all sinners with a sinful nature, so He wouldn’t put his hope in human beings. However, we are not God and we cannot see what’s in a person’s heart. Like Proverbs 20:5a says, “A plan in the heart of a person is like deep water,” not everyone can discern what is in another person’s heart. Jeremiah even warned us by saying, “The heart is more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick; Who can understand it?” (Jer. 17:9) Many times we might not even know our own heart!

Now you may feel a little discouraged thinking, “Does that mean there’s no hope?” There is hope – our hope is not built on human beings, your hope is not built on your husband, nor on the discerning or seeing through his heart, but on the Lord who is full of mercy and grace and is sovereign over all things and all people, and He will never disappoint you. The Lord says that He is the one “who is going ahead of you; He will be with you. He will not desert you or abandon you.” And so He comforts and encourages you, “Do not fear and do not be dismayed.” (Deut. 31:8) His precious and true promise to you is: “I am your refuge and strength, a very ready help in trouble.” (Ps. 46:1). The second part of Proverbs 20:5 also says, “(A plan in the heart of a person is like deep water,) but a person of understanding draws it out.” And God says that if any of us lacks wisdom, we ought to ask of Him, who gives to all generously and without reproach, and it will be given to us (James 1:5).

Your love/marriage is facing a crisis at the moment, making you very depressed and anxious, but please remember that because of what Christ has done for you, you are now the precious daughter of the Most High God, the Creator of heaven and earth, so no matter what you go through, the most important thing in your life is always your relationship with God, not your relationship with your husband.

A marriage crisis is one of the biggest temptations that you will ever face because Satan the opportunist will try to use this opportunity to cause you to doubt God and to leave God, tempting you to rely on your own strength to “solve” this crisis, rather than relying on God alone from whom the true power comes (1 Pet. 5:8). Therefore, be on the alert, particularly during this time, lest you fall into Satan’s trap and into real spiritual crisis.

In this critical season of your life, being on the alert, come to the Lord and meditate on His grace, looking to Him for hope and help, and depend on Him. Remember that God is going ahead of you; He will be with you; He will not desert you or abandon you; He is your refuge and the source of your strength, a very ready help for you in trouble.

During this process, you might first need to wrestle through many difficult yet important questions before the Lord, even various emotions toward Him, for example, “Why did God allow this to happen? Does God really love me? Is God real? What is God’s plan for my marriage?” Your faith is now being tested by this trial, and you might have many questions for which you need to seek the Lord. This is part of the most important relationship that you have with God.

This process of wrestling and seeking God will likely take a long time and need much patience, and will be extremely agonizing with intense pain, so please don’t try to go through this on your own, rather, reach out to your pastor, faithful, mature and loving Christian friends, and biblical counselors, etc. and ask for their help to seek the Lord together with you. Only when your relationship with the Lord is strengthened, will you have strength and wisdom from above to deal with other difficult things.

2. Learn to Identify True Repentance

You are experiencing something very painful, but there is one thing that we can be thankful for, which is your husband’s saying that he will repent and cut off all communication with the other person. We do hope that he meant it and that he is determined to do so. However, for you personally, after such a huge betrayal and “humiliation”, you might be feeling unable to trust him again like most people probably would feel, fearing that he would continue the affair behind your back or that he might do it again with someone else in the future. I hope you know that it makes perfect sense that you feel this way, and it is a completely understandable and normal response.

Because your husband has broken your trust, it won’t be easy to repair that trust, and it’s certainly not something that can be done overnight. It will require him to prove over a long time that he is worthy of your trust by his behaviors and changes. This is reasonable and is part of the consequences that he needs to bear for his sin before the Lord. God keeps emphasizing the fact that sin has consequences throughout the Bible. Even though Jesus has paid the penalty for our sins, so when God’s children confess sin before God, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins (1 John 1:9), it doesn’t mean that we won’t need to bear consequences for our sins in this life (e.g., murderers will go to jail).

So how do you know if your husband’s “repentance” is true? The Puritan preacher Thomas Watson explained “the nature of true repentance” in his book The Doctrine of Repentance, which can help us identify whether a person’s “repentance” is true or false.

Watson listed out six special ingredients of true repentance: 1) Sight of sin 2) Sorrow for sin 3) Confession of sin 4) Shame for sin 5) Hatred for sin 6) Turning from sin. His book would be helpful to learn more about true repentance and to grow in wise discernment.

As Watson said in this book, “Repentance is a grace of God’s Spirit, whereby a sinner is inwardly humbled and outwardly reformed. ” If your husband were to truly repent, it would be the Holy Spirit’s working in his heart, moving him toward the sight of sin, sorrow for sin, confession of sin, shame for sin, hatred for sin, and turning from sin. So I would like to encourage you to pray for him without ceasing, asking the Lord for mercy, so that he would see the ugliness of his sin and the enmity against God, leading him to true repentance.

I hope this relatively brief reply could bring you some comfort and encouragement, as well as guiding you toward God. May our Father in heaven bless you and help you, comfort you and encourage you, may He strengthen you to walk this journey depending on Him, so that no matter what decision you make in the end, He will enable you to rejoice in Christ alone and hope in Him alone!

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