Years ago a woman came to talk with me about adultery.

She was both giddy and horrified to realize that she was attracted to another man. Certainly she had fallen like a felled tree for her husband ages ago. But their love had drifted, fading like the curtains in her bedroom window. This feeling she had for another man, a married man, was like electricity whenever she saw him. And she found ways to see him.

She paused in her confession for me to be shocked. I was not shocked. 

When I was a young girl I remember telling my father that the commandment about adultery was superfluous. I would never, ever, ever do that, so I could cross it off of my to do list and forget about it. He smiled. And said nothing. 

Fifty years later I no longer question the inclusion of a directive in the Top Ten about monogamy. It is there because God needs to be clear. Faithfulness in a relationship is not just a good idea. It is the life's blood.

If shunning extra marital relationships were a no brainer, God would move on to secondary problems more likely to sabotage us. But He knows, how well He knows, that infidelity is a clear and present danger. Immunity is not awarded on the basis of economics, ethnicity, genetics or knowledge. 

I imagine a stream that begins innocently enough. You chat when you happen to run into each other. Then you find ways to make sure you bump into each other, and the water runs faster. You find that you care more about how you look and what you say to this Other person than you do with your spouse. The water begins to crest into rapids. 

It is harder to resist the current, and the loss of control is both frightening and exhilarating. You are headed to a cliff, but the adrenaline is surging so fast there is no room in your brain to imagine what is at the bottom.

Rocks.

Some months later my friend came to check back with me. She had reigned in the urge. Her marriage was intact. 

"The other day I saw my son laughing with the son of the man I was drawn to. The one I had begun to imagine leaving my husband for. If I had, those two young men would not be laughing. They would be crying."

Love, 

Lori