The forces that work against a Christian marriage are various and strong. When a husband acts upon his lust for a woman who is not his wife, the marriage falls into disrepute, disrepair, and/or destruction. The Christian husband can be effectively warned away from the sin of sexual infidelity by a church leader who is aware of a husband who is in an emotionally unsatisfying marriage and is in close proximity to another woman.

This man may experience an emotional fixation on that woman which confuses previously held beliefs and convictions about the sanctity of his marriage. The biblical counselor can lead this man to understand the marital relationship as a reflection of Christ and his church, gain his commitment to God’s standards for faithful marriage, and then coach him through the biblical steps of confession, repentance, and fleeing sin.

I will conclude with a practical example that illustrates how a church leader can identify, confront, and counsel a husband whose beliefs and desires are dangerously adrift.

The Problem

There are several warning signs that a married brother in Christ is sliding toward an affair. The first two warning signs can be seen by others. They are (1) proximity to another woman that presents an opportunity to cheat, and (2) the man’s dissatisfaction with his marriage.[i] The third is harder to see from an outside perspective because husbands commonly hide it.[ii] It is the emotional fixation that a married man has with a woman who is not his wife.[iii]

Dangerous proximity of husbands to other women is most prominent in the workplace. Very few jobs lack female employees and coworkers. The proximity of married men alongside females during the most attentive and productive hours of each week is a circumstance that is a reality of everyday life.[iv] Consider the case of a man who has worked at building a sense of unity and teamwork at home. However, when he goes to work, he engages in challenging specialized projects with a female co-worker. When success comes, the man has formed a unique sense of bonding over a mutual sense of victory with a woman who is not in his household. The spark of a new identity with someone of the opposite sex has struck.[v]

Pastor, counselor, and author, Dave Carder, explains how this dynamic occurs. He notes that proximity, left unchecked in a husband’s heart, can mature into daydreams about, and special conversations with, the other (proximate) woman. This shared special identity becomes something that each covets.[vi] He warns of people who fit a “dangerous person profile.” That profile is a non-spouse who fills deficits that are perceived in the husband’s marriage.[vii] At work, the husband finds that he and his co-worker’s spirits are lifted when they meet, they support each other in times of stress, and they succeed together on projects. The other woman fills an emotional and activity component that his wife cannot.[viii]

When a husband is in regularly proximity to another woman, away from the house, an affair is neither inevitable nor reasonably foreseeable. When things are going well at home, Dr. Shirley Glass notes that the man will employ a filter. This unintentional mental construct does not see an opportunity for an affair with a female co-worker because there is no interest. In other words, the man is blind to the opportunity to cheat.[ix] The thing that makes proximity dangerous to male fidelity is the addition of marital dissatisfaction.

Gary Neuman, a rabbi and family counselor, notes that 88% of adulterous men claim that the most important factor in their affair was dissatisfaction with their marriages. Of those, the overwhelming majority say that the dissatisfaction was emotional, not sexual. [x] The most common cause of emotional dissatisfaction in the marriage was a perceived lack of appreciation.[xi] It is easy to see how a proximate female at work could fill the husband’s felt need. The man sees himself reflected in the metaphorical “eyes” of two women: One reflection is not flattering, while the other looks appealing. Men will chase the more flattering reflection.[xii]

The man’s heart is responding to his imperfect marriage by seeking a remedy. If the man is experiencing depression-like symptoms due to underappreciation at home, then he treats it with one of the strongest stimulating anti-depressants available – the affair.[xiii] If the man feels like a whipped puppy at home, he chooses the affair to feel in control.[xiv] His restless heart is prone to meeting legitimate needs with illegitimate means.[xv]

When the spark of a proximate dangerous relationship is mixed with the fuel of marital dissatisfaction, a flame begins. That flame is the feeling of attraction to, and fixation on, the other person. Dr. Glass calls this the “most obvious red flag” that warns the man to pull back.[xvi] The fire that results from this combustion reaction is the most dangerous step along the road to adultery. It is here that the man is bound by obsession over another woman. Infatuation, like using drugs, stimulates the brain’s reward system.[xvii]  The adulterous man will begin to hide his emotions toward the other person from his spouse while building a secret identity with that other person.[xviii] The adulterous man has treated his pain by falling in love with another.[xix] He has begun an emotional affair.[xx]

The Solution

The man who is at this perilous point in his life is in desperate need of heart change. His heart has gone astray and is wandering about blindly! Like the family dog who has forsaken his people and all of his obedience training to chase a squirrel, the husband has mentally justified his headlong (heart-first) plunge into sin. The biblical counselor must use the Gospel to shake him from this dangerous fixation.

A pointed approach to rescuing sexual sobriety and marital honor for such a man is imperative. First the man must be given a high view of marriage. Next, he must understand that his heart’s responses should be shaped by faithfulness to God’s plan for marriage and sexual sobriety.[xxi] Afterward, he must be willing to commit to take the biblically practical steps of repenting and confessing his emotional unfaithfulness to his wife, then fleeing his proximity to the target of his obsession.

John Piper notes that there has never been a generation that has held a high view of marriage. Ours is predominantly low.[xxii] The Christian man teetering on the verge of an affair needs to see that his self-perception as an unfulfilled and dissatisfied husband springs from a “small, worldly, culturally contaminated, self-centered, Christ-ignoring, God-neglecting, romance-intoxicated, unbiblical view of marriage.”[xxiii]

God created marriage (Genesis 2:18–25). God, in his original creation, finds that it is not good for man to be alone, so he fashions a perfect helper (v.18). This helper, his wife, is God’s ultimate and original design. God then gives away the first bride by bringing Eve to Adam (v. 22). Next, he speaks marriage into existence, declaring that the two individuals shall become one flesh (v. 24, Mark 10:8). The one-flesh union is not mere sexual intimacy; it is a joining of two people by God according to his design. Therefore, what God joins, no man should destroy (Matthew 19:6, Mark 10:9). The man that is peering over the precipice of throwing his marriage away in search of an emotionally charged high must understand two things: (1) he is demolishing the creative work of God, and (2) Jesus has specifically commanded him not to destroy it.[xxiv]

In Ephesians 5:25–33, Paul commands husbands to love their wives three different times (vv. 25, 28, 33). The first time, he says that the husband must love his wife as Christ loves the church. That picture of the selfless love of Christ for his bride stands in stark contrast to a husband that seeks his own emotional and sexual fulfillment outside marriage. Next, Paul tells husbands to love their wife like they love themselves. This is a direct counterattack on the worldly belief that the affair is “self-care,” administered by chasing an entitled feeling.[xxv]

Instead, the Bible dictates that the conquest-energy that he is pouring into his outside interest should be directed toward his wife. Finally, verse 33 ties the love of his wife to the original commandment for a man to hold fast to his wife (Gen 2:24). Paul says that this relationship is a mystery, because it reflects the relationship between Jesus and his church (v. 32).

This man’s relationship with the object of his adulterous heart will tell a story to all people who see it. If this man’s story goes one way, it will paint a picture of a faithless husband. It degrades a living portrait of Jesus, who has not only purchased his bride with his blood, but he will neither leave nor forsake her (Matthew 28:20, Heb 13:5). On the other hand, there is still time to create a portrait of an imperfect, struggling, yet loving and sexually faithful husband. Marital faithfulness is a display of God and an essential way we can be like Christ (Eph 5:1).[xxvi]

Once the man believes the sanctity of marriage is meant to be an essential image of God’s relationship to us, he will need pointed scriptural guidance regarding the response of his heart to temptation. Romans 12:1-3 is written to the husband who is at this point in his Christian walk. The passage begins by giving the believer a high view of mercy. Paul begins his address by appealing to the mercies of God (v.1a). If a man has the faith to believe that the lover of his soul has shown him unspeakably great mercy, how could he do anything but reciprocate toward his bride with a shadow of the same type of lovingkindness. Compare what we, in our sin, deserve to what the wayward husband thinks his wife deserves. We have merited death before a holy and perfect God because of our rebellion (Rom 3:23, 6:23). His mercy toward us required the sacrifice of his own Son. The wayward husband’s wife, in contrast, has merely “sinned” by not satisfying her husband in the way his sinful heart desires. Because her perceived transgression is so much less, and the one offended is far from holy and perfect, then mercy toward her should naturally flow from a right perception of God’s loving disposition toward us.  

There is a second relevant reaction to God’s great mercy. It is the commandment to present our body as a sacrifice to the Lord, holy and acceptable (v. 1b). In the Old Testament, acceptable sacrifices were only those which were prescribed by the Lord (Gen 4:4–7, Ex 12:1–6, Lev 1:3, 4:3, 22:21, Num 6:13–14). In the New Testament, we are to present our bodies as the prescribed sacrifice. God wants our bodies to be employed in submission to him. This is our reasonable (or spiritual) expression of praise for his great mercy.

Submission of our bodies is the product of a transformed heart. Romans 12:2 adjures us to be transformed by a renewed mind rather than conformed to this world. Conformity is what Play-Doh does when pressure is applied to it. This is how the heart responds when pressures, such as circumstances, self-image, and external expectations are applied to it.[xxvii] In contrast, Paul urges the mind to be transformed. This indicates that the substance of the mind is changed from one thing into something else. Transformation is not just the application of another counter pressure. It is something old being replaced (an ongoing process) by something that functions in a fundamentally different way.[xxviii]

Transformation is not merely a one-time transaction. Christian counselor, Joe Dallas, has found that the sexually addicted men that he has worked with had a false belief that conversion would equate to the removal of sexual temptation from their lives. It did not.[xxix] Jesus said that adultery occurs in the heart (Matthew 5:28). Likewise, Dallas maintains that coveting someone sexually is a problem of the heart. It is the heart’s longing for something that it has no right to have.[xxx] This transformation that Paul commands in Romans 12, then, must be a unique event followed by a process that makes God the controlling context that the heart responds to. In a different epistle, Paul writes, “And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another” (2 Cor 3:18). This ongoing component of transformation requires continuous repentance and submission to both the Holy Spirit and the Word of God by faith.[xxxi]

After the man has both humbled his heart to God in this matter and committed to the necessity of heart transformation, he must take a series of biblical actions that will ultimately fulfill the emotional needs of the transformed heart.  First, he must repent and confess the sin of his heart to his wife.[xxxii] James 5:16 urges us to confess our sins to one another so that we may be healed. This is done in obedience to the Word of God, yet it has an incredibly solid practical effect. Shirley Glass notes that when we share our hidden feelings about another person with our spouse, “the intensity and fascination of that secret are greatly diminished. We let reality into fantasy.”[xxxiii]

Paul says to flee sexual immorality (1 Cor 6:18). Fleeing is both an imperative in Scripture and an active process this man must engage in. Therefore, the next step is for the man to take material steps to distance himself from the object of his heart’s lust. That may involve a conversation with that person, a transfer of jobs, the deletion of information from electronic and social media means of communication, and honoring other suggestions from his wife. Since immorality lies within the heart, the man must actively flee the temporal points of contact that would woo his heart back into sin.

Finally, he must fill what his heart desires with the provisions that God has given to him.[xxxiv] Paul implores us to take every thought captive in obedience to Christ (2 Cor 10:5). God has saturated the union of a man and a woman with the potential to fulfill emotional needs. When a husband and wife combine to form “mutually interlocking fires” against the enemy, they see the world from the same lens, the walls are built around their union (not between them), and they have a greater sense of victorious accomplishment than the husband can find with another woman at work.[xxxv]  

When all is said and done, the husband’s heart must clearly see the danger to his family, his church, and his Christian witness by following this theological trek. The gift that God has given him in marriage is a thing that cannot be discarded because it is central to the Christian understanding of God’s relationship with us. A biblical view of mercy should cause him to leave the lusts of the flesh and pursue his bride. He should engage in confession and repentance before God and his wife, then restore marital trust by fleeing his sin.

What follows is a practical example of working through the  process by a leader in the church who engages a husband that is standing on the verge of adultery.

Applying the Solution as a Practical Exercise

In the movie Tombstone, I always find myself pleading with Wyatt Earp (played by Kurt Russell) to focus on his marriage and his ailing wife, instead of finding love in the furtive glances of a stranger. Alas, my pleadings fall on deaf ears. The movie has been made, and no matter how many times I watch it, the plot doesn’t change. So, I will provide my own practical exercise (application) of these principles, pretending that Wyatt is a believer and that I had his ear and could speak to him before he fell.

_____

Wyatt Earp, I have been appraised of your situation, and I need to approach you in brotherly love about where you find your actions and faith. I understand that your wife, Mattie, is suffering from unhealthy addictions, some of them related to your location and job as Sheriff of Tombstone, Arizona. As you have attempted to deal with that situation, your demanding work has brought you into regular and persistent contact with Josephine Marcus, the actress and photographer who is new to town. She has a crush on you. You appear to be reciprocating. Many people around town are talking about the inordinate amount of time you are spending with Josephine. Your attitude toward Mattie has suffered.

First, I would like you to know that I see your heart in all of this. Life in this town can be very hard on families and marriages. You put your life on the line each and every day that you don the sheriff’s badge and fight bad guys. You probably want your biggest fan to be Mattie. Instead, she seems to be broken by the medical treatments that she is receiving and by her move into this town. In the midst of dealing with your disappointments at home, you have been faced with a very attractive newcomer who is offering you all the affirmation – especially that from a close female – that you crave.  You see a better reflection of yourself in her eyes that those of your wife. Mattie sees you as part of the reason she is suffering physically and mentally, while Josephine sees you as brave and heroic. Who wouldn’t be attracted to that?

Your response betrays your attraction. You have picnic lunches and long horse rides with her. Your engagements with Josephine are all done while Mattie is somewhere else. It appears that you are keeping the fascination that you have with Josephine away from your wife. Your brothers hear you talk about this “other woman” all the time. This tells me that you are emotionally fascinated with the prospect of becoming intimate with her, despite what an affair will do to your wife and your representation of Jesus in the church and in the town. Your wife is treating her ailments through illegitimate means, and it appears that you are about to make the same terrible mistake.

Do you know that God has given you a beautiful gift? It is marred by sin, just like everything in this dusty town. We see brokenness all around us, Wyatt. Despite this, God has given you a bride. This is a direct gift from him to you. God invented marriage and gave away the first bride (Gen 2). Mattie is a gift from the creator of the universe. It is only a stubborn and rebellious heart that takes the good things God has given and declared that they are not good enough (Num 11)!

God has also said that marriage reflects the relationship that God has with us – his imperfect bride! Paul, in Romans 12:1, appeals to all believers by the mercies of God. Think about it, Wyatt: the perfect God loves us – the imperfect – so much that he not only calls us his bride, but he gave Jesus to purchase us from our fallenness. Since God has dealt with us in this manner, we should treat other broken people with the same lovingkindness. This is especially true when that other person is a gift from God himself.

Paul also urges the Christian to be transformed by the renewal of your mind. Submission to God involves the transformation of the mind that is currently lunging blindly into an affair! A transformed mind knows what is good and acceptable instead of being blindly led away by the desires of the flesh.

Wyatt, I want you to believe your marriage to Mattie is a gift from God. I want you to believe that how you treat that gift says a lot about your faith in his Word, especially all that Romans 12:1 says about mercy and a transformed mind. Upon this faith, I want you to desire good more than evil. The good is what God has given to you; the evil is what God has specifically forbidden. Desiring God and his good things can only happen from a transformed heart. The more you lean into God’s Word, engage in the gathering of the saints, and humble yourself in prayer, the more you will find that there is something much better than Josephine.

When this happens, I want you to come clean with Mattie. This is a moment for honest conversations that involve confession and repentance. You will find that if there are any vestiges of feelings for Josephine, your confession will allow you to see those inclinations for what they are: misguided and harmful. After you have done this, I want you to tune in to what your wife says about this closeness to Josephine. Let Mattie know when you break this emotional affair with Josephine. Honor whatever suggestions that Mattie has for creating distance between you and Josephine. Your wife needs to see what confession, repentance, and reconciliation look like. As you pray for her, she may find herself on that same track.

Be strong and courageous brother. I and all the saints in the church are here to help you along this path. Above all, keep Mark 11:22 in view: “have faith in God.”

ENDNOTES ______________________________

[i] Shirley P. Glass and Jean Coppock Staeheli, Not “Just Friends”: Rebuilding Trust and Recovering Your Sanity After Infidelity (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2021) 18. Glass and Staeheli list the top four causes of infidelity, generically, as opportunity, vulnerability, commitment, and values.

[ii] Glass and Staeheli, Not “Just Friends” 47-48.

[iii] June Hunt, Adultery: The Snare of an Affair (Peabody, MA: Henrickson Publishers, 2013) 122-3.

[iv] Proximity to another woman can also happen in a number of circumstances, including social media, encountering an old love interest, or through a person in a social/friendship circle.

[v] Glass and Staeheli, Not “Just Friends,” 28.

[vi] Dave Carder, Anatomy of an Affair: How Affairs, Attractions, and Addictions Develop, and How to Guard Your Marriage Against Them (Chicago: Moody Publishers, 2008) 13-14.

[vii] Carder, Anatomy of an Affair, 37.

[viii] Carder, Anatomy of an Affair, 43-44.

[ix] Glass and Staeheli, Not “Just Friends,” 27.

[x] M. Gary Neuman, The Truth About Cheating: Why Men Stray and What You Can Do to Prevent It (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2008) 17. A 2001 National Science Foundation survey found that respondents who said that their marriages (relationships) were either “pretty” or “not” ‘happy were two to four times more likely to report infidelity than those reporting happy relationships. “Infidelity in the United States Among Married Couples: A Fact Sheet,” Healthy Marriage Info, accessed March 14, 2026, https://www.healthymarriageinfo.org/wp-content/uploads/2457.pdf.

[xi] Neuman, The Truth About Cheating, 20. Dr. Julian Ibe records that lack of marital respect and appreciation lead to a greater tendency to be unfaithful, along with other indicators of marital dissatisfaction such as boredom, marital unhappiness, and a lack of sexual satisfaction. Julian C. Ibe, “Infidelity in Christian Marriages: Causes, Effects, and Solutions,” Journal of African Studies and Sustainable Development 6, no. 4 (2023): 245-6.

[xii] Glass and Staeheli, 45.

[xiii] Irwin M. Marcus, Why Men Have Affairs: Understanding Hidden Motives of Infidelity (New Orleans: Bon Temps Press, 2004) 45.

[xiv] Marcus, Why Men Have Affairs, 90-91.

[xv] June Hunt, Adultery, 30, 36.

[xvi] Glass and Staeheli, Not “Just Friends,” 18.

[xvii] “Why a Person Cheats: The Neuroscience & Psychology of Infidelity,” Amen Clinics, December 15, 2025, https://www.amenclinics.com/blog/why-people-cheat-the-neuroscience-of-infidelity/.

[xviii] Carder, Anatomy of an Affair, 13-14.

[xix] Ibe, “Infidelity in Christian Marriages,” 246.

[xx] Tim Clinton and Ron Hawkins, The Quick Reference to Biblical Counseling, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2009) 25. Clinton and Hawkins note that the emotional affair is often more damaging than the sexual component of an affair.

[xxi] The term “sexual sobriety,” is a major theme of: Joe Dallas, The Game Plan: The Men’s 30-Day Strategy for Attaining Sexual Integrity (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2005).

[xxii] John Piper, This Momentary Marriage: A Parable of Permanence (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2009) 19.

[xxiii] Piper, This Momentary Marriage, 21.

[xxiv] Piper, This Momentary Marriage, 21-24.

[xxv] “He who worships anything of himself is a candidate for extra-marital sex. His marriage is vulnerable. His desires have become his privileges. So long as he is his own god, he feels himself free to obey nothing and no one but himself.” Walter Wangerin Jr., As For Me and My House: Crafting Your Marriage to Last Expanded ed. (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1990) 195.

[xxvi] Piper, This Momentary Marriage, 24-26.

[xxvii] Jeremy Pierre, The Dynamic Heart in Daily Life: Connecting Christ to Human Experience (Greensboro, NC: New Growth Press, 2016) 101-103.

[xxviii] The Greek root verb for “transform” found in Romans 12:2, μεταμορφοω, in its imperatival form, is a command to be changed inwardly in fundamental character or condition. Frederick W. Danker, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, 3rd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000) 639-640.

[xxix] Dallas, The Game Plan, xiii.

[xxx] Dallas, The Game Plan, 121.

[xxxi] Pierre, The Dynamic Heart in Daily Life, 112, 117-19.

[xxxii] Walter Wangerin Jr. sees four steps to this process: Recount everything, admit fault, speak it to another, then listen and believe. Wangerin, As For Me and My House, 201-202.

[xxxiii] Glass and Staeheli, 35.

[xxxiv] Nancy C. Anderson, Avoiding the Greener Grass Syndrome: How to Grow Affair-Proof Hedges Around Your Marriage (Grand Rapids: Kregel Publications, 2004) 43.

[xxxv] Nancy Anderson advises building hedges around the marriage: hearing, encouraging, dating, guarding, educating, and satisfying. Anderson, Avoiding the Greener Grass Syndrome, 46-47.