How to survive an affair
Are you about to give up? This is what you need
You did not come here by accident. Something inside you knows you cannot keep living the way things are. Maybe your marriage feels like it is hanging on by a thread. Maybe betrayal has shattered the trust you thought could never be broken. Or maybe you are carrying silent questions you are afraid to say out loud: Is there still hope for us? Is this the end of our story? Could anything good come out of this pain?
If those questions sound familiar, pause and take a breath. You are not alone, and you are not without hope.
This Is Not Another Blog
This is not another marriage blog filled with clichés or quick fixes. What you will find here is a seven-part journey built to help you step back from despair and discover that healing, intimacy, and even joy are still possible. Affairs do not just break marriages, they break people. They destroy the foundations of who you thought you were, what you thought you had, and where you thought you were going.
When you are standing in the rubble, you face two choices. You can stay stuck in the pain, or you can begin building something new, safe, and strong.
Why This Series Exists
That is why this series exists. These seven videos are not random ideas; they are a survival kit packed with tools from people who have been in your shoes and found a way forward. Each video reveals a key step in the healing process. You will learn how to face painful emotions, rebuild intimacy, choose forgiveness, and see why vulnerability may be the very thing that saves your marriage. Most of all, you will be reminded that God has not abandoned you.
By the end, you will see what many have already discovered: broken does not mean finished, and your story is not over. Healing starts now!
The 7-Part Series at a Glance
1. When a Marriage Feels Dead: The First Steps Toward Healing
The moment after betrayal can either save your marriage or seal its coffin, discover the first move that decides everything.
2. Rock Bottom Love: Turning Collapse into a Comeback
Your marriage has exploded into ashes, but inside that wreckage lies the hidden weapon that can turn total destruction into a comeback story you’ll never forget.
3. The Cost of Image vs. the Power of Truth in Marriage
Your obsession with appearances is quietly killing your relationship, rip off the mask now or risk losing everything forever.
4. Sex, Trust, and Grace: Restoring Intimacy After Betrayal
Think intimacy dies after infidelity? Think again. The raw truth about rebuilding passion will shock you, unsettle you, and give you hope you didn’t believe was possible.
5. Why I Stayed: Choosing Healing After Infidelity
When the world screams “leave,” staying looks like madness, but the choice to stay unlocked a redemption story you need to see to believe.
6. The Pain Behind the Curtain: Breaking the Silence Together
What you’re hiding in the dark is poisoning your marriage, watch what happens when couples finally drag their deepest secrets into the light.
7. Pastor vs. Lawyer: Can a Marriage Really Survive?
A pastor bets on miracles, a lawyer bets on statistics, what unfolds in their clash could decide the fate of your marriage.
When a Marriage Feels Dead: The First Steps Toward Healing
When a marriage collapses under the weight of betrayal, pain, or disappointment, it can feel like there’s no way forward. But what Carl and Laura Lentz recently shared in their story shows us powerful truths: even in devastation, healing and restoration are possible. Their journey is not just their testimony; it’s a window into timeless truths for every couple on the brink.
Men, if you’re serious about saving your marriage and reclaiming your integrity, we have a crucial resource for you. The Proven Men Study has already helped thousands of husbands break free from pornography, rebuild trust, and rediscover the man God designed them to be. This isn’t another empty promise; it’s a proven path that equips you to fight for purity, healing, and lasting intimacy. If your marriage matters to you, start here today.
Truth & Takeaways #1
1. Healing Starts with Brutal Honesty
The first step Carl and Laura had to take was honesty; honesty about sin, about wounds, and about the ways trust had been broken. Hiding never heals. The truth hurts, but the truth also opens the door to freedom.
Takeaway for your marriage: Healing requires telling the truth about where you are. Don’t pretend everything is fine. Don’t minimize the damage. Be willing to face reality together. John 8:32 reminds us, “Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”
2. Forgiveness Is a Daily Choice, Not a One-Time Event
Laura’s choice to stay in the marriage didn’t mean everything was instantly fixed. Forgiveness wasn’t a moment, it became a daily practice. Forgiveness doesn’t erase the pain, but it keeps bitterness from poisoning the future.
Takeaway for your marriage: If your spouse has hurt you, forgiveness is not pretending it didn’t happen. Forgiveness says, “I refuse to let this wound be the final word over us.” You may need to forgive seventy times seven, just as Jesus taught (Matthew 18:22).
3. Healing Requires Work, Not Just Time
Time doesn’t heal all wounds; truth, humility, and hard work do. Carl had to face his brokenness and allow God to rebuild him. Laura had to lean into her own healing instead of waiting passively for things to get better.
Takeaway for your marriage: Don’t wait for feelings to magically change. Pursue counseling, mentorship, prayer, and accountability. Healing is active, not passive. Galatians 6:9 reminds us, “Let us not grow weary in doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up.”
4. Vulnerability Creates Space for Intimacy
One of the most powerful things in their story is how they now share openly about their struggles. Vulnerability isn’t weakness; it’s strength. It’s the soil where trust can regrow.
Takeaway for your marriage: Let your spouse see your heart again. Even when it feels impossible to rebuild, truth spoken in love becomes the starting line for healing. When you allow yourself to be fully known, even in weakness, you create the soil where intimacy can take root and grow strong again.
5. God Can Breathe Life into Dead Places
At their lowest, Carl and Laura’s marriage looked over. But they discovered what every follower of Jesus can cling to: resurrection power is real. The God who raised Jesus from the dead is able to resurrect a marriage that feels dead.
Takeaway for your marriage: Don’t count yourself out. Don’t believe the lie that it’s “too far gone.” With God, nothing is impossible (Luke 1:37). The same Spirit that raised Christ from the dead can breathe new life into your covenant.
Rock Bottom Love: Turning Collapse into a Comeback
When your marriage feels like it has been reduced to rubble, when trust is gone, when pain feels permanent, when the future seems impossible, it’s easy to believe your story is over. But even in devastation, there are powerful truths that can guide a couple toward healing.
Truth & Takeaways #2
1. Brokenness Can Become the Turning Point
It often takes a collapse to expose what was already cracked beneath the surface. Rock bottom may feel humiliating, but it can also become holy ground, because it’s there that pretense dies, and the real work of healing can begin.
Takeaway for your marriage: Don’t despise the collapse. Instead of hiding it, let it push you toward honesty, repentance, and a fresh start with God’s help.
2. Personal Healing Fuels Marital Healing
A marriage can’t thrive if the individuals inside it are deeply wounded and unwilling to grow. Healing your marriage begins with allowing God to heal you. Counseling, accountability, and spiritual renewal aren’t over the top; they’re lifelines.
Takeaway for your marriage: Ask yourself, What parts of me need healing right now? Don’t just focus on fixing your spouse. As God restores you, He can use that wholeness to strengthen your covenant.
3. Forgiveness Is the Bridge to the Future
Forgiveness doesn’t erase what happened; it creates a bridge so you can move forward instead of being stuck in the past. Without forgiveness, bitterness becomes the language of every interaction. With forgiveness, even the hardest conversations can turn into opportunities for rebuilding trust.
Takeaway for your marriage: Begin the work of forgiveness, even if it feels impossible. Forgive in small steps, over and over. Each choice loosens the grip of resentment and makes space for love to grow again.
4. Protect the Space Where Healing Happens
Healing is fragile. Outside voices, family, friends, media, even well-meaning church people, can unintentionally make things worse. For a marriage to mend, you must guard the sacred space where restoration takes place.
Takeaway for your marriage: Set boundaries. Choose carefully who you let speak into your marriage. Not everyone needs access to your pain, reserve that space for safe, trusted, God-given voices.
5. Vulnerability Restores What Walls Destroy
Walls feel safe, but they also suffocate intimacy. Healing requires taking the risk of being open again, sharing your fears, your failures, your longings. Vulnerability invites your spouse to truly see you, and it creates the soil where new intimacy can grow.
Takeaway for your marriage: Begin practicing vulnerability in small ways. Speak honestly about what you’re feeling. Admit where you’re afraid. These small risks create the conditions for trust to slowly take root again.
The Cost of Image vs. the Power of Truth in Marriage
When life feels like it’s spiraled beyond repair, when trust is fractured, shame is suffocating, and the future seems blurred, it’s tempting to believe there’s no way back. But even in the wreckage, there are foundational truths that offer a lifeline back to healing.
Truth & Takeaways #3
1. Healing Begins When You Choose Truth Over Image
The weight of a broken marriage often comes hand in hand with shame and fear of judgment. But true restoration begins when you choose healing over reputation. Letting the rain fall, pain, consequences, and all, can become the soil where grace and growth take root.
Takeaway for your marriage: Stop measuring yourself by appearances. Freedom comes when you trade perfection for authenticity, and in that space your marriage can finally breathe again.
2. You Can’t Rebuild Together Until You Heal Alone
Marital recovery isn’t just about repairing what’s broken between you; it’s about the healing that must happen within each of you. Each spouse must tend to their own wounds, carry their own weight, and walk through restoration with intentional healing.
Takeaway for your marriage: Ask yourself: What parts of me are still fractured? Seek help, counseling, and spiritual renewal. Personal healing doesn’t detract; it empowers and transforms the marriage.
3. True Responsibility is Found in Reflection, Not Blame
Taking ownership of your choices, even the most painful ones, is a critical step toward rebuilding trust. Blame distracts, but reflection transforms. Owning your part isn’t about self-condemnation; it’s about creating a solid foundation for real restoration.
Takeaway for your marriage: Ask, “What role did I really play in this?” Own it. Apologize sincerely. Let your response become living amends, not just words, but changed actions over time.
4. Boundaries Protect the Sacred Space of Restoration
Recovery isn’t meant to be public. Outside opinions, rumors, and noise can derail the delicate process of healing. The work that happens in the shadow, the private, vulnerable moments, often lays the groundwork for long-term healing.
Takeaway for your marriage: Create boundaries. Guard your space. Let healing breathe without the intrusion of external voices. Safe vulnerability is what restoration requires, not approval, but authenticity.
5. Vulnerability Builds the Bridge Back to Trust
Walls feel safe, but they prohibit intimacy. Choosing to be vulnerable, even when it hurts, is how trust re-emerges. Being seen in your brokenness is what allows love to grow again, rebuilding connection one courageous moment at a time.
Takeaway for your marriage: Risk letting yourself be seen. Every risk of honesty is also a seed of trust—and those seeds grow stronger than walls ever could.
Sex, Trust, and Grace: Restoring Intimacy After Betrayal
When trust is fragile, communication stumbles, and faith feels hard to access, especially in the intimate realms of sex and trust, it’s tempting to believe the damage is irreparable. But even when you’re unsure if restoration is possible, there are profound truths that invite healing, intimacy, and spiritual depth back into your marriage.
Truth & Takeaways #4
1. Emotional Honesty Revives Intimacy
Sex isn’t just physical. It’s deeply entangled with emotional connection, security, and vulnerability. When emotional bandwidth is low or trust feels distant, intimacy suffers. Reviving it requires more than physical desire; it requires radical emotional honesty and connection.
Takeaway for your marriage: Talk about what you feel before talking about what you do. Let emotional transparency pave the way for physical reconnection.
2. Spiritual Alignment Anchors a Relationship
When emotional walls go up, spiritual disconnection often follows. Misaligned faith life, or feeling spiritually disconnected from one another, can create a chasm where clarity and unity used to be.
Takeaway for your marriage: Re-discover shared spiritual rhythms, prayer, reading, confession, and worship. That renewed spiritual alignment can rebuild the hope and purpose you once shared.
3. Guilt Isn’t the Guide, Growth Is
Guilt about past choices doesn’t heal; it paralyzes. Healing isn’t about punishing yourself or your spouse, it’s about leveraging what went wrong into a pathway toward growth and deeper intimacy.
Takeaway for your marriage: Don’t stay stuck replaying the past. Choose to write a new chapter, one where mistakes become lessons that fuel intimacy instead of walls that divide.
4. Boundaries Create Safety for Vulnerability
You can’t rebuild trust on a foundation left open to more breaches. Whether emotional or physical, healthy boundaries provide the structure inside which vulnerability can flourish, not shrink.
Takeaway for your marriage: Set clear, mutually respected boundaries, especially where desires or temptations remain unhealed. Safety fosters authenticity; authenticity rebuilds trust.
5. Grace Reconfigures the Narrative
In moments when all seems lost, grace rewrites the story. Not grace that ignores pain, but grace that says, “Even here, there is hope.” Grace invites healing from the inside out, starting with yourself.
Takeaway for your marriage: Treat your spouse and yourself, with the same grace God extends to us. Let this grace become the template for how you speak, forgive, and rebuild.
Why I Stayed: Choosing Healing After Infidelity
When infidelity rocks your world and every promise feels fragile, the instinct to leave can feel like protection. But choosing to stay, when hope seems lost, reveals a journey of healing grounded in deep truths.
Wives, you don’t have to carry the weight of betrayal and heartbreak by yourself. The Proven Wives Study is a lifeline for women walking through the pain of broken trust. This study will guide you step by step through God’s healing process, giving you the tools to process your hurt, rebuild hope, and walk in freedom again. Thousands of women have already found strength and restoration through this journey, don’t wait another day to begin yours.
Truth & Takeaways #5
1. Staying Isn’t Passivity, It’s a Choice Toward Healing
Choosing to stay after betrayal doesn’t mean ignoring the pain. It means deciding, day after day, to lean into restoration. Staying becomes active, not passive. It’s not about denial, it’s about commitment to a new, stronger future.
Takeaway for your marriage: If you feel like walking away, ask, “What would it take to rebuild, inside me and between us?” That willingness lays the foundation for a healed love.
2. Broken Trust Doesn’t Have to Be destroyed trust
Trust feels fragile after betrayal, but what feels like destruction can become a pathway to deeper trust if rebuilt carefully. Trust isn’t restored overnight. It’s rebuilt through consistent truth, humility, and transparent choices.
Takeaway for your marriage: Watch for small, ordinary moments of integrity and openness. These build day after day into a trust that can run deeper than the one that was broken.
3. Forgiveness Is Courage in Action, Not a Feeling
Forgiveness doesn’t erase the pain, it chooses freedom over bitterness. It’s not blind or easy. It’s the courageous refusal to let past wounds continue governing your relationship.
Takeaway for your marriage: Begin forgiving in small ways, letting go of blame in conversations, refusing to hold onto every mistake. That daily courage softens hearts and reopens relational pathways.
4. Healing Isn’t a Place You Arrive At, It’s a Path You Walk Together
Recovery after betrayal isn’t a destination, it’s a journey. There are steps, missteps, stalls, breakthroughs. Healing becomes a rhythm of showing up, choosing reconciliation, and allowing the process to shape you both.
Takeaway for your marriage: Expect the long haul. Celebrate progress, no matter how slow, and persevere through the valleys together, not alone.
5. Redemption Is Possible, Even When Hope Feels Gone
When betrayal makes you doubt everything, even love, redemption whispers that nothing is too broken for grace. A marriage rebuilt after infidelity can emerge stronger, kinder, and purposed by the suffering it endured.
Takeaway for your marriage: Hold onto redemption, not in clichés, but in small, brave steps: honest confession, mutual accountability, and the radical choice to build again.
The Pain Behind the Curtain: Breaking the Silence Together
When your heart is hiding a silent storm, whether it’s anxiety, shame, suicidal thoughts, or the weight of being unseen, it can feel like you’re living behind a facade no one can see past. But what happens when someone dares to speak the unspoken? What lifeblood flows into relationships and souls when raw vulnerability meets grace?
Truth & Takeaways #6
1. Your Pain Doesn’t Define You, Your Response Does
The way you confront it, speak it, seek help for it, and give it space to breathe reveals strength…not weakness.
Takeaway for your marriage: If you’re wrestling with hidden struggles, let your courage define you, not your shame. Share what weighs you down in safe ways, even if it’s imperfectly spoken.
2. Speaking the Unspeakable Creates Real Connection
When what’s meant to stay hidden finally gets named, whether mental health battles, fear, or emotional exhaustion, a bridge is built in the darkness. Honesty is not always comforting, but it’s always necessary for intimacy.
Takeaway for your marriage: Create a safe space where even unspoken fears can be voiced. Safety nurtures honesty, and honesty deepens connection.
3. You Are Not Burdening; You Are Building Trust
There’s a lie that says your verbalization of personal brokenness is selfish. In reality, vulnerability invites compassion and presence. Rather than worrying that you’re too much, recognize that being seen in your pain deepens trust.
Takeaway for your marriage: Don’t shy away from revealing your interior. Let your transparency be the soil where real intimacy can grow; trust isn’t built in perfection, but in presence.
4. Healing Isn’t Quiet, It Requires Voice and Action
Sometimes we hope pain will pass without notice. But silence often allows suffering to deepen. Healing begins when inner pain is named, when we reach for help, when we refuse to let numbness have the last word.
Takeaway for your marriage: Listening is vital, but speaking matters too. Advocate for healing, together. Break the silence that isolates the heart.
5. Grace Meets You in the Place You Least Expect It
At your lowest, hope can feel impossible. But grace doesn’t wait for you to be fixed. It finds you where you are, in the unnoticed, unlovely spaces, and begins to rewrite your story with compassion, not cancellation.
Takeaway for your marriage: Let grace be the first word, not the hard one. Give it to yourself and each other, even when you feel unworthy. That’s where healing truly begins.
Pastor vs. Lawyer: Can a Marriage Really Survive?
When your marriage feels fragile, or you’re weighing the possibility of walking away, a conversation between a pastor’s heart and a lawyer’s experience can offer clarity. Their differing viewpoints reveal shared truths about marriage: what’s worth fighting for, how to build against collapse, and how to stay even when hope feels gone.
Truth & Takeaways
1. Selfishness Is Often at the Root of Divorce
Few forces corrode a marriage like self-centeredness. It shows up as unchecked expectations, unmet emotional needs, or expecting your spouse to fulfill roles they weren’t built for, roles that belong to God, friends, or yourself.
Takeaway for your marriage: Examine where selfishness has crept in. Shift your focus from “What did I get?” to “What can I give?” Even small acts of selflessness can begin to reverse the downward spiral.
2. Marriage Is an Ecosystem, Not a Scorecard
Marriage isn’t a transaction where you accumulate ‘points’ and tally ‘fails.’ It’s a living, breathing ecosystem, where mutual support, shared growth, and emotional rhythms matter more than fairness or keeping score.
Takeaway for your marriage: Let go of the ledger mentality. Choose connection over argument, restitution over retaliation, and partnership over perfection.
3. Being Seen Holds More Power Than Being Right
When frustration is high, it’s not always about proving yourself; it’s about feeling understood. A pastor sees marriage as a sacred covenant; a lawyer sees the same through the lens of consequences. Yet both ultimately point to the power of empathy in bridge-building.
Takeaway for your marriage: Before defending, seek to be understood, and to understand. Offering empathy invites your spouse into deeper healing more effectively than any argument.
4. Legal Endings Happen, but Spiritual Endings Don’t Have to Define Us
A lawyer may see separation as an ending, while a pastor sees it as the start of something dangerous, but not necessarily conclusive. The legal classification of marriage may change; the spiritual journey of reconciliation often continues beyond that.
Takeaway for your marriage: Even if you’re navigating separation or deep conflict, hold onto the possibility of spiritual reconciliation. It doesn’t dismiss the pain; it offers a pathway beyond it.
5. You Can Choose Restoration Even When It Doesn’t Feel Practical
The lawyer points to statistics and predictability; the pastor points to hope and restoration. While data might say a marriage is unlikely to survive, faith and perseverance can rewrite the expected endings.
Takeaway for your marriage: Don’t let the numbers define your story. Miracles emerge in the smallest choices, prayer, vulnerability, consistent love over time, even when logic says it’s over.
Resources
When your marriage feels beyond repair, remember: broken doesn’t mean finished. God delights in restoring what feels impossible.
Men, you don’t have to carry this battle by yourself. You may have tried on your own before, but lasting freedom comes when you have help, structure, and accountability. That’s why we built the 90-Day Executive Freedom Program. For three months, Proven Ministries’ own executives will walk with you through a proven plan to break free from pornography, rebuild trust, and rediscover who God has called you to be. Imagine 90 days from now, stronger, freer, leading your marriage with integrity. Don’t wait for “someday.” Your freedom can begin today.
And if you and your spouse are ready to pursue healing together, we’ve created something just for you: the Proven Marriage Bundle. It combines the Proven Men and Proven Wives studies into one powerful package, designed to help husbands and wives rebuild trust, rekindle intimacy, and grow stronger in Christ side by side. Whether your marriage is hanging by a thread or you simply want to deepen your connection, this bundle gives you the tools to heal together instead of drifting apart.
Quick Tips
Be Honest. Healing starts when the truth is spoken out loud. Hiding never heals.
Forgive Daily. Forgiveness is not a one-time event, it’s a choice you make again and again.
Do the Work. Time alone won’t heal a marriage. Humility, prayer, counseling, and effort will.
Be Vulnerable. Walls protect, but they also suffocate intimacy. Choose to open your heart.
Set Boundaries. Guard your healing. Don’t let outside noise drown out God’s quiet work.
Build Something New. Don’t chase the past, let God create a marriage stronger than before.
Trust God’s Power. The same Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead can raise your marriage too.
Your Story Isn’t Over
Take one small step today, speak truth, offer grace, or risk vulnerability. God’s strength is enough to carry you, and His love is strong enough to restore what feels lost.
