24 Days of Thanksgiving - Day Fifteen

I had a nightmare last night.

I dreamed that my sweet husband came to me with a confession. "I cheated," he told me.

Knowing my husband as well as I do, and knowing how deep his love for me goes, I assumed it was nothing more than a kiss. Even so, my heart started pounding. My chest felt tight, and I was afraid I might faint.

"Remember in college, when I had early morning classes?" he asked. "I didn't really have class. I was hooking up in an empty classroom with a girl I know."

I was dumbfounded and on the verge of tears. We got married in college, which meant this was going on while we were newlyweds. What had I done to make him want to stray??? Is it because I made him help me with the dishes, because we were both going to school and working??? What was wrong with me that I wasn't enough for him???

But the pain didn't end there. The blows kept on coming.

"Don't worry," he reassured me, "I ended it a while ago."

"How long ago?" I whispered.

"About a year."

We've been together for seven years. Throughout our entire marriage, he had been cheating on me.

Then he dropped the big bomb. "I broke up with her when she told me she was pregnant. I knew that would break your heart."

"You have another kid???"

"Two, actually."

At this point in my dream, I lost it. I started sobbing. "So here we've been trying for four years to get pregnant, and you've been giving another woman the babies that you were supposed to be giving me????" The pain was like a knife stabbing through my chest. I wasn't able to give him another child, but this fertile home-wrecker had given him two others! My security, my self-worth, and my marriage were shattered.

Then I woke up.

The biggest problem with shaking this nightmare off was that Dream Ben was exactly like Real Ben. So when the confessions of infidelity came, it was unexpected. And my dream self didn't recognize that Dream Ben wasn't the real thing, because he was exactly like the real Ben.

Usually when I have a bad dream where Ben breaks my heart somehow (and I have a LOT of them. I think my brain hates me), he's different. I can tell it's not the real Ben. He's "off" somehow.

But like I said, this Dream Ben was indistinguishable from Real Ben. So when I woke up, I was afraid to wake Ben up and talk to him, even though I desperately needed reassurance. My brain knew that it had been a dream, but it had felt so real that my heart was afraid. I was worried that if I woke him up, he would tell me that my dream had been true, and that he had cheated on me. My heart and my brain were at odds.

After several agonizing minutes, my brain finally won, and I woke Ben up. He was immediately concerned about why I was so upset at 4 AM. I started telling him about my dream, crying hysterically, pausing frequently to blow my nose. He, of course, held me and reassured me that it had just been a horrible dream. And he repeated the same words he has reassured me with throughout our entire marriage: "That would never happen."

And despite my dreams, I know for a fact that it's true. Ben would never cheat on me, not in a million years.

There are few things in life that are truly certain, but Ben's love for me (and vice versa!) is one of them. He is not the kind of man who would cheat in the first place. He takes his vows seriously. And on top of that, he's head-over-heels in love with me. There's no way he would ever be unfaithful.

But last night I got a taste of what it must feel like to be one of the thousands of wives whose husbands do cheat. And it was one of the most horrible experiences of my life. I doubt that I will ever forget that nightmare.

But I was lucky, because I woke up. There are so many women in the world who have to live through their nightmares, with no escape.

I was talking to someone a few weeks ago who said, "Sometimes it isn't the man's fault if he cheats."

His explanation was that he had a friend whose wife was very cruel and cold. They'd tried counseling, and it just didn't help. She was awful, so it made sense that his friend would look elsewhere for love and gratification.

My response was, "It is never okay to cheat. If things are that bad, and you desperately want to look outside of your marriage for love, get a divorce! Divorces may be painful, but I guarantee that cheating will be more painful, especially for your spouse. Adultery is sneaky, selfish, and it shatters people's self-esteem. Whatever difficulties you may have with your spouse, you made them a promise when you agreed to marry them. Going behind their back and betraying them so completely is never an acceptable alternative."

That's my opinion, and nothing will ever change my mind.

I hate that cheating has become accepted as "normal" by so much of society. People don't even flinch anymore when they hear about it. Often, they'll even blame the spouse - the one who stayed true to their marriage vows. They should have done more to keep their spouse interested! Maybe they shouldn't have gained that weight! They're cold and mean, so it's their own fault!

Blaming the victim? That's truly despicable.

I think people forget, or maybe don't realize, how agonizingly painful it is for the person whose spouse has strayed. Divorces may be hard, but finding out that your spouse has been unfaithful is agony.

Nobody deserves that kind of pain.

I'm so grateful that I'm married to a man who loves me, respects me, and honors our commitment to one another. When he tells me that he will never, ever stray, I know that he's telling me the truth. I know that he's a man of integrity, who loves God and hates adultery. I know that he would rather die than cause me to feel that kind of pain.

I'm blessed to have such a secure marriage. That doesn't mean we don't have to work at our marriage, but it does mean that when I send him off on a deployment for months at a time, there's one less thing I have to worry about.

And I'm grateful to know that the nightmares will always end when I wake up.