On infidelity, as I prepare for marriage

21 Jan, 2026

Frederic Edwin Church, “Above the Clouds at Sunrise,” 1849.

—

Early in college I found out the wife of a foundational Christian couple from my childhood was stepping out on her husband. First, it crushed me. Then, the obvious question: how can I guarantee that it will never be me who steps out on my future wife?

Back then, my future wife was imaginary. Just some nice Christian woman I was going to pledge my life to.

—

I spoke with my mom the other day while driving her to the airport after visiting me. She told me how excited she was to see Dad, that even a few days away makes her miss him. They’ve been married 38 years now, and they still want to be together all the time.

—

My wife has a face now. Her name is Alexis, and she goes by Lex to people close to her. We are in pre-marital counseling with our pastor right now, and we get married a month from Wednesday. We are praying for anything but a blizzard.

So, when the news of a Christian writer’s eight year affair came out, I pictured Lex’s face at the end of the church aisle, standing there glowing in her wedding dress.

What can I do today to guarantee I will never be that Christian writer?

—

My grandad has been married twice. My Grandma Carolyn passed away from cancer when I was five, and he’s been married to Grandma Nancy now for over twenty-five years. He is ninety this year, still working at the furniture store he owns in Chandler, Oklahoma, and still greeting every person who enters the Chandler Friends Church each Sunday.

He’s been faithful to both marriages. Whenever Grandma Nancy talks about my grandad, she tears up. She told me once, “I never imagined we’d get this many years together.”

They are both planning to attend our wedding.

—

I called my mom and dad after the eight-year-affair came to light. That one hit closer to home because he had the career I hope to have. A Christian writer who wasn’t a pastor and wrote with honesty about the ups and downs of life and faith. If it could happen to him, couldn’t it happen to me?

—

My friends Mitch and Abbey met the second night of college orientation, back in 2011. I was Mitch’s roommate, and he came back to the room that night beaming, telling me about the prettiest girl in the world and how she talked exclusively with him for over ten minutes.

They dated through college and married one month after we graduated. In June this year, they will have been married for a decade. Mitch will be standing beside me on my wedding day, and Abbey and their three lovely, audacious, brilliant girls will be in the congregation.

—

Didn’t that unfaithful Christian writer stand at the altar all those years ago and watch as the doors opened on his wife in her dress? Wasn’t he beaming? Didn’t he have nerves?

Was he afraid of cheating back then? Or did he assume it would never be him? Was he as optimistic and naïve as I am now?

How do I know that I’m not him?

—

Saturday was the wedding shower. Lex and I opened presents, and I said “ooh” and “ahh” while looking at new pans (pretending that I ever really used pans as a single guy). I couldn’t wait to see Lex there in that space, surrounded by all the women who raised her and loved her into the woman she is now. I knew she was going to be exquisite, like a sunrise over the snow-covered fields here in Michigan, and I was right. My breath caught when I first saw her in that dress.

I have never in my life felt the way I feel right now. All I want to do is be beside her, to try and make her laugh, to sit in silence or talk talk talk talk talk or just lay around and watch St. Denis Medical.

I just crave her presence.

—

Mitch gave me sex advice after he got married.

He said that if you want to have sex with your wife, you can’t just dim the lights, turn on the Marvin Gaye, and get it on. He said sex is the culmination of a day spent serving her. It is small comments here and playful flirting there. It is taking out the trash. It is ordering your thoughts towards her betterment, towards her fruition and thriving.

He said that’s what makes for great sex. And, ten years and three kids later, I think he knows what he’s talking about.

—

O. Alan Noble writes in his wonderful piece about that unfaithful Christian writer and the eight-year-affair,

“Maybe our models for faithfulness ought to be local, virtuous men and women who stay faithful in their marriages and friendships in the church and serve God devoutly. If Jesus is enough for them, why shouldn’t he be for us?”

I think he’s onto something here. I think it is too easy to look at the faces on the billboards and the headshots inside my book jackets. I assume they must be the ones in God’s inner circle, they must be the ones who have unlocked holiness. So when they fail, their failure defines my identity and my outlook.

But there are my dad and mom and Grandad and Grandma Nancy and Mitch and Abbey, all of them beacons of hope cutting through the morass of fear.

God bless them, all of them.

—

During church this past Sunday, my pastor told the congregation about a married couple—members of the church—who were both ninety-eight. He said that the husband knew he was dying for the past few months.

My pastor said he visited them last week and the place felt like a party. The husband was in bed, oxygen tube affixed to his face, and he took a picture with my pastor, smiling.

My pastor said his wife sat in a chair by his bed the entire time. She told him, “I’ve been by his side for seventy-four years, I’m not about to stop now.”

—

Years ago, at another church, my pastor shared a quote by someone named Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn that hasn’t left my mind:

“The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either—but right through every human heart—and through all human hearts.”

This line between faithfulness and unfaithfulness runs through my heart; I am not immune to this treacherous dichotomy, and, ultimately, none of us are. We are each—every single one of us—sinners, after all.

But I hope this knowledge drives me to my knees in humility and hunger for God’s righteousness. And I hope it keeps me vigilant to the small choices of faithfulness I can make each day, small choices that bolster this goodness in my heart.

—

My pastor visited the dying man again last Sunday. He said on the nightstand beside the man, a speaker was playing that old hymn,

"I love You, Lord

In Your ear."

My pastor told the congregation that this faithful ninety-eight-year-old man passed away this past Monday. It was the same day Lex and I went to premarital counseling with our pastor at the church. I thought about how one marriage turned to a new chapter as another marriage was about to begin its first.

—

“In the dark of the moon, in flying snow, in the dead of winter, war spreading, families dying, the world in danger, I walk the rocky hillside, sowing clover.” —“February 2, 1968”1

I know I’ve shared this Wendell Berry poem before. But I’m thinking about it now, in light of all I’ve written, in light of the small flickers of fidelity in all this darkness of infidelity.

Yes, there is darkness and flying snow and dead winter and war and death and danger—all of it encompassed by this Christian writer and any other person making that fateful, unfaithful decision—but there are also all these people—my parents and my grandparents and Mitch and Abbey and the ninety-eight-year-old couple at my church—walking that rocky hillside, sowing clover.

And just like sex takes a day of small decisions, so too does faithfulness. It is loving Lex during her wedding shower and loving her afterwards. It is the highs and the lows and all the vast middles. Love notes and patience, married sex and hard conversations. It is a daily, hourly, moment-by-moment choice to choose her.

To steal that famous quote from Annie Dillard,

“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.”

Faithfulness with each day, I believe, leads to faithfulness for a lifetime.

I’m just so ready to walk down that aisle.

Afterward #1:

I know people who do not have local models of fidelity, who look out at a sea of unfaithfulness and abuse and brokenness. To you, whoever you are, I hope you will hold out the smallest flicker of hope that your story can be different, that God is a God of raising dead bones and shouting rocks and morning sunrises, that—in the face of impossibility—through God all things are possible. Even a faithful marriage.

Afterward #2:

If you have been the victim of unfaithfulness, I am praying for you. I am praying that God’s good justice will wipe away your tears, and this God-man—this Jesus—who was so acquainted with grief and suffering, will sit with you until you have the courage to stand up again. There is a great good morning awaiting you, whenever that might be.

May love in all its forms hold you tight and guide your feet.

Afterward #3:

Tom Junod—the journalist who got to know Mr. Rogers so well—wrote about Mr. Rogers in the wake of mass shootings:

“[Fred Rogers] would pray for the shooters as well as for their victims, and he would continue to urge us, in what has become one of his most oft quoted lines, to ‘look for the helpers.’”

I thought of this quote when I read the news about that unfaithful Christian writer. I prayed for his wife, and I prayed for him, believing he is not beyond forgiveness or redemption. To be clear, forgiveness does not negate consequence, and he needs to soberly live into the consequences of his unfaithful choice. But prayer is for both our friend and our enemy, and forgiveness means there is hope on the other side of our failure.

If you have been unfaithful and are reading this, I am praying for you too, and I am holding out the hope of Jesus—that great man who provides mercy even when we least expect it. I hope you find mercy and redemption, looking soberly at what you have done and believing there is life on the other side. There is hope, and I am hopeful for you.

May you—through that great mystery of repentance—receive life as a forgiven human.

To each of you, please tread softly with one another, treating each other with love. You are more deeply loved then you could ever possibly know. May we each recognize that love a little bit more every day.

cheering for you,

drew

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