"DID YOU REALLY WANT CHARLYNE TO FIND SOMEONE ELSE AFTER YOUR DIVORCE?"
No, I did not. I have never talked with a prodigal who seriously desired that their one-flesh mate find and become involved with someone else. They may exist, but I have never encountered a prodigal whose heart-felt desire was that someone else take their place. I do know, however, scores of prodigals who went haywire when their abandoned spouse began to date.
Why then, do we prodigals carry on about our abandoned mates finding someone else and getting on with life, when we do not really mean it? To alleviate our own guilt. We attempt to justify that if our spouse was involved with someone, we would not appear as guilty to family, to friends, and even to God.
The area of someone else is make-it or break-it territory for the stander. You have a grand opportunity to wear your ring and to declare in word and in action that you are married. You also have the dangerous opportunity to do possibly irreparable damage to your stand by doing anything that is near dating. Needless to say, dating to make your prodigal jealous is like throwing a match into gasoline. It simply will not work.
Early one Saturday morning while we were divorced, I called our home to arrange to pick up our children for the day. A man answered with, “Charlyne’s home.†He refused to tell me why he was there. He also refused to allow me to speak with my wife, as I referred to Charlyne during that call. We will not discuss my reactions, or what I was thinking. It later turned out that two church families who knew Charlyne was having a hard time had come that morning to help her around our home. The ladies had gone with Charlyne to purchase supplies, while the men started on minor home repairs. When the phone rang, one of them had answered. Until that day, perhaps like your spouse, I had been encouraging Charlyne to start dating. Not until I thought that had happened, did I really come to know my own heart on this matter.
The Lord worked all this out, according to His timing and without Charlyne’s help. If you attempt to make your spouse jealous, I can promise disastrous results for everyone involved. Just ask the woman who hung men’s clothing on her clothesline and damaged her reputation or the one who had a relative park different cars in front of her home, until the police took notice.
Go out of your way to not become involved in anything that could make your prodigal spouse jealous. If God can sustain this entire world, right down to each individual, He knows and can carry out what is best for your family’s restoration.
For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh. Genesis 2:24
Because He lives,
Bob Steinkamp
Rejoice Marriage Ministries, Inc.
