Recently, a hurting wife asked us a question we hear more often than people realize.
“Is it normal that my husband believes he loves this woman, even though so much of this affair is completely out of character for him?”
If you’ve ever asked something like that, we want you to know first and foremost that your question makes sense. It doesn’t come from weakness or jealousy or insecurity. It comes from deep shock and grief.
Betrayal is devastating on its own. But hearing that your spouse believes they are in love with someone else can feel like an entirely different wound. It can feel as though the marriage itself has been erased or replaced. It can leave you wondering whether anything you shared was real at all.
This article isn’t written to excuse sin. It’s written to bring clarity where confusion now reigns and to help you understand what may be happening beneath the surface so lies don’t get the final word.
When “I Love Them” Feels Like the Final Blow
For many betrayed spouses, those words are harder to bear than the physical details of the affair.
When your spouse says they love the affair partner, it often communicates something devastating, even if they never intended it to.
It can sound like you were not enough.
It can sound like your history didn’t matter.
It can sound like the affair must be more real or more meaningful than your marriage.
It’s important to say clearly that none of those conclusions are true. But it’s also important to understand why this statement feels so terrifying. It feels permanent. It feels like the door to restoration has been slammed shut.
Before we talk about hope, we need to talk honestly about why a spouse might believe this in the first place.
Why This Can Feel So Out of Character
One of the most confusing parts of betrayal is watching someone you know well behave in ways that seem completely foreign.
You may find yourself saying, “This is not who they are,” while also wondering how they could possibly be doing this.
Scripture helps us here by telling us something uncomfortable but necessary about the human heart.
Jeremiah 17:9 says, The heart is more deceitful than anything else, and incurable. Who can understand it?
This verse isn’t meant to produce despair. It’s meant to produce clarity. It reminds us that sin doesn’t usually announce itself as rebellion. It disguises itself as desire, justification, and emotional certainty.
Biblical counselor David Powlison once wrote words that are bracing but deeply clarifying:
“People do not commit adultery because they have a strong sex drive, but because they are weak worshipers.”
That statement doesn’t mean your spouse stopped believing in God. It means that, in that season, something else quietly took the place of obedience and faithfulness as the ruling desire of the heart.
When desire rules, vision narrows. Values that once guided a person can be eclipsed, not erased. This is why betrayal often feels so out of character. Sin reorganizes what matters most.
Hebrews 3:13 warns us of this dynamic when it says, But encourage each other daily, while it is still called today, so that none of you is hardened by sin’s deception.
Sin deceives. It persuades. It reshapes perception. And it often does so gradually, long before outward behavior ever changes.
Why the Feelings Feel So Real
One of the most painful realities for betrayed spouses is realizing that their spouse’s feelings are genuine, even though the relationship itself is sinful.
Strong feelings don’t automatically mean true love. But they can feel convincing.
Affair relationships are uniquely powerful because they exist outside of real life. They’re fueled by secrecy, novelty, affirmation, and selective self disclosure. There are no shared responsibilities, no long term sacrifices, and no accountability to expose weaknesses.
In that environment, emotions are intensified. What feels like love is often attachment and escape intertwined.
God’s Word cautions us against trusting feelings as our primary guide.
Proverbs 14:12 says, There is a way that seems right to a person, but its end is the way to death.
And James 1:14–15 explains the process clearly: But each person is tempted when he is drawn away and enticed by his own evil desire. Then after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin, and when sin is fully grown, it gives birth to death.
Notice the progression. Desire precedes action. Feeling comes before consequence. And desire often feels right before it proves destructive.
Pastor and counselor Paul David Tripp has consistently reminded the church that love cannot be defined by emotion alone. He writes,
“Love is not first a feeling. It is a commitment of faithful sacrifice.”
Affair relationships are sustained almost entirely by feeling. Covenant love is sustained by promise, sacrifice, and faithfulness over time. One feels powerful in the moment. The other proves powerful over a lifetime.
What They Are Calling Love Is Often Attachment Plus Escape
This distinction matters, especially for wounded spouses.
The affair partner often becomes a symbol rather than a true partner. A symbol of being admired. A symbol of escape from guilt or failure. A symbol of being known without being challenged.
This doesn’t mean the betraying spouse never loved you. It means they are interpreting intense emotions through a heart that has been temporarily reordered by desire.
Scripture speaks plainly about misplaced love.
1 John 2:16 says, For everything in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride in one’s possessions, is not from the Father, but is from the world.
When desire attaches itself to something outside God’s design, it doesn’t remain neutral. It pulls the heart further away from truth.
A Word Directly to the Wounded Spouse
If you are the one who has been betrayed, we want to speak directly to you.
Your pain makes sense.
Your confusion makes sense.
Your fear that this means everything is over makes sense.
You’re not wrong for asking this question. We wish there were a faster answer. There isn’t.
But your spouse’s feelings do not define reality. They don’t erase your history. And they do not determine the future.
Psalm 36:2 says, For with him his flattering opinion of himself keeps him from discovering and hating his iniquity.
Sin often flatters before it destroys. It reassures before it enslaves. That doesn’t mean truth can’t break through. It can and it does.
This is why we choose to guide couples through biblical counseling. Not because it offers quick answers, but because it helps us slow down and name what Scripture has always taught about the heart. Repentance is often misunderstood as a religious word that simply means saying “I’m sorry.” In reality, repentance is a complete turn. It is turning away from a heart that has been deceived by desire and self justification, and turning back toward God’s truth and His design for marriage. Repentance restores clarity because it reorders what has been disordered. Feelings may linger for a time, but they are no longer in charge. Truth becomes the authority again, and healing begins there.
Steve’s Story and Ours
This question isn’t theoretical for us.
Steve once believed he loved the woman he was involved with. At the same time, he was acting in ways that were completely out of character and completely destructive.
Those feelings felt real. They felt powerful. And they felt convincing.
But they were not the truth.
As Steve has shared in our book, The Journey to Stay, that clarity didn’t return because feelings magically disappeared. It returned through confession, repentance, accountability, and a slow reordering of the heart toward God and toward his marriage.
What once felt like love was eventually revealed as attachment fueled by secrecy and escape. What felt irresistible lost its power when brought into the light.
This is why we’re so careful to say that feelings can be honest without being trustworthy.
What This Means for Healing
If couples believe that feelings determine truth, hopelessness often follows. But God gives us a different order.
Repentance leads to clarity.
Obedience often precedes emotional change.
Truth creates space for healing.
Ezekiel 36:26 offers hope where hearts have gone astray: I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will remove your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.
Understanding does not remove the pain, and it does not guarantee the outcome you hope for. But it can interrupt despair. And often, understanding is where God begins His work of restoration.
If you’re walking through this pain, please hear this clearly. Your story is not over. Your marriage is not automatically erased because feelings have gone astray. God is not confused by your spouse’s confusion, and He is not powerless to restore what sin has distorted.
If you need help walking through this, you don’t have to do it alone. This is the very work we’ve been called to do, side by side.
All Scripture references are taken from the CSB translation.
