Chances are you didn't wake up this morning and think: Yes, today is the day I'm going to meet a married man—and I'm going to want to be with him. I'm even going to want him divorced so that we can be together. When I woke up that morning almost eight years ago, that thought never crossed my mind. Yet, by the end of that particular summer day, I'd met him, and I was instantly attracted to him. And then I met his wife—that same hour.
Meeting her didn't stop me from feeling the attraction, but I didn't think I needed to be concerned. I was a good, strong Christian woman—I already knew that adultery is a sin, and I believed I could be stronger than the attraction. I wondered what kind of mature Christian I would be if I couldn't handle being around a married man. So I didn't flee or guard myself. I kept willfully and naively choosing to participate in the same weekly events that I'd promised them. Yes, them: his wife too.
My false sense of invincibility The truth is I was prideful: I thought I was above committing adultery. The truth is I was prideful: I thought I was above committing adultery. I now understand how my pride gave me a false sense of invincibility. I felt shielded by my holier-than-thou mentality, but in fact I was deeply vulnerable to the sin I thought I was too good to commit. "God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble," James 4:6 says. I was positioning myself to be opposed by the Creator of the universe. It wasn't my wisest moment.
Proverbs 16:18 heeds, "Pride goes before destruction, and haughtiness before a fall." What I thought was strength or maturity in the face of attraction was, in fact, pride. What I thought was just a harmless attraction was actually bait on the line of temptation. Gradually, I was reeled further into the entanglement of sin. It was shockingly subtle and surprisingly innocent—a flirtatious comment here, or a lingering look there. And it would be harder than I could have expected to get off the hook.
Indulging in my sin I knew in my head that adultery was wrong, but I felt drawn to this man. And when we so strongly feel something that we identify as a good feeling (such as lust that we interpret as love), it's easy to question if it could possibly be too good to be wrong. I let my feelings guide my decisions and that was part of the problem. I felt affirmed. I felt noticed. I felt desired. And prior to meeting him, I was oblivious to how starved I was for those satisfactions.
