A
male
age
36-40,
anonymous
writes:hai, well il go straight to the point..i am a christian man raised with morals and i waited to have sex till i married, now 10yrs down the line my wife tells me i was not her first, she had slept with 6 men 2 of which i work in the same company.i asked her when we just started dating if she was a virgin, i told her about my faith. Am ashamed with her, i dont what to do.what else could she be keeping from me.i believed her when she told me she broke her hymen bike riding. Such a fool i was.we have two kids together i do not know what to do.she tells me she does not regret her past then why not tell me at the begining? I could have made a choice to stay or bolt. Should i divorce her!
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christian, co-worker, divorce, her past, hymen Reply to this Question
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male
reader, Serpico  +, writes (22 July 2010):
You have every right to be angry and upset. She lied to you about something that is very important to you. My hunch is she is lying about other things as well.
A
male
reader, Odds +, writes (22 July 2010):
 That last anon is less than helpful. I'm sure you aren't looking for a slave, just an honest woman.
Jealousy over past relationships is already bad (and completely normal); compounded with a lie, it's much worse.
Lying "because she didn't want to lose you" is a truly bizarre way to see relationships. I can't comprehend why anyone would think that's acceptable, and you should not feel pressured to listen to that kind of advice. You say she does not regret her past, but then, most people who say they regret it are lying. I'm not sure if she's apologizing or not.
Either way, it's her duty to help you work through this. Not because her history makes her bad, but because she lied to you. For the sake of your kids, you ought to find it in yourself to forgive her. She's not ruined or unclean, and if you're worried about faithfulness, get your kids a paternity test.
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A
reader, anonymous, writes (22 July 2010): Ok you know what, I think your wife would be better without you. You are way to punishing and unforgiving. Just divorce then and find yourself some other woman who will willingly obey your every command like a slave. That seems to be what you want.
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A
reader, anonymous, writes (22 July 2010): This is verified as being by the original poster of the questionone thing i can say is that am only human and it would be easier for a man who also had multiple sexual partners because he will be like why am i hang up over this when i also slept around. But for me its different i never slept around and for your information my wife was a christian before i married her, we went to the same church she chose to do those things.yes i am not perfect and i can not stand that orther men saw my wifes inner privacy.
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male
reader, anonymous, writes (22 July 2010): By that definition of forgiveness, it's equally un-Christian of this guy to get angry at a cashier who purposely shortchanges him at the grocery store.
Does he have any rights at all?
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A
reader, anonymous, writes (22 July 2010): If it's about dishonesty, then forgiveness is the answer, Christian or not. Jesus said, "If someone slaps you in some way, turn your head and let them continue to slap the other side." She confessed, and that's good enough. She doesn't have to explain herself now for the rest of her life. If you feel that strongly against her, then leave her and let your children be raised in a peaceful environment, with unconditional love.
From what you're saying, you won't be handing that out to your wife, so just let her go, so she can find someone who's willing to do so, Christian or not. Like the last poster said, religion has nothing to do with it. Let me add to that, though, and say, "if you don't want it to." Of course you're free to do as you wish and think how you want about her, but then why pretend you're going to live any Christian life you claim to walk, when you tell us you have no intention of showing compassion or forgiveness toward their mother.
If you came here not for advice, but just to vent, your will is done, but then don't be upset by what people respond with, because they will respond, whether you wish to accept the help from them or not. You won't possibly have a happy life with your family if you're going to treat your wife like a traitor and liar the rest of your time together, so you have only two options left.. counselling for both of you, not just for yourself(couples counselling), or leaving her.
It's your choice, but you're telling us you've already made up your mind to do nothing about it, but wallow in your self pity and never let go of your wife's lie, even though she confessed and most likely repented in the process. That's all the help I can give you, then. I'm sure other anonymous posters will continue to come and act as blind guide dogs, just to hear themselves talk and vent their own pain, but I've shown you your options, and you can take them or leave them. God gives us all the ability to help ourselves, and He helps those who help themselves.
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male
reader, anonymous, writes (22 July 2010): Which verse in the Bible gives her the right to trick him into dating the wrong person? I must have missed that one.
This is not a Christian issue. The fact that the guy happens to derive his morals from a religion is a side point. He has the right to derive his values wherever the hell he wants to.
This is about dishonesty.
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A
reader, anonymous, writes (22 July 2010): This is verified as being by the original poster of the questionso what your saying is that the one whos wrong? And my wife is the honest one.and just suppose to say thank you darling for lien and ruining my life, its like am the bad unchristian like husband and shes an angel all because she decided to tell me this now.
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reader, anonymous, writes (21 July 2010): That's why Jesus came along in the New Testament, the other half of the Bible.. so people could learn to forgive, without punishment and judgement for their actions. Quoting the Old Testament just to hold something your wife did before she met you, against her, is your problem. If you want to live like that and still call yourself a Christian, go ahead.
Then remember that's why I suggest counselling for you, not her.. because it's the way you allow yourself to think that brings you down, and how you hold things against people..not their actions toward you. You can choose to call yourself a Christian, and twist its teachings to suit your mood, or you can live like a Christian, freeing yourself and those around you, from guilt and judgement.
You can quote the Bible to argue against positive change, but you can't argue the fact that your resentment and jealousy toward what your wife did has nothing to do with Christian morals. Only you can harvest those feelings, and only you can stop them. From one Christian to another, take my advice or let it fall on deaf ears. Noone can help you if you don't face your fears head on, and admit when you have to find positive change within yourself. It's very possible, even without Christian teachings, but only if you try.
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male
reader, anonymous, writes (21 July 2010): Forgiveness is something you do for people who are genuinely sorry about what they did and they ask to be forgiven.
She does not sound sorry at all. She isn't asking for forgiveness. Forgiving her now would be an abuse to your own self-respect.
Your marriage is over as far as I can tell. Maybe you will stay with her for the children but I don't see the romantic relationship with her continuing now.
If you still want to repair this relationship with her then I think it would have to be in the form of a new relationship. Look at it as if one of you had cheated on the other in the present. You will have to completely start over with each other. You will have to see if you even want to be in a relationship with this new different person in front of you.
But none of this process can even start unless she is genuinely sorry for what she has done to you. That seems unlikely to ever happen from the sounds of things right now.
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female
reader, OhGetReal +, writes (21 July 2010):
 No one has kids out of guilt or can spend 10 years being a good wife and mother out of guilt. I find your attitude very unChristian, You're not God you don't get to decide she is a sinner without conscience. We are all sinners, and my God is a forgiving one. What she did is so minor it is almost laughable that you have this I don't want to be near her attitude.
Do your wife a favor and divorce her. Children would rather be from a broken home then live in one.
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reader, anonymous, writes (21 July 2010): This is verified as being by the original poster of the questionam christian, let me give you an example in tha bible david took another mans wife, God forgave him. But he had to face the consequences of hes actions, i can forgive my wife but the respect just went out the window.il stay not for her but my kids, have you considered just maybe the reason she was a good wife and mother is because she was guilty? I gota think bout ma kids, her il forgive her but i dont want to be near her.
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male
reader, anonymous, writes (21 July 2010): If her virginity was important to you and you let her know this, then you have every right to be angry and upset with her lies. What can you do about it now, I am not sure. If it is that important you could divorce her based on this fraud or you could try a marriage adviser.
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reader, anonymous, writes (21 July 2010): Oh please. So she had sex with a few dudes before she met you. Big deal! get over it. If she lied about those things it's because she was so afraid of your reaction if she had told you he truth, so afraid you would not want her. That's how much she wanted to be with you.
Just relax, keep your faith to yourself and don't enforce your own morals up on your wife's past, it simply isn't fair.
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female
reader, anonymous, writes (21 July 2010): The issue is why she has brought this up now.
I personally feel that she is angry with you about something, and she wants you to be agitated.
She shouldn't have lied. You may even think she shouldn't have done what she did. But she knows you, and she knows you would be probably more upset about this now than you would have been at the start.
And she chose to tell you. What else is wrong in your relationship? There are bigger issues than this, I'm sure of it.
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female
reader, anonymous, writes (21 July 2010): I didn't think divorce was one of the tenets of Christianity. Surely you can't pick and choose. You can't judge someone by your Christian morals and then decide it's ok for you to act against them if it suits you. Isn't marriage a sacred institution? It's not like your wife has committed adultery during your relationship.
Just, don't be a hypocrite. And put your kids first.
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male
reader, anonymous, writes (21 July 2010): Anyone who defends the wife's lying is more interested in advocating their own sexual views than doing what is right in this case. The wife is entirely in the wrong and the husband does not owe her anything right now. She is not who he believed he was marrying. She did not lie to protect herself from being judged by the man she loved. She lied at the beginning of the relationship, long before there was love and marriage on the table. She lied to a guy she didn't know very well just to keep her options open. She lied because her desires ranked more important in her mind than his right to choose who he was getting involved with. Original poster, first thing to do is get a DNA test for all your kids. It will give you peace of mind. (And maybe she will start getting the message that this whole thing is not a minor problem to be forgotten in a couple weeks.) I am not in your shoes. But right now I would say you should at least think about divorcing her. Forget past sex, forget paternity, forget forgiveness for a second. Will you EVER be content and happy and fully trust this woman again? Just from what you say so far, I really doubt it. (You say she is not even sorry about anything? Wow, that says a lot.) This rift won't just get better over time by itself. Either you deal with pretty quickly or you just stay with a wife who makes you feel betrayed and ripped off for the rest of your life.
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A
reader, anonymous, writes (21 July 2010): If you are now, after 10 years considering divorcing your wife because of something she did before you got married, I think you are over-reacting.I think your wife didnt tell you the truth all those years ago because of how you would react. However, I do not condone the fact that she did lie to you. Trust in a marriage is very important.Rather take the time to got to counselling to help you overcome this issue which has become an obstacle in your life and will only get worse if you allow it to.
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reader, anonymous, writes (21 July 2010): You're experiencing retroactive jealousy, because you have a problem dealing with her past. She held that back for a while, because she figured you might not like it or want to be with her. Going by what you're saying, she would have been right, and so her gut feeling told her to wait until you knew her for so long that you might actually understand when she spills the beans.
Let it go, because you can't live in the past, and you can't live in her past.. both will make you feel lonely and depressed, because you'll never be able to change them. Just be happy she picked you as her life long partner whom she feels is above all other men. You can't judge her just because she didn't live within the same moral or religious constraints as you did. If you feel she lacked morals or good judgement in her younger years, and you're a Christian, forgive her and love her, and move on, like Jesus teaches you to do.
Life is a never ending process of making mistakes and getting past them. We're humans, and we'll always make mistakes, as perfect as we try to be, so that's why you have to rise above this and smile at her and tell her you're sorry for viewing her in a negative light. She can't change her past, and neither can you, so you have to move on together in the future, and appreciate that you have each other, now. That's all that matters.
If you still can't get over her past, and you continue to allow it to eat away at you day to day, seek professional counselling. They can help you greatly.
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female
reader, OhGetReal +, writes (21 July 2010):
Your title made it sound like your wife was an immoral trollop who cheated on you with two men at work and I was all ready to jump all over her.But instead, for some reason she decided to tell you the truth about how she had lost her virginity 10 years ago before you were married.Should you divorce her? Let me ask you, how can something in her past so benign as to have nothing to do with your life with her erase the last 10 years of married life? Is she a good and caring, loving person and wife? Is she a good mother? What do you hope to accomplish by divorce besides destroying your family and then shuffling your kids between you and your wife for the next several years?I understand your upset that she didn't tell you, but is it the measure of her as a woman? Surely not. Why don't you ask her why she didn't tell you or what the circumstances were surrounding how she lost her virginity? It could be that she was forced upon, it happens to more virgins than you can imagine due to fear and insecurity and being trapped in a situation that you don't know how to get out of...then she may have reacted by being a bit promiscuous. Obviously, she has changed and wanted a man of high moral fiber, that's why she married you, so she shares your values does she not?
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female
reader, janniepeg  +, writes (21 July 2010):
 Your reaction now is the exact reason she didn't tell you before. Why she told you now I don't know. Were you arguing about religious morals and then she told you this to be spiteful?
The title suggests she cheated on you but as I read on I see that happened before meeting you. I think both Christians and secular atheists here would say you are overreacting. If you divorce her it would be because you two are incompatible, not because she is a shame. She is not the one causing you misery, your beliefs are. Non virgins are just as capable of loving as virgins.
You do realize that the majority of aunts and uncles are north americans and british, right? Our answers will be biased to you. You have to stick to your own morals.
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reader, anonymous, writes (21 July 2010): If you would seriously consider divorcing her over an issue like this, you both may be better off separating. That's not saying that one of you is right and the other is wrong, it's just that you have very different beliefs on a very important subject. I personally think you're overreacting, but that is just my personal opinion. First, the comment about the hymen might very well be the truth, and is almost petty to bring up. A number of girls break their hymen before they even have knowledge of what a hymen or sex even is. Breaking the hymen at a very young age is not uncommon at all for girls that are involved in physical activities (gymnastics, cheerleading, other sports, etc.). The hymen can also be broken by tampon use, or could be broken through masturbation. Second, people don't talk about things like this in the beginning of relationships simply because conversations like that have a tendency to kill relationships before they start. Men and women both have a tendancy to lie about their past sexual resumes at the beginning of relationships for a number of reasons. One, for most people, there is a certain level of jealousy that goes along with a significant others' past sex life. Two, people are afraid of getting judged based on actions that may not reflect who they currently are. Three, (and this is the big one for you) some people do not view premarital sex as inherently wrong. In the grand scheme of all possibilities, 6 prior sexual partners is not a tremendous amount. There's probably a good likelihood that most, if not all, of those partners were from relatively stable dating/relationship scenarios. To most people, myself included, that's more than acceptable. To me, there's a big difference between sex between someone you're romantically/emotionally committed to (marriage or not) and having random sexual encounters with a large number of people. As for working with a total of 1/3 of her past sexual partners, there's one of 3 situations going on here:A) You have beaten the 1:1,000,000,000 odds of that happening.B) You met her through your coworkers, whom she was still friendly with. In that case, given the nature of opposite sex friendships to cross into the sexual realm, it was caveat emptor on your part. C) You live in a very small community. Being someone who grew up in (and subsequently left) a very small, rural community, I know from experience that once you pass the age of 17, you had better be aware that there's a very good likelihood that you know and interact with someone that has had sex with the person you are involved with now. Simple math and science at work: people have physical needs, and in a small area, there aren't that many people. If this is the case, you have three options: 1. Become comfortable with this fact; 2. Remain single; 3. Move. Sorry if that comes off as blunt, but that's the case with living in a small area. Background on where my opinions are coming from. When my now wife and I began dating, we were both well aware of the fact that we both had more than one prior sexual partner. Neither of us were overly promiscuous, but both of us had prior experiences. To this day, neither one of us harbors any feelings of jealousy towards the other. How can this be? Easy, all of those prior activities happened before we even knew each other, and the emotional and physical connection that we have together easily surpasses any type of connection we ever felt with anyone else. What we have together is unique, and we both know it. I've even inadvertently met one of her past boyfriends. Now, I will admit, there was a slight pang of jealousy knowing that I was talking to one of the other men who has seen my wife naked, touched/tasted/felt her entire body and brought her to orgasm. However, it passed relatively quickly, because I know that despite all that, there is a connection that the two of us share, that cannot be shared with anyone else. The question you need to ask yourself is: do you feel that connection with your wife, or do your other beliefs outweigh that? If your beliefs outweigh that (please don't think I'm being judgemental), you're better off to leave your wife, as this is something that will not change.
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female
reader, HollieMc +, writes (21 July 2010):
 NO, I mean, if that happened before your time with her, then just try to deal with the lie she told you. Dealing with it by trying to get some closer from her, and never bring it up, or think of it again. (try)Dwelling on it will only make things worse. (I learned that the hard way) But you will need your closer! And don't let her forget it!I would hope that she only lied to you because she did not want to loose you. And was afraid to tell you considering you may have left her. (but she was still wrong for lying)But if she is a good wife, a good mother, do not leave her for that, (only if she slept with them before you)Although if she cheated that could be a differnt story.Ask your wife why she lied, and if she gives a good answer if she does elaborate well it might be enough for you to understand her reasoning. (hoping she has good reasoning)I do not like that she says she doesn't regret her past, that is a slap in the face for you. She needs to regret her past if her past is hurting you; the man whom she married, and should care for more than anything.I would tell her that It makes you feel uncomfortable and You will need a lot of recurance. I hope it all goes well. good luck :)
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male
reader, Odds +, writes (21 July 2010):
No one else can tell you for certain that you should divorce (or stay together, for that matter). However, in your shoes...
I'd be upset that she lied. If you were business owners negotiating a merger, that would constitute fraud, so you have every right to be upset and she needs to respect that. It's *her* job at this point to convince you that she's sorry and a worthwhile spouse. I know few women who would ever do that, though, so you'll probably have to work through it on your own. You must decide for yourself if this means that she has lied about other important things or not.
Leaving aside the lie, let's focus on the sexual history. Six men appears to about average for women (according to Center for Disease Control data) upon marriage, assuming that number is accurate (women tend to decrease the actual number even in anonymous self-reporting). That's in America; in Zambia, I have no idea. Either way, she's not a ruined woman, physically speaking, and if she makes a good wife/mother, than her past is not hurting the marriage in any objective sense.
To reiterate, your feelings are entirely justified. You stayed true to your faith, but were sold a false bill of goods as your reward. This is one reason I advise all men to avoid marriage, incidentally. Your wife, and more importantly, *you* need to understand that you should not be ashamed of your anger.
That said, what would Jesus do? Forgive her for the sins of the past, and pray for a real future. If she is a good mother, she is a better woman than most, and that alone would be valuable enough to me. You have to decide if the same applies to you.
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male
reader, anonymous, writes (21 July 2010): I have to question your faith, as one of the tenants of being a Christian is forgiveness. Your acting on humiliation, and have turned this to be all about you - it is not. Your wife told you an untruth, as she was clearly afraid of being judged harshly by a man she loved.
You need to search your soul and determine why you are feeling the emotions that you are, and then determine what of that is her's and what is yours.
If she's been a good wife, you need to be a good Christian and work on forgiveness.
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female
reader, candygirl_iraq  +, writes (21 July 2010):
I am of muslim faith,and in my religion and community virginity is the basic matter of all relationships so I fully understand your agony and shame.The true quetion is not about what happened 10 years ago,what about today? Is she faithful to you? Has she had sex with another man after you took your vows?? If she goes to church and confesses than God will forgive her,I'm sure you can find it in your heart to forgive her too. Ofcourse she had no right to lie to you,but maybe she thought that you were too good of a man to lose because of past choices. Think about the children before you take any action.May God guide you through!!
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