There is more than one kind of cheating on a spouse. Placing extended family above your spouse is a form of disloyalty. Placing yourself above your spouse is disloyalty.
Matthew 19:4-6 "…4 Jesus answered, “Have you not read that from the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’ 5 and said, ‘For this reason, a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’? 6 So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate.”…"
When we leave our families to marry a spouse we do not completely abandon our families unless they are destructive to the relationship. However, they no longer have priority in your life over your spouse. Extended family may have opinions about something we are doing but when they place pressure on us as a couple to do things the way they do them, that is the time to get away.
Every married couple must break from extended family to have their own lives their own way. If you are in an extended family system that requires you to be like them, do what they do, and go where they go, you must get away from this and make your own traditions.
There are many family structures that place intense and unreasonable demands on married couples as though the couple is married to the family. This is unbiblical and destructive to a marriage. IF this is the condition you are in then you must move as far away from the extended family as possible so they will not be able to influence the marriage.
1 Peter 3:7 "7 Husbands, in the same way, treat your wives with consideration as a delicate vessel, and with honor as fellow heirs of the gracious gift of life, so that your prayers will not be hindered. "
I have observed extended family placing pressure on the husband to oppress and discipline the wife falsely. They attempted to influence the husband that the wife should not have her own ideas, her own desires or express herself openly to her husband in her obedience. This is patently unbiblical and ruinous to a marriage.
When we marry we become one flesh, which means that we allow each to express ourselves within their roles as God made us as well as inputting verbally our desires for the marriage. Discussing something in marriage to come to a common agreement bonds a couple to one another. To remove this bond through one person barking orders and the other person obeying without a word will destroy the relationship.
1 Peter 3:7 "Likewise, husbands, live with your wives in an understanding way, showing honor to the woman as the weaker vessel, since they are heirs with you of the grace of life, so that your prayers may not be hindered.
Colossians 3:19
"Husbands, love your wives, and do not be harsh with them."
1 Peter 3:1-6
"Likewise, wives, be subject to your own husbands, so that even if some do not obey the word, they may be won without a word by the conduct of their wives, when they see your respectful and pure conduct."
Ephesians 5:33
"However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband."
A husband cannot honor the wife when he is treating her like a mindless slave. A wife cannot revere her husband when he treats her as an object to be used for his own purposes.
Marriage is a relationship, not a contract. It is a relationship, not a slave-master or father-child relationship. It is too adults with gifts and talents coming together to help one another grow in holiness. The wife is the counselor to the husband as well as his companion in the endeavors God has given him to do. She is a valuable asset to him with differing vantage points that can help him see sides of things he may not see.
The wife is also the manager of the home. She sees to the needs of the home, her children, and her husband so the husband is free to be in the workplace earning the money for the wife to run the household.
The manager of the home is an important position, she decides how it will be run and what will be done in her home. The husband is not to usurp this God-given role by dictating how she does her job. A husband may express some desires for certain things but he does not dominate over this, it was not his to give to the wife, it was God who gave it to the woman.
A woman should care if her husband is pleased with what she does in her role of CEO of her household, after all, he lives there too and they are one together.
A husband who disregards the needs of his wife and a wife who disregards the needs of her husband are both acting selfishly. This should never occur in a marriage where two people are one.
When we make a decision within our roles we consult with the other half of us to make sure they are pleased with the decision. If one is not pleased then there must be discussion to come to a common agreement. If a common agreement cannot be reached then the husband must make the decision as led by God. However, the husband ought never to make decisions completely disregarding the input of the wife and the wife should never disregard the input of the husband. They are ONE, the other half of us matters and has been given for a reason.
God did not make man and wife ONE for one to disregard the other. The woman must decide to follow Christ on her own as the husband must decide to follow Christ on his own. They will have differing views on things from time to time that must be discussed, no one forces another to believe a way that meets with theirs, this would be hypocrisy.
Each person within the marriage seeks God on doctrine, if they are both seeking God then they will agree on all important matters. Christ is not divided and no one person is above Christ.
There are those who believe they should take on the beliefs of the husband because he is the leader. The sad thing about this is that it causes women to learn not to think for themselves and make good honest decisions about truth through their own seeking of Christ. Husbands are wrong at times, they need the wife to show them the Bible passages working as helpmate to their husbands.
1 Peter 3:1-2 "1 Wives, in the same way, submit yourselves to your husbands, so that even if they refuse to believe the word, they will be won over without words by the behavior of their wives 2 when they see your pure and reverent demeanor."
Our behavior and resolve to follow Christ has more power with husband who are unsaved than any words would. "More is caught than taught" is a true saying.
Those who are married to saved husbands need to be open and verbal about the truth when their husband has a blind spot. Husbands are not our gods, they make mistakes and need our counsel from time to time just as we need theirs.
A husband who does not have an open and honest wife who will challenge him from time to time will never grow spiritually past infancy. Anyone who has no challenges to their behavior will not grow emotionally or spiritually. We need one another, the most important person in our lives is our spouse, we must be challenging one another continually to greater levels of holiness. Without this, no one grows.
Even the wife remains immature because she will not speak the truth openly, she becomes a mouthpiece for her husband even when he is wrong, she is no help to him.
noun ezer, עֵזֶר. is helpmate in Hebrew. Eve completed Adam. Husband and wife are two parts of a whole, serving a mutual purpose, that is to serve God. Husband and wives are two equal half of a whole sharing a common purpose.
Titus 2:4-5 - "Then they can urge the younger women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled and pure, to be busy at home, to be kind, and to be subject to their husbands, so that no one will malign the word of God."
Ecclesiastes 4:9-10 - "Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their labor: If either of them falls down, one can help the other up. But pity anyone who falls and has no one to help them up."
When a husband acts like a dictator, not as one with her, he is not valuing the wife as his equal and partner in life. When a wife disregards the needs of her husband she is acting independently as though she were not one with her husband.
God said that we should love our spouses as we love ourselves. No one despises themselves, if we love others as we love ourselves we would have little time to worry about getting what we want only. Everyone loves themselves, we are born that way, we don't have to work at that. The real challenge is to love others as much as we love ourselves.
Matthew 22:38-40 "…38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40 All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”…"
Just a side note, those who say they hate themselves are lying. They are so self-absorbed that they hate how their life is going they want something they believe to be better than what they have, this is not self-hatred, it is an over-emphasis on self. If those who say they hate themselves would stop thinking about themselves and focus on others they would find there was no self-hatred, only excessive self-love.
When we love our spouse as much as we love ourselves we will want them to succeed in life emotionally and spiritually. We cannot stand to watch those we love act badly causing a damaged reputation for themselves. We cannot stand to see them fail in their relationship with God.
Those who believe they are being good wives by allowing their husbands to be horrid people without any input from them are deluding themselves, they are more concerned about looking "submissive" to others than they are about the well-being of their husbands. Every woman must be led by the Holy Spirit when approaching a husband with a problem. If the husband blows up in anger then the wife must remove herself and input until the Lord works in his heart.
When we love someone, caring deeply about their success as loving human beings we will speak the truth, if they will not listen then we leave it with God, carrying on to do what is right in God's Word even if our husbands will not.
Below are some instances when the authorities over men or midwives were instructed to do something and those who followed God could not obey.
Acts 5:28-30 "…28“We gave you strict orders not to teach in this name,” he said. “Yet you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching and are determined to make us responsible for this man’s blood.” 29But Peter and the other apostles replied, “We must obey God rather than men. 30The God of our fathers raised up Jesus, whom you had killed by hanging Him on a tree.…"
Exodus 1:17
"The midwives, however, feared God and did not do as the king of Egypt had instructed; they let the boys live."
Daniel 6:13
"Then they told the king, "Daniel, one of the exiles from Judah, shows no regard for you, O king, or for the decree that you have signed. He still makes his petition three times a day."
1 Samuel 25:1-32 is a passage about Abigail who was married to a man who was not obeying God, so she had to take matters into her own hands to do what was right before God.
Abigail was married to a wretch of a drunk. She was described as "A beautiful woman with a beautiful mind as she had is surely one of God’s masterpieces."
When a woman will not be the helpmeet to her husband, working for his good by expressing truth and living it, she is no good for the husband. We must love our husband more than we love ourselves. We must love them so much that we are willing to be hurt by him to bring truth from God to the marriage.
Bottom line: Seek God in all things, do not listen to those who have human traditions they have added to the Bible to diminish the Oneness union of a man and woman.
By the way, Abigail was acting on behalf of her husband as the other half of him even if he was not doing right, the other half of him did do what was right and helped a possible horrid situation. Her story is well worth reading in 1 Samuel.
The more we know the word of God the less we are influenced by false and destructive doctrine.
