Mr. Mrs. Mistress

In any profession there are a host of first. This was my first married couple, and their reason for coming to see me was healing from infidelity. This topic was something that I both wanted to understand in an effort to help my couple through their healing journey but it was something very personal to me as well. Infidelity was a part of my origin story. You can watch the full back story here: https://youtu.be/wRILgSSMzrQ

A product of an affair and having been tasked with helping a couple in their healing journey, I set out to understand the physical, and emotional components of infidelity. I would soon find out that it was the spiritual aspect that was the most telling, and most important for healing.  In all my getting I wanted to get an understanding.  As I began my quest for wisdom, I found a multitude of research and information on the "prodigal spouse", "reluctant spouse", "unfaithful spouse", and the "betrayed spouse", "hurt spouse" but very little on the "affair partner'. 

I noticed that the mistress became this insignificant thing that the couple just “got past”. In the grand scheme of the MARRIAGE, I get it, after time the affair partners significance in the couples’ life diminishes. Compared to the years, responsibilities, and family of the couple the mistress becomes reduced to a "storm" that happened, and the got through, in their marriage. My mother’s relationship with Elijah spun nearly 2 decades but his marriage to his wife lasted 40 years past that.

The thing to understand though is that the mistress is significant in the overall big picture because she too is human being with her own set of emotions, expectations, desires, and spiritual needs. There are tons of books and research for married couples healing from infidelity but little to nothing for the affair partner, who also needs the time, space and support to heal. There are guides for unfaithful partners to end their affairs and return to their marriages. But what about affair partners who want to leave the entanglement but are bound by it, and find it too painful, or to paralyzing to walk away? What about the women who, like my mother were blindsided by the marriage and felt as though they were already "in to deep" or "deserving" to get something out of the time they'd put in. Where are their guides, their support groups? If you do the research, they are few and far between and even in those the affair partner is usually demonized, or glamorized but rarely humanized.

The Other Woman’s Baby is an Ode to my mother. The broken version of her who allowed the lust of the flesh to cause her to tarnish Gods most sacred human relationship and the healed version of her who showed her daughter Christ and positioned her to be the Restorer of the Breach for generations to come.

~Lex Ely, The Other Woman's Baby