Dear Betty:

I am very sorry to hear about your marital problems.  I would certainly advise marital counseling.  By your narrative I am not sure whether your unfaithfulness has been in the mind or that you have actually committed adultery with another person.  In any event the problem of lustful heart on your part, or your husband's part, or both, does not mean the marriage must end or even be unhappy.  It is possible to recover from this.  It is possible to heal from a lustful heart.

I would advise several prayers for you and your husband to pray in addition to the marital counseling.  These prayers are found in our Spiritual Warfare Prayer Catalog. Specific prayers I recommend that are in the catalog and include:

• Prayer to Confess a Lustful Heart
• Prayer to Confess Adultery
• Renunciation of Satan and Claiming the Full of Victory
• Prayer for Marriage

Be sure to look through the Catalog for other prayers that may be to your benefit.

As for whether or not you should tell your husband about your own lustful heart, I really cannot advise you since I do not know him or you.  I would suggest that you talk to your counselor about that in a private session when your husband is not in the room.  Usually the marital counseling involves sessions with both of you and with each of you individually, so they should not be a problem.  Your counselor will be in a better position to advise you on what to reveal to your husband and when.

From what you're describing I would say that your husband does have a degree of immaturity.  I was once that way myself.  When my wife did commit adultery, however, I found that my reaction was different than I expected.  Despite my wife's infidelity, I did not wish to marriage to end.  Even after my wife committed adultery a second time I still wanted to continue the marriage.  My marriage did end in divorce because she ran off with another man, but ending the marriage was not what I wanted. 

The point of this story is to show that even in actual adultery, which is certainly worse than adultery-in-the-heart, it is possible for a marriage to continue if both parties are willing and able to mortify their egos and admit their shortcomings.  My wife did not want to do that, thus we ended in divorce.  If both of us are more willing to work on our marriage it might have been saved.

Nearly any marriage can be saved if both parties mortify their egos, recognize their shortcomings, are willing to work hard, are willing to communicate productively, and are willing to do what is necessary to cultivate love between them. 

Personality disorders and emotional illness can be serious impediments to saving the marriage as those psychological problems may have to be resolved first.

More common problems are pride, distrust in God, or bondage to sin (especially to sexual and lustful sins) that makes saving the marriage much more difficult, but not impossible. These spiritual problems can be resolved it the parties resolve to work on it and submit themselves to God. Spiritual Warfare issues can also be resolved through prayer and perhaps by going through the Seven Steps to Self-Deliverance, which would be a good idea for you to do anyway.

 We will be praying for you and your husband.

God Bless,
Bro. Ignatius Mary