A mother of four in Florida, America, Charity Craig has credited her husband’s affair with saving their marriage, saying spouses need to look beyond the “other woman” to heal a challenging marriage.
Matt Craig had an affair in 2012, but Charity, 46, says it made their relationship stronger after she decided to work on herself.
“It dawned on me he’s not my enemy,” Charity, now a marriage coach, told PEOPLE. “We’re both just humans with deep wounds, and that’s where we started healing.”
Valentine’s Day 2013 marked Charity and Matt Craig’s first date after his affair during their marriage.
“It was awkward, but it was part of a healing process,” Matt, 41, told the publication. “You can’t expect things to go back to the way they were. And I didn’t want things to go back, and neither did she.”
Sharing advice for others who might find themselves in similar spots, she says getting hyper-focused on the “other woman” gets in the way of healing a relationship.
“Affairs don’t happen in a vacuum,” Charity says. “Once you heal yourself and your marriage, 10,000 women can walk past my husband, and he’s not going to blink an eye because he’s not looking for an escape.”
The couple, who got married on Jan. 17, 2004, healed their marriage after they discovered that well-meaning friends and family did not help the core problems in their marriage by wanting them to divorce and move on after the divorce.
“They acted more hurt and betrayed than I did,” Charity says. “People hate seeing how broken and shattered you are.”
Charity was a teacher and Matt had tested his hand at a music career in Nashville before settling into a more secure job. They had four children in five years, beginning almost exactly two years after they were married. “We were in survival mode,” Charity remembers.
About eight years into the marriage, things seemed to be looking up.
“It was the pivot point of our lives,” Charity continues. “Matt had gotten his dream job.”
The pay was good, but Matt points out that “it was also the most stress I’ve ever experienced in my life.”
He had a team of musicians and creatives and was in charge of mentoring and shepherding a flock of about 12,000 people. It came with midnight texts from his boss, constant work and time away from home.
“He kept telling me, ‘I’ve got to get out of here,’ but I didn’t listen,” Charity explains. “I wasn’t dealing with the toxic behaviour behind the scenes.”
Home stopped being a safe place for him because he couldn’t vent or talk about it, she says.
Matt says he can’t quite pinpoint the exact time he began sliding down a slippery slope with a woman he knew from his church duties, but he recalls how the affair started with group texts, and then individual texts.
“And there comes a time when you cross the line and then start rationalizing it,” he says. “But once you cross the line sexually, you think you have screwed up too bad to be a good husband, and you walk away.”
Matt left for about six months before he and Charity decided to work it out.
First, Charity had worked on her own issues with a therapist, and then both used therapy to sort through their issues. But mainly, they opened up and started talking about the whys.
“You want life to be perfect, but life is life and people are people,” he notes. “You are going to run into the same issues when you run from yourself.”
The affair has taken a backseat over the past decade, and they are at a comfortable and loving place in their now 20-year marriage.
Dr. Talal H. Alsaleem, author of Infidelity: The Best Worst Thing that Could Happen to Your Marriage, and the founder of the Infidelity Counseling Center, agrees that infidelity can result from circumstances that generally have little to do with “the third party,” no matter which partner cheats.
He points to three main factors that can result in infidelity: First, the person may have a personality disorder, sex addictions or past trauma. Second, environmental issues — such as having a stressful career — can increase the likelihood. But the most prevalent is how happy people are with their partner.
“It’s like having a heart attack. The trauma of infidelity forces the couple to look at those issues that led them to this point,” Alsaleem tells PEOPLE. “Either they address those issues in a healthy, successful way or realize this is a relationship they should have exited a long time ago.”
He also cautions couples not to go public with their situation. “It adds a layer of complications for couples later, especially if they decide to stay together,” Alsaleem says.
“We talk about the affair in a more retrospective way now,” Matt says. “We’ve actually been married longer after the affair than before it.”
