Good situations can go bad. About seven years ago I served as a youth minister and news broke of a pastor a couple miles from us had an affair with his secretary. People were shocked and the church was crushed. Even church people can get wrapped into something they don’t want to be a part of.

So much hate and hostility went on. I was talking with one of the pastor’s sons and weeks after this happened, he said he couldn’t believe what his dad did and truly had a hatred for him. He didn’t understand how this could happen and how he could do this to his mom. What went wrong? How did a loving father and pastor have an affair? It didn’t happen overnight, many people and a church struggled after this happened.

You might not be a pastor or having sex with someone else but you could still be close to an affair. Most affairs can be an emotional affair. There isn’t sex involved, yet. This type of an affair is when two people connection on a level of intimacy with what they say or share that has an impact on the marriage relationship. If you see distance being created in your relationship, this needs to be a red flag.

About this same time as the affair above we had a youth group event and one of our volunteer staff was texting someone after 1 a.m. This guy had four kids and I highly doubted he would be texting his wife. I asked him in a joking way, “Who are you texting?” He said while laughing, “My girlfriend.” At first, it ran through my head as a joke, as more thought went into it, there had to be more. I never followed up on it. A month later he met with my senior minister to tell him he was having an affair on his wife. What if I picked up the signals earlier and spoke up? I can have regrets thinking about that.

“No test or temptation that comes your way is beyond the course of what others have had to face. All you need to remember is that God will never let you down; he’ll never let you be pushed past your limit; he’ll always be there to help you come through it.” 1 Corinthians 10:13 Anytime a red flag situation comes up, react to it. You don’t have to act upon a temptation with a bad action. What happened to the men above, a temptation led to a bad reaction to another and so on. Affairs don’t happen in a heartbeat, there is time. If this is you, get away from that situation. Don’t fall into the traps. Let someone else whether a friend (Not the person you might be having an affair with) or spouse know what’s going on before it’s past a point of recovery.

The pastor that had an affair on his wife is doing better. He sought counseling, forgiveness and it took a long time but that same son that hated him, eventually forgave him. This doesn’t happen every day and it doesn’t have to get to that point. Work on those broken relationships to get better.

Affairs hurt more than the immediate people involved. Think before you act, God can help you through the bad that can happen.