There are always two sides to a divorce.  Always.  While there are, of course, the huge issues of abuse, most of the time, it takes two people to lose a marriage.

 For instance, Bill’s former wife left him for another man and spent a couple of years being quite promiscuous.  She left her kids, as well, Bill was a skinny, nervous, stressed-out “Mr. Mom” when I met him.  It was easy to blame her.    She certainly had made some selfish and disastrous behavior choices.

 I was married to Bill only a short time, however, when I realized that he wasn’t the saint he thought he was.    I don’t condone what she did, but I sure don’t blame her, either.  I realize that he is selfish, dictatorial, obsessive-compulsive and downright unkind at times. 

 Likewise, in our former discussion, the wife in the story has many faults.   The husband could say with all truthfulness that he had grounds for divorce as well.  She was pampered and adored by her parents from birth.  She has character defects, also.  She is neurotic and self-involved and flighty.  She was too young to be married. 

 She graduated from high school at 18, met and married her husband a year later and feels that she missed out on a lot.  She, at this point, is happy and at peace with her decision to divorce.  She’s looking to the future leaving a devastated husband who only now is realizing that his wife needed a stronger person and that he leaned on her way too much to provide the income and pay the bills.

 It’s heartbreaking.  You guys can post however you want on this, I don’t care where this discussion goes.  But I will say this:  If I had to do it over, and I know what I know now, when I found that motel slip that told me they were sleeping together, I would have tossed it in the trash.  Because it’s a lot easier (although incredibly painful still) to break up with a boyfriend than it is to divorce a husband.

Dealing with the repercussions of fornication are, I feel, not nearly so hard as dealing with the repercussions of divorce, the anticipated temple cancellation, and all the legalities, not to mention the financial problems they both now face.

I hate to say it, you guys, I don’t say it lightly.  But if I had to do it over, I’d've just let them sleep together and stayed out of it.  I think, in trying so hard to do the right thing, encouraging marriage, then temple sealing, we did the wrong thing, and we’re all paying for it, most of all the kids.

Joseph Smith said, “that which is wrong in one circumstance, can be and often is, right in another.”  I don’t think sex outside of marriage is ever right.  But marriage isn’t always the answer in those cirumstances, either.