Marriage from Adultery and Infidelity to Love and Hope for the Future

By Dr. Farla Bridges

In a time when marriages are breaking up and families are being destroyed. I hope to shed some light on the purpose of marriage and the impact that adultery and infidelity can have on the lives of people. Although there are cultural differences concerning the matter, I am focusing on what God said about marriage and family. In my book, I will share some very explicit examples of pain and suffering that occurred during adultery and infidelity. Finally, I will share some ways people can overcome, have love restored, and hope.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Sep 25, 2018
• ISBN: 9781984555373

Dr. Farla Bridges

Dr. Farla Bridges was born and raised in Atlanta, Georgia. Her parents were married until partied by death. She married her high school sweet heart before he enlisted in the Military. After a few years they returned to Atlanta and she received Christ as her savior. She served in different capacities in the church, in different occupations and in the community. She continued her education until receiving her graduate degree in Business Administration DBA. Dr. Bridges and her husband have been married for 55 years and they have three children.

Book preview

PART 1:

LOVE AND MARRIAGE

CHAPTER 1

Inseparable

My husband and I met in Alabama. His family was from north of us in another state, they were relocated here to Alabama where his father, a pastor, was assigned to a church. My family moved in the neighborhood two houses down from the church. We started attending the church, although it was a different denomination from our family’s church that we attended all our lives. I was born in Alabama, at first I became friends with his youngest sister, and we walked to school together. He would come over to play basketball in our back yard with my brothers.

He started hanging around. We started talking. We were in our neighborhood church youth choir and club. We sung at different churches. We walked to school together holding hands and talking. We talked about our hopes and dreams. We fell in love and it was as if there was nothing or no one else in our world. We were inseparable; we had to see each other every day. Every day we just wanted to be together. My husband and I were high-school sweethearts. At school everybody knew we were boyfriend and girlfriend. He was a senior and could hardly wait to graduate, leave home and go in the Military. I was in the tenth grade; I had gotten kept back a grade in elementary school. I was in college prep courses and wanted to be a secretary. We got married after his graduation; my mother had to sign for me because of my age when I assured her that I would finish school. He didn’t want his parents to know that we were getting married. He wouldn’t talk to them about it. I didn’t know at that time that his father had told him to stay away from me, to leave me alone. He didn’t tell me that until several years after we were married. I thought they liked me. I was wrong. I really found out how they felt about me when they found out that we had gotten married a few months later. He enlisted in the Military and left. I couldn’t stop crying for a week. I was so lonely, I cried a lot. I started back to school in the Fall as we had agreed.

Someone informed the school that I had gotten married. They called me in the office, and told me how disappointed they were in me for getting married. They gave me all bad conduct grades. They told me that I was being expelled because I was a bad influence on the rest of the girls. I have been dealing with that all my life. It hurt so badly. I left the school. I started attending night school. My brothers were taking turns walking me to and from school at night until they got tired of it and I quit the night school. I thought I would never get my high school diploma. My husband and I decided for me to come live with him near the Military base while he was stationed. I did, it was our first time living together. We really knew what it meant to be in love and be with that person. I got pregnant with our son. We both were afraid of me being alone so much while he was on duty. We decided for me to come back to Alabama and live with my parents until I have the baby.

We had a good relationship; my husband was so loving and kind. He would thumb a ride with strangers to come see me if he didn’t have the money to ride the coach bus. When I had the money to ride the coach bus I would go see him. We wrote each other all the time and talked on the phone. I was threatening a miscarriage at 6 months; he got a leave and stayed with me at my parent’s house. God blessed us not to lose the baby. When he was born, they said I was overdue and had to induce labor, my husband came home on leave again, and we experienced being new parents together. After a few months my son and I went to back near the military base to live with him in another rooming house. We were so happy. My husband was so proud.

While my husband was stationed on that military base his family was relocated to New York. His father insisted that we come to New York because there were good jobs up there. He was a pastor and his church organization had sent him up there to pastor a church. The closer it came for my husband’s discharge from the Military; his father kept calling and writing for us to come to New York when he got out, come home. Just as we were getting excited about him getting out of the Military and starting our lives together, getting a place of our own, the Vietnam War was going on and his whole company was going to be deployed to Vietnam. He wanted to go with them. They told him he was too short in time for getting out. He would have to reenlist or something. We moved back to my parent’s home in Alabama. My husband’s father continued calling insisting that we come to New York. He demanded that he come home. He said he could get a good job. I didn’t want to go, but my mother made me go with my husband. She said wherever your husband is, that’s where you are supposed to be. We left Alabama and road on a coach bus to New York his parents picked us up.

CHAPTER 2

Living With My Husband’s Parents

We lived with my husband’s parents in their apartment. We had a good relationship before we lived with his parents, who made it clear to me that they did not like me being married to their son. I always wanted them to know how much I loved their son and he loved me. I was thinking about how I was treated while I was pregnant with my first baby. When we told them that we were going to have a baby, his mother said, you shouldn’t be having a baby, you are frail and you will always be nothing but a doctor bill to my son. How his mother treated me! She had told me that she would never like it, me being married to her son and that I wanted him to marry me because I had no love at home. His father had told me that I would never be happy one day as long as I was married to his son. I had a miscarriage sometime after I had our son. I almost died I had to let my mother keep our son for months. I did not know that I was pregnant again when we moved to New York. I found out three months later while we were living with his parents. I was so sick during the first months of my pregnancy with our daughter. I was so depressed because of how I was being treated, I couldn’t eat. I lost so much weight. I went down from my hundred and five pounds to eighty five pounds, the doctor told me that if I wanted to live and the baby to live that I better start eating. I did.

My Mother-in-law would talk about how lazy I was when we stayed with them; she would think I was asleep. And had nothing good, only rebuke for me being pregnant and my husband and I were married. My mother-in-law went with me to the doctor’s office when I found out I was pregnant with our daughter. She said. I thought so. I didn’t know I was pregnant. In fact I found out that I was three months. I was going through so much with them; I didn’t even realize that I had missed that many periods. We were staying with them and my life was a living hell.

My husband always defended his mother and father against me. I would cry. I was miserable. My husband would yell at me and say his mother didn’t say the things I was saying. Anyway, while we were living with them my husband would help me wash our clothes and take care of our son. One day his father came home and caught my husband with an apron on, he told him, it better never happen again! Housework and cooking was a woman’s job and he better let me wash clothes and iron. I would hang as many clothes on the pulley line as I could. When the clothes were frozen I would pull them in, and lay a few on the radiator to dry. Some things I finished drying with an iron like my husband’s underwear and socks. Sometimes I would walk in the yard to hang up or gather clothes when snow was so high it would get in my knee high boots, and I would cry, all along hoping I would not fall because I was pregnant. My husband and I argued most of the time when he came home from work and I cried most of the time. I told my husband, if we didn’t get our own place I was going back home to my mother.

CHAPTER 3

Moved In Our Own Place

We moved in our own place. It was in a large duplex house across town from the apartment where they lived. My father-in-law gave us his old car, it had holds in the floor and it was cold riding in it, but we were just happy having a new place and something to ride in. After we moved into our own place, I started eating and gaining weight, My husband and I had been going through a lot of difficulty since we moved to New York when we lived in the an apartment with his parents; my husband started distancing himself from me. After we moved in our place they moved in a house in another city. Later I was so sick with the pregnancy, he asked his mother to come over to be there with me. She used that opportunity to tell me I don’t know why you got yourself pregnant again. You didn’t need to have another baby I never asked her for any help since then. I told my husband and he didn’t believe it.

My husband was gone all the time; he started working a second job. He slept at his mother’s house, between jobs. I didn’t understand. I was always asking him why he didn’t come home. I would call his parents’ house, his mother would answer, and when I asked to speak to him she would tell me no, He’s sleep. I’m not going to wake him up, he needs his rest. It would hurt me so bad. I never had a way to go to their house I didn’t know how to drive. On Saturdays we would go to their house and wash our clothes. It was very tense and frustrating. She wouldn’t let me operate her machine. They would be laughing and talking but I couldn’t relate to them. I would sit there and say nothing. I was rejected and