How to Forgive After an Affair

Jason's Story

Tell me about your story that led you to write the book.

Jason Vallotton: The long story short is I grew up in a really good home, got married when I was 18 years old, right out of high school to my high school sweetheart, which is awesome. And I had kids really young, I started having kids [at 19 years old], so life was going really good.

About nine years into our marriage I realized I don’t feel really connected, I don’t feel really close to her right now, which isn’t terribly uncommon if you’ve been married any amount of time. It’s not uncommon to feel some kind of disconnection. The more I pursued her, the further away she got. And I started to realize, “man, there’s something wrong here”. Over a course of about four months she got further and further away, indicating that with what she was saying too “I don’t want to be with you” and “I don’t feel like we have passion." Things like that, which is really hard. I mean, just crazy. By this time we have three kids and I’m in Ministry, and so eventually after about four months I found out that she had somebody else that she was seeing and from then on, here comes the book as far as the pain. And “what am I going to do?” is the initial feeling. “My wife just left, I have three kids. How are they going to handle this? And how am I going to handle this?" I didn’t even know what to do.

The Sadness

What were your immediate feelings with her and the man she was unfaithful with, as well as your long-term feelings for them?

Jason: Immediate feelings would be: I’m human, I’m angry. I want justice. I wish it was the Wild West. I wish I could go out there and settle it with a bullet. Those are my initial feelings. Crying, really frustrated, [and] really confused. I’m mad for my kids; I’m mad that she would leave them. All that stuff would be an initial feeling that I had to work through.

My long term feelings are “I want the best for her.” What God gave to me I want Him to give to her, as far as wholeness and forgiveness and reconciliation. God reconciled all of us to Him. He gave all of us, in our sin, a way out. He gave us freedom. So that ultimately became my goal with her. Although I’m in pain, even in my pain I still want her to be free. And I want her to be whole. And I want her and him to have a good life. I don’t win if they ruin my life, so those were my short term and my long term thoughts.

Jason's Dad

Your father is a pastor, so he must have struggled with trying to protect you while helping promote forgiveness. What were the struggles that he went through in this whole process?

Jason: Yeah, my dad is my best friend, so I think he probably carried the brunt of my emotions and feelings and decision making. I talked to my dad everyday for probably close to nine months while I was walking through this and we cried together and that whole deal. I would say that my dad was every bit as emotional as I was. I know that my dad shared the same emotions that I did as a grandfather to my kids and a father to me and to her. In some ways he was a spiritual dad to her and loved her.

When somebody walks out on you it hurts, it hurts on every level, it hurts everybody that’s in a relationship. My dad was included in that, so [my dad] writing the book with me was really the finalization of our journey together. It wasn’t just “Hey dad, I need help”. It was “Hey dad, let’s finish this road together. We’ve walked this far and we’ve really come to a place of wholeness and of healing and our family has come to a place of healing and wholeness. Let’s finish this road by giving away what we’ve learned and where we’ve been to other people.” But even that process was hard, especially for him because he’s having to relive how he felt. I tell my story a lot so I get a lot more used to going, “that was my life and that’s how I felt,” but for him I think it was a little bit harder to go, “this was my kid’s reality and my grandkid’s reality. These are the things that we walked through.”

Jason Reaches Out to Others

Are you offering a ministry for men that are going through the same thing?

Jason: At this point, I would say I’m offering the world an opportunity to learn what I learned and to walk out of it. I’m a pastor at a school here. I travel and speak. We have an organization called Moral Revolution, which is an organization to help change morality in the world.

I teach my message and share my message and help people out of it. But I don’t have a specific ministry to go, “I’m going to bring guys in that have been divorced or are in pain” and help them out. I helped oversee and lead a men’s sexual purity group for sex addicts for a long time while going through this. And I spent a lot of time just helping guys overcome pain and learn how to not medicate and learn how to break cycles, be self-aware and things like that.

How You Can Overcome Hardships

A lot of people reading your story might have gone through this and feel very connected to the story. What advice would you offer to help others who experienced an affair or other hardships?

Jason: I would say there are some really great verses in the Bible that say, “God gives you beauty for ashes” and “He makes all things new” and He’ll change your path and your future into something that’s beautiful. Learn how to not let your emotions be your guide. Your emotions are really important tools in your life. They let you know what you need but they don’t necessarily tell you how to get there nor are they always the right motivation. So, being in pain, your pain says something right away. Pain says: “Do something, do anything to get out of this right now,” which, oftentimes leads us to medicate, whether that’s pornography or a rebound. We all hear about the rebound, which is pain. Pain is saying, “Go find somebody else, go do something to not feel this way”. But really, the best thing to do is to be okay feeling that way and to let God work through it with you.

I would say you need vision. You need to go, “In two years, what do I want my life to be?” “In one year, what do I want my life to be?” “When I tell my great-grandkids about this part of my life, what do I want my story to be with them?” You have to wake up every day like that and remind yourself because there is so much pain. A lot of people feel hopeless and they don’t know how to get out of it, so they’re dealing with depression and hopelessness. And I would say to them, “There is a way out. What I went through was really, really hard but I no longer live in that world.”

Work Through Your Own Pain

Jason: I didn’t write the book to share my story or somehow for the world to get to know me. That’s the least motivating thing for me. But my story is one of probably 40 stories in the book of “this is a type of pain that somebody went through, whether they were a sex addict and they ruined their life and here’s how they overcame it” or “this guy follows dad, beats brothers with rubber hoses and this is how he overcame it” or “this woman used to cut and she hated herself and here’s how she overcame it.” The book is not really about divorce; it’s about how to deal with pain, unforgiveness, hurt, and [how to] become an emotionally whole person. The book is to go, “there is hope, there’s a way out and here’s some tools how to get out of it.”

I would say to somebody listening that feels hopeless or stuck or like they want to give up: “You feel that way because you don’t know that there’s a way out.” And we also feel that way because we don’t necessarily believe God all the time that He is going to turn what was bad into good, and He’s going to give us a better life than what we had. But when you truly believe that, and when you allow God to come in and heal you, He does for you what He did for you when you were a sinner. And when you asked Him into your life, He took your broken life and He gave you a whole life. And He takes our broken places and He gives us whole places again.

You need to work through your pain, [and] you need to learn how to work through your pain. You need to get tools, whether that’s my book or whether that’s a counselor or whether that’s your pastor. You need to invite people into your lives to help you walk through this process and not run away from it.