All right, well,
you to go down here and then we're going to move down to Pennsylvania and we're
gonna move over to Todd. Hi, Todd, how are you today?
Hi. Hi Joe. How may I help you? My friend? Uh, yes.
So, um, I was, um, actually a committed adultery and,
um, married the woman that I committed adultery with and, uh,
move changed. My job, um,
changed my whole life, uh, to be with this woman. And, uh,
we've been married since October now and I'm
really feeling a lot of regret. Um, a lot of guilt.
Yeah. I actually read your book. Getting past guilt, um,
helped a lot. I read another book, um, by Rubel Shelly. Uh,
so, um, divorce and remarriage, redemptive theology.
I mean, I guess there's people that say we shouldn't get another divorce alone,
but part of me feels like, you know, I, I guess deep down inside,
I feel like, you know, this shouldn't have happened. Um,
I shouldn't be in this relationship, but it's going to be married to this woman.
Um, she really loves me and, uh, she doesn't want me to go and,
um, you know, I'm going, I'm seeing a therapist right now, myself, um,
to try to get through some of this. But I,
when I saw the opportunity to ask you a direct question, I, I just,
I guess I wanted to take the opportunity to do it.
Alrighty. So you're feeling a tremendous amount of guilt. My friend,
I'm so sorry for that pain, but that's what guilt does now.
You see, you're asking me a question is what theological than,
than what we do here. And, uh, when you say,
should I divorce her and go back to the first back when I was a minister,
which was back a long time ago. Pardon me?
And I guess I call when I say the word minister back when I was a minister many,
many years ago, um, young minister back in the late 18 hundreds,
I would have had one view of theology there. And, and now in my position,
I have a different view of theology.
Here's the general principle about which we work now.
Obviously you have to make your own decision. And if you read Rubell's book, dr.
Shelley lives right here in middle Tennessee,
I'm sure you can find him one way or the other.
He also teaches at Lipscomb university and, uh,
he doesn't teach here anymore. I'm sorry. Carolyn,
who is my brilliant assistant over here? It says, no,
he doesn't teach there anymore, but you can find ruble. And if not,
if you can call our office down here and say, help me find dr. Shelly,
I'll see if I can find his email for you or something.
You might want to talk to him. If you want to talk to the geology. I mean,
he's the theologian. When it comes to us, when it comes to us,
here's the way it works. We tell people we,
we fight to help people save a marriage. That's what we do now.
Would I agree that you should not have ended the first marriage as I would agree
with that wholeheartedly? What I say that adultery is a bad thing do. Yeah,
I would agree with that wholeheartedly as well. I do,
but that now that you're married to the second person, the way we view it is,
okay, now this is the marriage you work on. Now that yes, it started badly.
You should, the other things should not have occurred, but they did occur.
And now you're in this marriage. And so do what you do to make,
do whatever you need to do to make this marriage work. But see,
that's our philosophy. I'm not giving you a theology.
I'm giving you the way that this organization exists. If you want to look at it,
theologically, I strongly recommend finding dr. Shelly, if,
if you want to look at it that way,
then that's a different thing than what we do here.
But we couldn't buy by the very principles by which we
operate. We could never help a person in one marriage to go to another marriage,
even in a situation like yours. Does that make any sense to you at all?
Okay.
And as far as the guilt is concerned,
I do hope you find some way to get past that. You know,
lots of us Todd have done some really crappy stuff, you know, I have,
I certainly have. And that's why I ended up writing that book,
getting past the guilt when, uh, Howard,
when Howard that's published by Harvard books,
which is a division of Simon and Schuster,
when they first came to me years ago to write a book,
they wanted me to write a book about spiritual warfare. And I said,
I'm happy to write a book about spiritual warfare,
but I want to write a book about kilt first, because,
because of all the things I've done in my life and finding the way to be
forgiven and feel forgiven, well,
they didn't make me write the spiritual warfare book first,
but so they just gave me a two book contract.
And that was the second book getting past guilt.
And I wrote that my friend from me so that I could find the scriptures and the
healing and hope so I wouldn't rest of my life, be bogged down with guilt.
And I do strongly recommend that you find a way to do that through God. Now,
again, if you want to find dr.
Shelley and you can't email here and I'll get one of our folks to find out how
to get him in LA and we'll email that back to you. Okay?
Yeah. Thank you so much. And again, I, that,
that book has helped me a lot to get him past guilt book.
I would recommend anybody read that. Definitely. I appreciate your, um,
yeah, just, uh, your vulnerability and, uh,
and just sharing your story in that book and then everything else with it. Um,
so yeah, that's definitely helped me a lot.
Utah. That means a lot to me. It means a whole lot to me. All right, my friend,
you take care. The book getting past guilt. If you guys are interested,
you can find all of my books on Amazon. Uh, of course,
you're going to wish call here at marriage helper and we'll go ahead and give
our 800 number up here on the screen. Our eight six, six number.
It is not 800 numbers anyway, (866) 903-0990.
And if you're having a problem with your marriage then,
and you haven't talked to anybody here yet,
you call that number (866) 903-0990.
And tell whoever answers the phone.
We have a whole lot of people here and they'll get you to one of our client
representatives and he,
or she will be able to listen to understand enough of your situation to refer
you to whatever resource we have that can be of assistance to you. Now,
it's not a hotline.
It's not like you're going to call and talk to a counselor and that's not the
way it works. The client representatives will listen enough to understand,
and then they'll help you understand what products we have, if any,
that will help you or what services we have, if any,
that will help you with that.
Now that they're not going to twist your arm to try to get you to do anything,
but they are going to try to get you the best resources available to help you
with whatever you're facing.
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