I know my wife committed adultery after she filed for divorce. Do I have the right to remarry?
Question:
I am a member of the church and have been for many years, (although my faith has been weak for the past few years, I have now come back to the Lord. Here is my situation and question:
I have struggled with pornography for many years while married. My wife finally divorced me and she stated that was one of the reasons. I believe another reason was that she met someone else and she told me she was intimate with him before the divorce was final. I guess I have two questions. One, did she have a right to divorce me because of pornography (sexual immorality)? I never committed adultery with another person. Two, since she divorced me. She initiated it, and I even tried to talk her out of it. She even admitted to having sex with another man before the divorce was final. Do I have a right to remarry?
Answer:
If the reason she divorced you was because of pornography; no, I do not find that to be justification for ending a marriage. You needed help, not desertion. Pornography is not the same as fornication, which is often translated as sexual immorality. This is one of the reasons I really don't like the vague phrase "sexual immorality" used to translate porneia. See "Is looking at pornography fornication?"
There are brethren who believe it makes a difference who files for divorce. I would grant that it made sense before today's concept of no-fault divorces. In the past, the person who wanted a divorce had to prove justification for the divorce. Thus, who asked for the divorce often told you who was the innocent party. Today the courts don't care why a divorce is happening, they are only there to settle the split. I have run across several cases where the adulterer is the one who initiates the divorce so he can go marry his lover.
Your former wife did commit adultery since she was still married to you when she had sex with another man. While it is possible that she had already been seeing the man before she initiated the divorce, I don't know what the truth of the matter is. You'll have to come to a decision about it, and it is something I can't help you with. If it was the case that she was seeing another man and then decided to divorce you (blaming you for the problems in the marriage), I could accept the argument that you had the right to remarry. As it stands, I must admit that I don't know. If it had happened after the divorce, I would have said you don't have a right to another marriage, even though she did you wrong by divorcing you and sinned further by marrying another man when she had no right to do so.
