Bob: This is FamilyLife Today for Thursday, August 6th. Our host is the President of FamilyLife Dennis Rainey and I’m Bob Lepine. What started innocently for Cheryl Scruggs would eventually become the cancer that would destroy her marriage. Stay tuned!
Welcome to FamilyLife Today thanks for joining us on the Thursday edition. I’ll tell you when anyone finds himself or herself in that kind of a situation, there ought to be some warning light on your marital dashboard that goes off that says, “You are in danger. It’s time to make some changes.”
Dennis: No doubt about it. In fact Bob, I would like to say that there ought to be a big red light on the dashboard that says, “Don’t ever do what she did”! Never, ever share your needs from your marriage with the opposite sex. I mean you are asking for a catalytic combustible relationship to be formed then. If that person is in a struggling marriage, it’s as though two hearts can almost be instantly melted and melded together.
Bob: Yes, when we get together with couples at our Weekend to Remember Marriage Conferences, we try to provide them with the kind of biblical coaching just like you are doing right here, to say, “This is what needs to be guarded in your marriage, this is what needs to be taken care of and cultivated in your marriage.”
Dennis: Here are some things in terms of maintenance for your marriage.
Bob: So many couples say to us, “We wish somebody had told us this year’s ago.” I hear from couples at these conferences who’ve been married thirty or forty years. The one thing they say is, “I wish we’d come to this right after we’d gotten married.”
Dennis: You think about it, there is no other relationship on the planet that even begins to approach the significance as a marriage relationship. Yet we enter into it with the least amount of preparation of any major commitment that we make in our lifetimes. If we buy a new car we usually read the owner’s manual.
Bob: You read the owner’s manual? You’ve never read the owner’s manual!
(laughter)
Dennis: Well, when I had to! When I got off in a ditch and I had to. But that’s the point Bob. Why wait until you get off in a ditch in your marriage before you read the owner’s manual about marriage? If you come to the Weekend to Remember I promise you we’ll give you the most concise, biblically accurate description of the owner’s manual for marriage that you’ll get in your lifetime.
Bob: We have 50 of these events that are about to happen this fall. Right now, this week and next week FamilyLife Today listeners can register for an upcoming Weekend to Remember Marriage Conference. You and your spouse register at the regular rate and we’ll send you a certificate for another couple to attend as your guests for free.
You can mail the certificate to your brother who lives out on the other coast; you can pass it along to somebody at church. They don’t have to come with you, but it’s a buy one get one free situation for FamilyLife Today listeners this week and next week.
Go online at FamilyLifeToday.com or you call 1-800-FLTODAY, and you have to identify yourself as a FamilyLife Today listener. So, if you are online at FamilyLifeToday.com, and you are registering for a conference you type my name, you type “Bob” in the promo code box that’s on the registration form.
Or if you call 1-800-FLTODAY get more information, get registered over the phone just say, “I listen to FamilyLife Today or Bob told me to call.” They will get you registered. When you and your spouse register at the regular rate you’ll get a certificate for a second couple to attend absolutely free.
Dennis: If you don’t know who to give it to today, save it and give it to a couple who are getting married in the coming months. Give it to them as a wedding gift. I don’t think there is a finer wedding gift to give a couple who are starting their marriage than the Weekend to Remember.
Bob: Yes, it would have been great if our guests today had had somebody give them a certificate for a Weekend to Remember back when they first got married.
Dennis: Yes, it would have saved them a lot of heartache! Of course they might not have written the book that they wrote. Jeff and Cheryl Scruggs wrote the book I Do Again and I’d like to welcome you to the broadcast. Jeff and Cheryl, welcome back!
Cheryl: Thank you!
Jeff: Thank you so much!
Bob: You both got married in 1982 - you met in Memphis. You were working in a restaurant/bar and you were a patron right, Jeff?
(laughter)
Jeff: That’s right!
Bob: A year later you’re husband and wife you move out to California, start new jobs out there, and life is going good with one small problem. That is Cheryl from your perspective, your marriage is drifting and you kind of emotionally separated yourself from your husband. Jeff, you didn’t think anything was wrong, right?
Jeff: That’s right – I thought it was perfect!
Bob: It wasn’t until year eight in the marriage that you realized that it wasn’t perfect Jeff?
Jeff: That’s right! I was getting ready to go play golf with a roommate from college that was in town. It was a Sunday afternoon, and I walked upstairs just to say goodbye to Cheryl. She was laying on her bed in our bedroom and she’d just finished talking to her Mom, and she was crying.
I said, “Cheryl, what’s going on? What’s wrong?” I thought something terrible had happened with her family, and she said, “I don’t love you, I’m not sure I ever loved you!” I said, “What are you talking about?” So, she didn’t really want to talk about it at the moment so I left with my buddy. We didn’t play golf; we went somewhere where we could talk. That’s kind of rocked my world!
Dennis: Yes, at that point, Cheryl, you had given up hope on your marriage of not being able to be transparent with your husband. At the same time you were working at a very high powered job and a guy was showing you some attention, and actually said something to you verbally that flipped a switch within you.
Cheryl: Yes, actually what happened is I would say probably by year six I was emotionally divorced from Jeff! I was just living the day in, day out, kept a smile on my face, put the meals on the table, did my job. We had our twin daughters by then, and I went to a sales meeting in March of 1990. Again I was always at the top of the list in sales and success and all that kind of stuff. I felt like, gosh, I should be happy. I don’t understand why I’m not happy!
Bob: Career is going great?
Cheryl: Career was great; I thought I was in a great marriage. Jeff and I didn’t fight; we had twin daughters. We had some issues trying to have kids and we had gone through an infertility program and ended up having twin daughters, which we felt completely blessed by. I am at this meeting and I start talking to a friend of mine who I’d known for a long time. We were just talking about marriage, and I had never shared with another person that I felt empty in my marriage until that day. And he started to tell me about his marriage and how unhappy he was in his marriage.
I never dreamed that what started that day would end up with us being connected emotionally: At that time I felt like it was the first person I’d ever connected emotionally with in my life. I was 31 years old and we talked until wee hours of the night. Nothing physical happened, but I felt a connection, and he was saying all the right things. When we went to our respective rooms he said to me, “Why don’t we meet for breakfast” and I said, “No, I can’t do that”!
I went back in my room and I laid on the bed and I thought what is happening to me? I felt like my heart was torn out of my chest. I felt like it was given to someone else within an hour’s time. That’s what was so weird to me!
So, I decided to meet him for breakfast after I had told him no. We sat at breakfast: luckily all of us were going home. I was in Southern California and he was in Northern California. I went home – it was on a Friday, at that point in airports you could walk off the plane and see your family or friends or whatever. I walked off the plane and I saw Jeff and the girls: the girls were about 16 months old at that point. I looked at Jeff and felt nothing for him. I missed my girls terribly, but I hadn’t missed him. It really scared me, and I thought where did my heart go? It went to somebody else that quickly!
Bob: I just want to jump in here and make sure we don’t run too fast by one of the first things every listener needs to hear. That is: you don’t have a conversation about the state of your marriage with somebody of the opposite sex.
Cheryl: Right! Never!
Dennis: Never! You can never ever open up and be vulnerable about a struggle you are having in your marriage with someone of the opposite sex who is married or isn’t married. It’s a set-up!
Cheryl: It is, and you don’t see that coming.
Bob: So, you had gone home. He’d gone home. Did you figure okay I don’t feel anything for Jeff, but I’m not going to see this guy again! Or, did you know there will be a next time?
Cheryl: No – I never thought there’d be a next time. This was on a Friday, I went through the weekend just torn, and I couldn’t wait to get to the office on Monday to talk to him on the telephone.
That’s what started happening! We started talking every day on the telephone and I was feeling more and more connected. The deception was that I actually thought I was falling in love with this person, and it was over the telephone. That’s what scares me about e-mail, texting, and face book today. Even some of the other avenues because there’s a lot of conversations going on and you never spend anytime with the person.
So, basically a month later is when I was laying on my bed and Jeff came in and I told him that I had something to talk to him about and I told him that, “I didn’t think I had ever loved him, I didn’t love him now”! We didn’t really go anywhere from that. He just walked out of the room thinking what has happened? He talked to his friend, and then a month after that we found out we’re being transferred to Dallas.
From the time that I told Jeff that until we moved in August this man came down to Southern California intentionally and we met and that’s when it became physical. That’s when it became a full-blown adulterous affair.
Dennis: I want to highlight a second principle here, and that’s for a chemical reaction to occur it means that the elements have to all be brought together in the same crucible. If you’ve had that attraction and that spark the easiest thing to do is to put it out and to not bring the elements back in to the same experience again. You didn’t do that!
Cheryl: I didn’t do that!
Dennis: There are others who don’t do that: it’s a hook! The sexual relationship is not what occurs first. It is the culmination of a soul connection. Now at the point she confessed to you she didn’t love you and wasn’t in the marriage anymore in terms of an emotional love for you, did you have any idea this was taking place?
Jeff: No, I didn’t. In fact I asked her if there was another person and she told me “no”! What I took from that was that we needed help. So, I talked to an older gentleman in my office and he recommended a marriage counselor. I called the marriage counselor and we went twice. She told me basically I was wasting my time and money – that Cheryl wasn’t into it! That was about the time we left.
Dennis: So, it wasn’t a Christian counselor who believed in the Bible, and that’s going to be our third principle as we’re talking about this.
Jeff: It wasn’t a Christian counselor. No! Amen!
Cheryl: I want to add something and that is most people when asked if there’s someone else involved—if you’re having an affair or however your spouse asks you—most people say, “No.”
Bob: Even if there is someone!
Cheryl: Even if there is! That is the one thing I would say to people. I wish I had said yes, but my fear was keeping me from saying that. I actually thought Jeff would take the kids from me or I don’t know what I thought he would do! I was afraid to tell him and I wished I had!
Bob: When he suggested counseling did you think well, okay, maybe we can put this back to where it belongs?
Cheryl: It was a slight thought, but my heart was gone and I really didn’t want to go!
Bob: You were just longing for whatever was happening emotionally with these daily telephone calls.
Cheryl: Right!
Dennis: Puppy love is real to the puppy!
Cheryl: It is – yes!
(laughter)
Dennis: I want to go back to the counselor thing again, and make that third point clearly here. You wouldn’t begin to think about going to a heart surgeon without checking out how successful they are in performing heart surgery. I want to tell you something – giving your soul, and your marriage and your family to a counselor who’s a guide, a person who’s going to give you advice; you have to have some prerequisites. You can’t just go to anybody – you must prequalify those counselors.
Just because they call themselves Christian as a counselor that doesn’t mean they believe this book is the guidebook. It’s part of the reason, Bob; I want to give a word about the Weekend to Remember. The counsel couples get at the Weekend to Remember is never the easy way of escape. It’s calling couples to be equipped. Calling people to the hope that the Bible gives about how you can turn an imperfect relationship into a perfectly good one.
Bob: Jeff, when two sessions of marriage counseling doesn’t do any good: the counselor says, “You are wasting your time and your money,” were you thinking this is doomed or were you thinking there’s maybe still a chance? As a guy, I’m thinking I’ve got to fix this!
Jeff: Right! I’m thinking that the move to Dallas and a new environment is going to help us. We had a couple friend there that we were friends with when we lived in Memphis and I thought, “You know this will be really great – we’ll finally have some community, and a new environment and things will be better.”
Bob: Still no idea that there was another guy?
Jeff: Still no idea that there was another person involved!
Cheryl: So, when we got to Dallas I thought, “We can start over. It’s a brand new life and new friends. I can just leave that in my past and never have to bring it up or say anything and walk away from it. That’s not what happened!
I was so deceived. We got to Dallas and what had started to happen for me and where the deception came in is I was missing the emotional connection with this other person. I was convinced that he was the soul mate that God had placed in my life.
Bob: Anything happening spiritually with either one of you at this point?
Jeff: Well, when we moved to Dallas for the first time in our marriage we started going to church. For me it was like I was running back to the Lord. I knew the Lord but I had walked away from Him. We started going to this church, and it wasn’t long after we started going to the church that they asked me to help with their high school youth ministry which was a joke.
(laughter)
At first it was just crowd control. They needed another warm body so I showed up for crowd control. Then later it came where they asked me to lead the guys in a Bible study: The Disciplines of a Godly Man by Kent Hughes. That was our Wednesday night young men’s Bible study. As I would prepare that lesson every week, God was showing me that you are not this godly man, and it was really convicting!
Cheryl: I didn’t care at that point. It didn’t matter what he said to me, I was going through the divorce proceedings on my own behind Jeff’s back.
Dennis: You were addicted to the phone calls to the guy!
Cheryl: I was addicted!
Bob: Did he know you were pursuing a divorce?
Cheryl: Jeff?
Bob: No, the guy?
Cheryl: Oh yeah, he was convincing me I needed to get a divorce and that he would be better for me and for my children. He’d be a great dad and he would give me all the things Jeff never gave me emotionally and all of that.
Bob: So, you went to the attorney behind Jeff’s back, said, “I want to do this, Jeff has no idea, he’s leading the high school youth ministry”!
Cheryl: Right!
Dennis: Had you built the house yet?
Cheryl: Yes – we were in the house!
Dennis: You had? You were in the house, and five months into the move into the new house – knock, knock, knock – there’s a knock at the door?
Jeff: Right, they were ringing the doorbell. I was upstairs reading the girls a bedtime story putting them to bed, and Cheryl was downstairs and I’m thinking, “Why isn’t she answering the door?” The doorbell kept ringing so I picked up one of the girls and headed down the stairs, went to the door, and it’s the sheriff serving me with papers. That’s the first I knew of it: the divorce proceedings!
Bob: And your wife’s in the kitchen?
Cheryl: I was in the bedroom! It was 9:00 at night! Yeah!
Jeff: I think she was in the bedroom.
Bob: Did you know this was happening?
Cheryl: I knew it was coming. That’s why I wasn’t answering the door because I knew that’s what it was.
Bob: What do you do with a daughter in one arm, and the shock in your hands?
Jeff: You know for the moment I think I was just numb. I can’t remember which girl it was – it was one of my daughters. I took her back up the stairs and put them to bed. Then I just went in my room and I was bawling like a baby. I’m thinking, what is going on? I couldn’t figure it out. I need help. We need help!
Cheryl: He was trying to come to me. Not every day, but he would come to me, and I had shunned him so much that I was starting to sleep upstairs. That’s a very common thing that couples do also is they go to separate parts of the home and start sleeping there. Our girls were young enough where they didn’t know that was happening.
So, he would do things! In fact one time (I’m a big golfer) Jeff was trying to shower me with anything he could. His heart, material things, he bought a set of Ping i2’s for me and put them under the sheets.
(laughter)
Jeff: I was desperate!
Cheryl: I thought this isn’t going to get it. I was just numb! I didn’t care what he was doing!
Bob: At the point that you were served papers, and even at the point that the divorce was final, you still had no idea that there was another man?
Jeff: I had no idea! I thought something was wrong with us. One of us had something going on mentally like what is going on?
Bob: One of us – like her!
Jeff: Right!
Cheryl: Like me – right! Yes, that’s right! He actually asked me three or four times if there was someone else.
Dennis: Yes, she had lied to you multiple times, and the reality of this is another principle that we’ve been talking about here: Tell the truth to your spouse!
Cheryl: Right!
Dennis: Don’t hide things from your spouse. A small thing can become a big thing!
Bob: Do you think there’s anything Jeff could have done? The Ping i2’s weren’t going to work!
(laughter)
If he had come in and sat down in front of you and said, “I’ll do whatever”!
Cheryl: He did that! I think that what was important to see from that is that I needed to communicate to him early on. That’s what the missing link was. That’s what I want couples to hear is that if you’re feeling empty and if you’re feeling things don’t be afraid to go to your spouse, and start working on it.
My Mom said to me the day I told her we were getting divorced – of course she cried, and my Dad said, “Of all you kids, I never thought you and Jeff would get divorced, but you kids you never work on anything”! So, that was a big thing – I still remember to this day now being almost 20 years ago or so.
Dennis: I’m listening to your story and I’m thinking of Proverbs 24: 3-4—by wisdom a house is built. I’ve never thought about this before, but you could also say the opposite of that— by foolishness a house is torn down. Foolishness doesn’t have to just be an affair. It can be a lack of understanding, a lack of initiative, passivity, and a failure to pursue. You both had added to the collapse of this marriage. It wasn’t one person’s fault.
I think the challenge to those who are listening is how do you get the wisdom to build a house that withstands the storms of life? They will come – the storms are out there, and there will be temptations. How do you build a house that can stand strong in this culture? Bob, a book like this can give hope to people who otherwise have no hope. They think they’re the only people in their city, or their community that have problems.
Bob: Right, and that may not be you – the person who is listening, but it could be that you know somebody who is in this situation. You could get a copy of this book and pass it along to them, and provide them with help, and with encouragement.
We have copies of the book at our FamilyLife Today resource center, and you can go online at FamilyLifeToday.com and find out more about how to order a copy of the book I Do Again by Jeff and Cheryl Scruggs.
Again the web site is FamilyLifeToday.com, or here’s another idea: if you know a couple that is in a tough spot in their marriage, why don’t you call them and invite them to join you and all of you go to together to a Weekend to Remember Marriage Conference when it comes to a city near where you live this fall.
To help make that possible for you, here’s what we’re doing for FamilyLife Today listeners this week and next week: When you call to register for an upcoming conference you register you and your spouse at the regular rate and we’re going to send you a certificate for a second couple to attend free.
So, you and your spouse register at the regular rate, you’ll get a certificate for a second couple to attend with you at no cost. You can send that certificate to somebody who lives across the country if you want to, you can pass it along to your married son and his wife, or your married daughter and her husband, or to your Mom and Dad for that matter. However you’d like to use it, but it’s a buy one get one free opportunity for the Weekend to Remember Marriage Conference – it’s for FamilyLife Today listeners, and it’s this week and next week only.
So to take advantage of this opportunity, you need to go online at FamilyLifeToday.com. There’s more information about when the conferences are being held, in what cities this fall, and you can register online for the conference. When you register, you want to make sure that you type my name in the promo code box on the registration form: just type in “Bob” and that will qualify you for the buy one get one free opportunity for the Weekend to Remember Marriage Conference.
Or, simply call 1-800-FLTODAY, we can answer any questions you have about when the conference is coming to a place near where you live and we can get you registered over the phone. Just make sure that you mention “Bob told me to call” or that you are a FamilyLife Today listener so that you can take advantage of this special buy one get one free opportunity.
You and your spouse register at the regular rate and another couple can attend with you at no cost. All the details are available online at FamilyLifeToday.com or you can get more when you call us at 1-800-FLTODAY.
Well, tomorrow we are going to hear how God eventually brought Jeff and Cheryl Scruggs back together to where they said, “I Do Again.” I hope you can be with us for that.
I want to thank our engineer today Keith Lynch and our entire broadcast production team on behalf of our host Dennis Rainey I’m Bob Lepine. We will see you back next time for another edition of FamilyLife Today.
FamilyLife Today is a production of FamilyLife of Little Rock, Arkansas.
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