Valentine’s Day 2013 marked Charity and Matt Craig’s first date since his affair during their marriage.
“It was embarrassing, but it was part of the healing process,” Matt, 41, tells PEOPLE. “You can’t expect things to go back to the way they were. And I didn’t want things to go back and neither did she.”
The Florida couple not only survived Matt’s affair in 2012, but Charity, 46, says it strengthened their relationship after she decided to work on herself.
“It dawned on me that he is not my enemy,” adds Charity, now a marriage coach. “We’re both just people with deep wounds, and that’s where we started to heal.”
Sharing advice for others who may find themselves in similar situations, she says that hyper-focusing on “the other woman” gets in the way of relationship healing.
“Affairs don’t happen in a vacuum,” says Charity. “Once you heal yourself and your marriage, 10,000 women can walk past my husband and he won’t bat an eye because he’s not looking for an escape.”
Charity and Matt Craig with their children, left to right, Hunter, Christian, Porter and Charis.
Matt and Charity Craig
dr. Talal H. Alsaleem, author Infidelity: the best worst thing that could happen to your marriageand founder of the Infidelity Counseling Center, agrees that infidelity can arise from circumstances that generally have little to do with a “third party,” regardless of which partner is cheating.
He points out three main factors that can result in infidelity: first, a person may have a personality disorder, sex addiction, or past trauma. Second, environmental issues—such as a stressful career—can increase the likelihood. But the most prevalent is how happy people are with their partner.
“It’s like having a heart attack. The trauma of infidelity forces a couple to look at the issues that got them to this point,” Alsaleem tells PEOPLE. “Either they deal with those issues in a healthy, successful way, or they realize that this is a relationship they should have gotten out of a long time ago.”
Although she says dealing with infidelity is essentially the same for both sexes, traditionally women bear more of the blame.
“There is a huge gender bias against women when it comes to infidelity,” says Alsaleem.
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He also warns couples not to go public with their situation.
“It adds a layer of complications later on for couples, especially if they decide to stay together,” says Alsaleem.
The Craigs found that well-meaning friends and family did not help solve the underlying problems in their marriage by wanting them to divorce and move on.
“They acted more hurt and betrayed than I did,” says Charity. “People hate to see how broken and broken you are.”
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Still, they both saw value in a relationship that lasted most of their lives. The two of them met in a youth group in the church of St. Louisa when Matt was 13, and Charity, then a freshman, became a friend of his family.
Their feelings developed after Matt invited her to his 18th birthday. They dated for about three years before tying the knot on January 17, 2004.
“Whenever you get married, you take a risk. Something tells you that you don’t want to live without that person,” notes Matt.
Charity was a teacher, and Matt tried his hand at a music career in Nashville before finding a more secure job. They had four children in five years, starting almost exactly two years after they were married.
“We were in survival mode,” Charity remembers.
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The Craig family with Porter, Christian and Matt in the back and Charity, Charis and Hunter in the front.
Matt and Charity Craig
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About eight years into the marriage, things seemed to be getting better. “It was the focal point of our lives,” Charity continues. “Matt got his dream job.”
The pay was good, but Matt points out that “it was also the most stressful I’ve ever experienced in my life.”
He had a team of musicians and creatives and was in charge of mentoring and shepherding a flock of around 12,000 people. It came with midnight texts from his boss, a full-time job and being away from home.
“He kept telling me ‘I have to get out of here,’ but I didn’t listen to him,” explains Charity. “I didn’t engage in toxic behavior behind the scenes.”
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The home stopped being a safe place for him because he couldn’t vent or talk about it, she says.
Matt says he can’t pinpoint the exact moment he started sliding down the slippery slope with a woman he knew from his church duties, but he recalls the affair starting with group messages and then individual messages.
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“And there comes a point when you cross the line and start rationalizing it,” he says. “But once you cross the line sexually, you think you’ve screwed it up too much to be a good husband, and you leave.”
Alsaleem says couples need to take time to process and assess the damage done to decide whether they should begin the healing process together or separately.
Matt left for about six months before he and Charity decided to work it out. First, Charity worked through her issues with a therapist, and then they both used therapy to work through their issues. But mostly they opened up and started talking about the reasons.
“You want life to be perfect, but life is life and people are people,” he notes. “You’ll run into the same problems when you’re running away from yourself.”
The affair took a backseat in the past decade, and they are in a comfortable and loving place in their now 20-year marriage.
“Now we’re talking about the affair in retrospect,” says Matt. “We’ve actually been married longer after the affair than before.”
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Source: HIS Education