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*This message includes adult themes and is not intended for little ears* 108. Anatomy of an Affair with Dave Carder **Transcription Below** Hebrews 10:23 (NIV) “Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful.” Dave Carder serves as Pastor of Counseling Ministries at First Evangelical Free Church of Fullerton, CA. His specialty is Adultery Recovery and Prevention for which he has appeared on numerous media outlets including The Oprah Winfrey Network, Discovery Health, and The Learning Channel, The Tony Robbins Passion Project, Ladies Home Journal, USA Today, The Counseling Connection, and various other magazines and journals. He has taught at various universities and seminaries world wide, and has done training for both the US Navy and Army. He is the author or co-author of Torn Asunder: Recovering from an Extramarital Affair, Close Calls: What Adulterers Want You to Know About Protecting Your Marriage, and Unlocking Your Family Patterns: Finding Freedom from a Hurtful Past. He holds the Michigan Limited License for Psychology and the California Marital and Family Therapy license, and has graduate degrees in Biblical Literature and Counseling Psychology. Dave and his wife, Ronnie, have been married for 49 years, and have four adult children and eight grandchildren. More info is available at www.DaveCarder.com At The Savvy Sauce, we will only recommend resources we believe in! We also want you to be aware: We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites. Anatomy of an Affair by Dave Carder Torn Asunder by Dave Carder Torn Asunder Workbook by Dave Carder Close Calls by Dave Carder Schedule an appointment with Dave Carder HERE Dave Carder’s Website, Including FREE video series on recovering from extramarital affair Thank You to Our Sponsor: Sam Leman Eureka Connect with The Savvy Sauce on Facebook or Instagram or Our Website Please help us out by sharing this episode with a friend, leaving a 5-star rating and review, and subscribing to this podcast! Gospel Scripture: (all NIV) Romans 3:23 “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,” Romans 3:24 “and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.” Romans 3:25 (a) “God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood.” Hebrews 9:22 (b) “without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.” Romans 5:8 “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” Romans 5:11 “Not only is this so, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.” John 3:16 “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” Romans 10:9 “That if you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” Luke 15:10 says “In the same way, I tell you, there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.” Romans 8:1 “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” Ephesians 1:13–14 “And you also were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation. Having believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession- to the praise of his glory.” Ephesians 1:15–23 “For this reason, ever since I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints, I have not stopped giving thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers. I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is like the working of his mighty strength, which he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every title that can be given, not only in the present age but also in the one to come. And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way.” Ephesians 2:8–10 “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith – and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God – not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God‘s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.“ Ephesians 2:13 “But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ.“ Philippians 1:6 “being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.” **Transcription** [00:00:00] <music> Laura Dugger: Welcome to The Savvy Sauce, where we have practical chats for intentional living. I'm your host Laura Dugger, and I'm so glad you're here. [00:00:17] <music> Laura Dugger: Today's message is not intended for little ears. We'll be discussing some adult themes, and I want you to be aware before you listen to this message. The principles of honesty and integrity that Sam Leman founded his business on continue today, over 55 years later, at Sam Leman Chevrolet Buick in Eureka. Owned and operated by the Bertschi family, Sam Leman in Eureka appreciates the support they've received from their customers all over Central Illinois and beyond. Visit them today at Lemangm.com. Dave Carter is a pastor, author, and therapist. He's also the best professional I can think of to educate us on infidelity. Dave is going to share his years of research with us, as he's going to let us know some shocking reasons why couples cheat. But more importantly, he's going to share how redemption is possible. [00:01:18] Here's our chat. Welcome to The Savvy Sauce, Dave. Dave Carder: Well, I'm looking forward to this. I always enjoy these kind of things. Laura Dugger: You have spent your career educating and counseling couples on marital unfaithfulness. So I'm curious, how did God use your past pain to become your purpose? Dave Carder: Well, it's a great story. At least on this end of it, it's a great story. So back when I was a youth pastor in the late 70s, pretty fresh out of seminary, my senior pastor ran off with another woman in the church. This was the second time this has happened to me. I'd only worked with three pastors. So this time I responded a little differently. I immediately drove to the nearest airport, bought a ticket, basically, to a Dallas-Fort Worth area that I had figured out where he had gone, and confronted him. Stayed a week in a hotel overlooking the U-Haul truck store where he was supposed to bring back the truck, and he never showed up. [00:02:22] I got a call on Saturday from the church back in Ohio saying, "You've got to get home. This place is in a mess," etc. So basically, I figured out what had happened was I had beat him to that location several thousand miles down there. But before I left, I went down and talked to the guy at the U-Haul truck store and showed him a picture of my pastor, and wrote my phone number and name on the back. And I said, "He's going to bring the truck back here. So when he does, please call me and get an address. I don't care what you tell him, just get an address." So on Monday morning, back in Ohio, after I'd flown home, I got a phone call from him about 10 o'clock, and he starts whispering. He says, "He's in my office." And I said, "Well, how do you know it's him?" He said, "He's got on the same shirt in the picture as he has on in my office. I know it's him." I said, "I know he's desperate for money. So you tell him you're going to give him a rebate. You need an address to mail the rebate to." Sure enough, he calls me back about 10 minutes, has an address. I get back on the plane, take a friend with me, fly back to Dallas-Fort Worth, get a rental car, drive the house, knock on the front door, and the single mom in whose home apartment I'd been having Bible studies for two years, for all the boys in the apartment complex, answers the door and screams. [00:03:35] So to make a long story short, we took our senior pastor, me in the front, to the park and tried to persuade him to come back to his family. He said, "No, he wasn't going to do that." Took him home, back to the house there they were renting, prayed with him. I started sobbing when my friend said, "Dave, lead us in prayer. I just started sobbing." My friend had to drive us back to the airport, and I cried the whole way there. As we turned into the Hertz rental car, I looked over at my friend Paul, and I said, "Paul, when I get home, I'm going back to graduate school, and I'm going to figure out why guys do this. Because I've had two experiences in a very brief ministry career." That was in '77, and I've been working ever since at trying to figure this out. Laura Dugger: Wow, that's incredible. I mean, tragic circumstances to start with, but it sounds like God's really redoing it in your life. Dave Carder: I would never have chosen to be a therapist or a counselor. [00:04:35] Laura Dugger: Well, I'd love to focus on your most recent book titled Anatomy of an Affair. I want to begin by this quote of yours, where you say, "My hope is this book will motivate couples to be more alert to potential marital disaster, understand the warning signs of an affair, and help couples strengthen the marriage bond that has kept them together." So let's discuss each of those components, beginning with being more alert to potential marital disaster. Why do you recommend couples never say this could never happen to them? Dave Carder: Well, you know, Laura, this is not normal behavior, but it is extremely common behavior. So what happens, especially in the Christian community, when this does occur, it shocks most of the participants. They never believed this could have happened. They never would have. They never would have planned for it. It came out of the blue. [00:05:35] You know, I was in a research team for a number of years, and we surveyed 4,000 pastors, and the language they used to describe their inappropriate behavior was blindsided, bushwhacked, had the rug pulled out from underneath me, never saw it coming, etc. So that tells us that there is some kind of a subversive, under-awareness, development, inclination towards having an affair. And you have to be honest, straightforward, forthright, and very self-aware if you're going to protect yourself in this culture. Actually, the coronavirus experience we're having right now is the perfect petri dish in which affairs can develop. First-time affairs, and I would say all of them, are all about comfort and distraction. Well, I want to tell you, we know additional new stressors in a marriage, like financial reversals, environmental changes, health changes, relationship changes, major career changes. [00:06:36] All of those contribute to the need for comfort and distraction. Laura Dugger: Wow. So you're saying circumstances like this where couples are under extreme stress, is that when they're likely to cheat? Dave Carder: Oh yeah, very much so. They don't go looking for this kind of relief, but this is a perfect firestorm, so to speak, because they both need comfort. And oftentimes, during high-stress experiences in a marriage, one runs out of gas to care for the other, or needs to go back to work to keep them afloat, or just needs longer to process what they've been going through. We don't all process everything at the same speed. So that difference is often in the time period, in the time frame, when these kinds of behaviors begin to happen. Laura Dugger: Are there any other common reasons that couples do cheat? Dave Carder: Oh yeah, oh yeah. We know, for instance, that there are certain high-risk periods in your life, in everybody's life, when they are more inclined. [00:07:42] Now, these risk factors I'm going to talk about, they don't make anybody do anything like this. But the big question for the spouse who's been betrayed is, why did you do this? Well, the answer to that question, why, is usually a cluster of circumstances that eroded the other person's boundaries and made them more vulnerable. It didn't make them do it, it just made them more vulnerable. So we look for that cluster of circumstances. For instance, about 50% of all first-time affairs in America happen during pregnancy or the first year after delivery. Now, why in the heck is that true? Well, as you begin to think about it, it makes all the sense in the world. The wife's body changes, there's hormonal changes, she's more tired, she might have a lot of nausea in the first trimester, maybe isn't very interested in sexual activity and lovemaking. Then she's got this little baby afterwards, she's sleep-deprived, and she's trying to balance this baby and maybe a career. [00:08:43] Hubby can oftentimes feel very neglected. That doesn't mean he went looking, I just said he was more vulnerable to somebody looking for him. Laura Dugger: With all of your research, just a few follow-up questions. Do you still find that that's true today, that it's more commonly the male spouse, or are those numbers evening out between males and females? Dave Carder: Basically, depending on what research study and frequency study you're reading, somewhere around 60% to 67% of all males acknowledge this, and somewhere between 50% and 55% of all females in America acknowledge getting involved in this. Laura Dugger: Then also, just because at the beginning you had talked about seeing this twice in ministry, do you see this vulnerability where people are more susceptible when they are in ministry, or especially in a head pastoral role? Dave Carder: Well, what I would say I see more of today is when two people in ministry share the same ministry, and they're not married to each other. [00:09:48] So let's just say they serve on the worship team together, or they serve in children's ministry, or the two of them work in homeless encampments, or they do this or that together. So anytime you share a ministry with another person, you share a heart passion that you and your spouse might not share. Now, that doesn't mean you shouldn't do ministry outside of your relationship with your spouse, but it does mean that if you're in a ministry that you are really passionate about with somebody else other than your spouse, you really have to be on guard. Laura Dugger: You give such a balanced approach, because also what I hear you saying is not, if you're in ministry, this will happen to you. You're just sharing what some high-risk times or situations would be. Also, are there any high-risk behaviors that make couples more vulnerable to an affair? Dave Carder: Oh, absolutely. Part of who we are and part of what happened to us when we first started dating, I just tell you this, this is such a kick. [00:10:52] One of my best friends and colleagues, he's my age, and he just got remarried this last week,…
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