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Japanese Yes, the Bible calls sex with a married man adultery, for him and for the woman with him, whether she is married or single. A romance with him is already on that road, because Jesus placed adultery in the heart before the act. And Scripture says just as plainly that God forgives it and gives the strength to walk away.
The Gospel of John tells of a woman “taken in adultery, in the very act” and brought before Jesus (John 8:3–4). The man she was with is not in the story. Her accusers reminded Jesus that the law said such a woman should be stoned, and Jesus wrote on the ground, said “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her” (John 8:7), and waited until every one of them had gone. Then he spoke to her himself: “Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more” (John 8:11). Both halves of that sentence are meant for us as well: he will not throw the stone, and he will not leave her where she was.
Is it adultery if I am single and he is married?
It is still adultery, because Jesus measured adultery by the marriage that is broken. A husband who leaves his wife for another woman, he said, “committeth adultery against her” (Mark 10:11), and he counted even the look of desire as adultery in the heart (Matthew 5:28). The commandment “Thou shalt not commit adultery” (Exodus 20:14) guards a marriage, and the woman who shares in breaking it shares in the sin. The Letter to the Hebrews holds the same line: “Marriage is honourable in all, and the bed undefiled: but whoremongers and adulterers God will judge” (Hebrews 13:4).
The Catechism of the Catholic Church says it in one sentence: “When two partners, of whom at least one is married to another party, have sexual relations – even transient ones – they commit adultery” (paragraph 2380). Between two unmarried people, sex is fornication, and where either one is married, it is adultery. There is more on both in what the Bible says about adultery.
Is it a sin to date a married man if we have not slept together?
Jesus answered this before we could ask it: “Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not commit adultery: But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart” (Matthew 5:27–28). He spoke those words to men, and they bind every one of us. A secret romance is made of messages, meals and plans for the day he is free, and each of them gives the heart to a man whose heart was promised to another woman before God. That is where adultery begins, and it is a sin even if nothing else ever happens.
Is it a sin to have feelings for a married man?
Feeling drawn to someone is temptation, and temptation is not yet sin. Jesus himself “was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin” (Hebrews 4:15). James shows us how the one becomes the other: “every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed. Then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin” (James 1:14–15). We do not choose every feeling that comes, but what we feed, and what we act on, is ours.
Some of us ask why God would send such a man into our lives, and James answers that too: “Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God: for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man” (James 1:13). So the pull toward a married man does not come from God, and what God does send is help: “God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it” (1 Corinthians 10:13). That is why we guard the place where feelings grow. “Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life” (Proverbs 4:23).
What if he says his marriage is over?
If he has told you so, listen carefully, because a man who is unhappy, separated or about to leave is still married. Jesus said of every marriage, “What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder” (Matthew 19:6), and the prophet Malachi says to a husband who has broken faith, “yet is she thy companion, and the wife of thy covenant” (Malachi 2:14). Churches differ on when divorce and a second marriage are allowed, but while his vow still stands, he is bound by it.
The Catechism quotes St Basil, a fourth-century bishop, on exactly this case: “If a husband, separated from his wife, approaches another woman, he is an adulterer because he makes that woman commit adultery, and the woman who lives with him is an adulteress, because she has drawn another’s husband to herself” (paragraph 2384). Hard as that is to hear, it is said to protect a third person who is usually absent from the conversation, his wife. What Christians believe about divorce itself is set out in the biblical grounds for divorce.
What are the spiritual consequences of sleeping with a married man?
Proverbs puts the first one plainly: “whoso committeth adultery with a woman lacketh understanding: he that doeth it destroyeth his own soul” (Proverbs 6:32). Paul says the same of every sexual sin: “Flee fornication. Every sin that a man doeth is without the body; but he that committeth fornication sinneth against his own body” (1 Corinthians 6:18). An affair wounds the two people in it before it wounds anyone else.
And then it wounds others: a wife who is betrayed, and children who lose the steady home their parents promised them. The Catechism calls adultery “an injustice” that “transgresses the rights of the other spouse” and harms “the welfare of children who need their parents’ stable union” (paragraph 2381). We see how far the damage runs in King David. He saw Bathsheba from his roof, learned she was “the wife of Uriah the Hittite”, and took her anyway. Then he sent Uriah to “the forefront of the hottest battle” to die (2 Samuel 11:3, 15). The prophet Nathan told him a parable and then said four words, “Thou art the man” (2 Samuel 12:7), and God’s word to David followed: “the sword shall never depart from thine house” (2 Samuel 12:10).
Joseph took the other road. When his master’s wife pressed him “day by day” (Genesis 39:10), he answered, “how then can I do this great wickedness, and sin against God?” (Genesis 39:9), naming first his master’s trust and then God. Every affair sins against a husband or a wife and against our own body, and first of all against God, who loves each person it hurts.
How do I end a relationship with a married man?
Scripture’s word for it is short: “Flee also youthful lusts: but follow righteousness, faith, charity, peace, with them that call on the Lord out of a pure heart” (2 Timothy 2:22). To flee is to end it clearly, once, without leaving a door open for later. That usually means no more private messages, calls or meetings, and if you work together, keeping to what the work needs.
Paul’s words “with them that call on the Lord” tell us we are not meant to do this alone. Tell a pastor, a priest or a trusted Christian friend, someone who will pray with you and ask how you are doing. They can also help you think through harder questions, such as whether anyone else needs to be told and how. Many churches also offer confession, where the sin is heard and absolved. There are prayers for the moment temptation comes, and for the moment after a fall.
Will God forgive me for sleeping with a married man?
He will, when we turn to him: “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9). David’s confession was six words long, “I have sinned against the LORD”, and Nathan answered at once, “The LORD also hath put away thy sin; thou shalt not die” (2 Samuel 12:13). The prayer of Psalm 51 is ours to pray as well: “Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me” (Psalm 51:10).
Paul wrote to a church where some had been adulterers. He named the sin without softening it, and then he wrote, “And such were some of you: but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God” (1 Corinthians 6:11). He put their sin in the past tense, “such were some of you,” and the past tense is the gift.
The woman in John’s Gospel stood alone in front of Jesus after the stones had been put down. She did not have to earn what he said to her, and she could not stay where she had been. Both are still true for anyone standing where she stood: “Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more” (John 8:11).
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