Thank you so much everyone for commenting on this.
I am very confused, and really not sure what to think.
When I started going to Church just over 3 years ago I was pretty much broken. I was very ill with OCD, I didn't want to live anymore, everything in my life felt absolutely terrifying - getting out of bed in the morning felt terrifying. My illness was exacerbated by my marriage. My STBXH isn't a bad person, but he is a very damaged, angry person - and my illness, my anxiety made him very angry. He never made me feel in physical danger, but he would do things like ranting in my face when I was having panic attacks, he showed me hardly any affection. Throughout our entire marriage he hardly ever touched me sexually, and when he did, he often had a look in his eyes as if he found me physically repulsive. To be honest, I did let myself go. I was very difficult to live with. He was having a lot of stress at work and coming back to a messy home and a wife who was constantly in a state every night was very tough on him. I kind of lost myself over my marriage. I stopped doing the things I enjoyed. I almost stopped thinking. I became a shadow of my former self.
Then a friend very gently suggested going to Church to ask for God's healing - and I did. I was very skeptical, but I was desperate. The healing process lasted a long time, but God has truly been faithful. I first of all prayed for healing for my Illness, but He worked on me in a different way, he led me towards love and forgiveness, of letting go of anger towards others, of seeing the world differently. I experienced the feeling of being filled with the Holy Spirit - more than once - and again, that is something I would have been skeptical about, but it happened, and slowly I became healed. Also, during this horrendous time, when most other people walked away from me, I had this loving, supportive Church family who prayed with me, who were there whenever I needed to talk, who gave me strength - and who modeled lives where they were kind and generous - and all seemed to have these amazing marriages - these strong friendships, that I just didn't have in my marriage.
So I started praying that I would stop expecting so much, that I could be happy. But then my STBXH got a job on the opposite side of the country, moved away and just came back every other weekend - and having thought that I couldn't practically survive without him, I found that I thrived. It was actually a Christian friend who said to me that she thought that the marriage was bad for me and that she didn't believe that God would want me to be unhappy. I was so shocked. I still worked on my marriage, but then my STBXH told me that he had "given up on it years ago", and I felt like a door had been opened and I had been set free (it turns out he didn't mean it, but I had mentally left the marriage once he told me that).
Sorry, I'm rambling here really - but that is where I've come from. I have felt that God has been so good to me. He has been healing me - my illness is so much better, I am volunteering at something I love (at a place that I stopped working at soon after I met STBXH due to loss of confidence), I am helping doing the Kids' work at Church, which I couldn't do before because of my OCD making it too scary (I have been told that if I were to live with my new man - not something I'm planning at the moment - without being married I wouldn't be allowed to do this anymore). I feel good about myself again. I am getting myself back - and I truly believe that this is because of God's healing.
BUT - my relationship with God has always been very spirit led. There are lots of things about my Church and the way they interpret scripture that don't make sense to me, and that has always been the way - but I've not found another Church that I feel so comfortable with - and that has the type of abandoned Worship time that I really benefit from. It feels like the right Church for me - but the belief at my Church is that every word in the Bible is literal. That the story of Adam and Eve is literal truth down to there being an actual apple, rather than looking at the possibility that the story is in fact allegory - which makes much more sense to me. My Church is against Gay marriage - and I just can't understand why homosexuality would be wrong - promiscuous homosexuality fair enough - but loving, committed relationships between people who just happen to be the same gender. I have dear friends that I have known since we were about 16, and I saw the process they went through coming out, coming to terms with themselves, and how positive and freeing it was for them - and I just can't see it as wrong.
And then I look at my relationship with the man I am seeing. The whole thing about not being able to have the conversation about it - we've spoken about it now, and I think he was just very scared that I was going to reject him and he felt defensive, but he wants to make it work and talk it through with me, so I think we can work together.
But otherwise, I've gone from being in a marriage with someone who pretty much saw getting married as something on a tick list, wasn't interested in my opinion on anything, refused to spend quality time with me because I was "no fun" due to my OCD, sexually rejected me when I put on weight and made comments about me "looking like a trucker with your gut hanging over your pants", closed down when I asked for emotional support and told me he wasn't my "empathy pillow". (Though he did work hard to provide for his family, and he did put up with my illness after a fashion, and he adores our DD).
And now I'm seeing someone who really, truly loves me, who thinks I'm gorgeous, who wants to talk with me for hours, who is interested in what I have to say, who is kind to me and listens and comforts me when I need support, who wants me to be happy, who makes me feel good about myself, who encourages me and builds up my self esteem - and who I find kind, intelligent, witty, inspiring - and just connected with...
So I don't understand, why would God bless the first relationship and condemn the second? It just doesn't make sense to me. Why, once I'm divorced would I even then be committing adultery. Why would a sexual relationship be immoral out of marriage if it is loving, committed, if you have decided that this is it forever, if it is driven by love. Spending the night with this new man - it didn't feel wrong, it just didn't. It felt loving and connected and good. It felt like a gift. It just doesn't make sense to me.
I know the divorce hasn't come through, and I've gone too far because of this - but I split up with my husband a year ago. When is a marriage truly over? When a Judge in a Court decides and people get their arse into gear sorting out the paperwork, or when a married couple decide it's not working any more, stop living together and make the declaration to everyone that they are no longer together?
Although I respond well to the Holy Spirit, I respond emotionally well during worship in Church - I struggle reading the Bible, I really do, because there is so much there that doesn't make sense to me, that seems cruel, that doesn't square up with how I experience God.
Sorry - that's an awful lot there - I'd better stop typing - but my head is just spinning with all of this and I don't know how to unravel it. Thanks if you are still reading.