It is also helpful if the wife understands “that we are punished by our sins and not for them.”13 She then recognizes that her abuser has inflicted far more eternal damage upon himself than temporal damage upon her. And even in the present, his true happiness and joy diminish in inverse proportion to his increased wickedness, because “wickedness never was happiness” (Alma 41:10). He is to be pitied for the sorrowful and precarious situation he is in.
Knowing that he is sinking in spiritual quicksand might begin to change her desire for justice—which is already occurring—to a hope that he will repent before it is too late. With this understanding she might even begin to pray for the one who has despitefully abused her.