Al Robertson and Lisa Robertson are opening up about the affair that nearly ended their marriage in Lifetime's Faith & Forgiveness, which premieres May 16 at 8 p.m. The film recounts how Lisa became involved in an extramarital relationship 15 years into their marriage, and how the couple chose to stay together instead of walking away.
Al said the story is meant to show that betrayal does not have to be the last word. "When unfaithfulness happens in a marriage, so many times, that’s the end of it, but it doesn’t have to be," he said, adding, "Everything can be worked through." That message gives the film its weight: this is not a glossy retelling, but a private crisis the couple is now willing to put on the record.
Their history stretches back to West Monroe, Louisiana, where they met in a McDonald's parking lot as teenagers. Al was 17 and a senior. Lisa was 15 and a sophomore. They dated on and off before marrying in 1984. After they had two girls, Al served as a pastor at a church where his family had been members for years, a role that placed the marriage under a sharper kind of scrutiny.
The film centers not just on the affair, but on the pressures that shaped the marriage long before it collapsed. Al, the eldest son of Phil and Miss Kay Robertson of Duck Dynasty fame, said one reason he fought for the relationship was that he had made mistakes of his own. He also said he failed to bring Lisa in as a true partner in his career and dreams, a gap that mattered long before the summer of 1999, when he grew suspicious she may have been seeing someone behind his back and she repeatedly denied it.
Lisa's account gives the story its hardest edge. She said she had been subjected to molestation starting at age 7, and later described herself as lonely and isolated while her husband was away. She said that history left her dishonest with herself, and that the damage deepened as she got older. She also said she later became involved in an affair after being contacted at work by an old boyfriend. In the film's telling, childhood trauma and adult loneliness are not excuses, but part of the road that led to the marriage's breaking point.
That is why Faith & Forgiveness lands differently from a standard celebrity memoir project. It asks viewers to sit with the uglier parts of a marriage, then watch a couple describe how faith and confession became their way back. The unanswered question is not whether the story is painful; it is whether people who have been through something similar will see in the Robertsons' account a reason to believe repair is possible. The film offers its answer plainly: in their case, it was.
