SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Hi my SI friends,

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking, something that just seems to fry my brain until I end up completely abandoning the thoughts is the chalk/cheese nonsense (can’t even find the words for it) I’ll explain…
My H was completely different to what he is now, he was very surface level, no emotional intimacy, didn’t really like being touched too much unless it was sexual, completely dismissed my wants/needs, always the victim (loved being a victim), in spite of all this he was my best friend, I accepted him for what he was. I was the wife who did everything my H went to work and that’s it!, he was sent to work every day with a packed lunch with his wraps, sides of olives, watermelon and feta cheese with roasted nuts and a chocolate on top. I wasn’t perfect but my husband and family came first, We all know what that got me.

Now it’s the opposite, I have a man that seems would stop at nothing to be by the side of triggerzilla. Now I have subconsciously and consciously put this man through every possible test I can think of and every single time he’s surprised me, I’m sure subconsciously it been to test if he would leave so I could say ah ha!, but consciously I’ve screeched at him to leave, I’ve asked him to leave, I told him to leave at any time he wishes. He didn’t leave.
When I think back to what we’ve been through this past year and a bit, my goodness, what a shit show! and he’s taken all of it on the chin.
I have a man who is emotionally available at any time, a man who wants to know how I feel, a man who seems to enjoy taking care of me and who enjoys being needed, a man who loves to be constantly touched or touching me and a man that can sit and listen to anything without flinching and come back with complete calm.

Sometimes I’m not going to lie, I could literally smack him in the face because it just seems so stupid. You had it so easy and now it must be so hard - why?.
Just the other day after I caught myself mid spiral I said, ‘I’m going to end up driving us both crazy’ he said you’re not going to drive us both crazy because you are fine and if you do then we’ll both be crazy together and we’ll be fine.

He had all of my heart and all of my trust and now he stays for zero trust and he said he’d stay for a corner of my heart, he said if he could get back just a corner he’ll be happy. Who wants to be loved with just a corner?.

Trust. Now trust is a big no no for me, I don’t trust anyone and I’m happy with that, life has taught me that, I’m not sure I can ever trust my H again and TBH I think trust is worthless. I think it’s depending on someone to not let you down, now I depend on myself now, I won’t let myself down. I trust him to provide for his family, he’s never once faulted on that one.
Do I trust him with my heart?, no, I know he’s not the same guy and with what he’s witnessed, accountability and our therapist holding his feet to the fire, he’s not the same guy but still no.
My husband always came first, now I come first, we all know that my husband seems to lose himself if he’s approached by something that has been ran through more than the Euro tunnel.

I do wonder if trust is something that comes back because for me it seems like the lid has been slammed shut on that one, I wonder if this is normal?.

Thanks for listening Bruce.

Bruce123,

I do wonder if trust is something that comes back because for me it seems like the lid has been slammed shut on that one, I wonder if this is normal?.

I know this was at the end of your post, but I wanted to start with it for I believe that the loss of trust is the hardest thing to remake, at least it was for me.

I think I am not alone in saying that I had "blind trust" prior to my wife’s affair. I had "blind trust" in my best friend as well. The problem wasn’t that I trusted, the problem was that I trusted against all the contradictions. I refused to see the warning signs that, on hindsight, were in plain view.

I have remade trust and it is nothing akin to the type of childlike trust I originally had. It is a mature trust that now knows that it can be betrayed but I’d rather take that risk than to never trust her (or my friend) again.

Sometimes I’m not going to lie, I could literally smack him in the face because it just seems so stupid. You had it so easy and now it must be so hard - why?.

These feelings are very understandable, probably healthy in the early stage that you are working through. You say it was so easy. I wonder, were things "so easy" for your husband? I know I thought, pre affair discovery, that everything was easy, perfect marriage! Loving, kind to each other, fully committed only to find out that it was easy for me but not for my wife. She carried buried issues that were around long before we met. And even though those issues were independent of me they nearly blew us apart. That might be part of the "why" you stated. The why is that it probably had nothing to do with you. You and the marriage, most likely, are collateral damage. Has your husband gone to individual counseling? If not I would recommend that he would. Our mistake was going to marriage counseling and to be honest, though in some areas it was extremely helpful but as to the infidelity it was an utter failure. That failure led to years down the road pain.

I have a man who is emotionally available at any time, a man who wants to know how I feel, a man who seems to enjoy taking care of me and who enjoys being needed, a man who loves to be constantly touched or touching me and a man that can sit and listen to anything without flinching and come back with complete calm.

From what you have written you man is making an effort but is slamming against a "slammed down door". Your unwillingness to simply trust again is both wise and understandable. However, somewhere in the future, if you cannot figure out a new type of trust that works for you, you may find your husband will retreat and stop knocking on the closed door. I know it is a hard thing to ask of a betrayed spouse, but if there is a desire to reconcile with any hope of mutual happiness, then a different version of trust is imperative. I try hard not to speak in absolutes, but on this I think the only hope of success is if trust can be reestablished. Just avoid blind trust.

I am so very sorry that you are forced to go through this trial. It is terribly unfair and unwarranted. But I would like to suggest that it is better than living a lie that you thought was truth. As you read more and more, here at SI, I think you will discover methods of how to process your grief, anger, mistrust, and lost joys and do so much faster than I did.

Asterisk

Thank you Asterisk for your response,

We did couples therapy, not MC in therapy our M was never discussed, she said that weather we wanted to stay together was completely up to us, we worked through the A. We both learned a lot. We both have childhood trauma, I’m a fighter he’s a fawner, I don’t need anyone he needs to be needed. He was mortified in therapy when he found out that people pleasing and conflict avoidance was not ‘just who he was’ and I was shocked to find out that my H told himself more lies than he’d ever told me.

I’ve never had blind trust I don’t think, not 100%. in fact I think my H was shocked when I reeled off what his reality would have looked like had his AP got her way, the house is in my name, both vehicles yes my name, phones, bills and anything of value is all in my name, I’d have left him homeless and destitute and let’s not even talk about child maintenance. His face told me that he really didn’t think about anything he was doing at all. Also when his parents requested that our children have duel citizenship when they were little I refused, this caused arguments but I didn’t give a shit, always told him that if they wanted duel citizenship when they reached 18 they could apply themselves but I wasn’t signing nothing. His A looking back now I can see the little things but only because I know.

Thing is I don’t really know now how to trust.

Bruce123

Trust. Now trust is a big no no for me, I don’t trust anyone and I’m happy with that, life has taught me that, I’m not sure I can ever trust my H again and TBH I think trust is worthless.

I do wonder if trust is something that comes back because for me it seems like the lid has been slammed shut on that one, I wonder if this is normal?.

We both have childhood trauma, I’m a fighter

I found these three statements when lined up together interesting. Do you believe that the origination for thinking" trust is worthless" comes from your husband’s affair or your childhood trauma?

For me, and this is only speaking for myself, why would I want to be in a relationship if I felt that trust was a worthless goal to aim for? Trust is a binder, a major glue in any relationship. More so, by far, than love. Yes, it has grave danger if we place too high of a self-price tag to it.

I know I struggled deeply with my self-esteem when I found out about my wife’s affair. It was a hard fight, a long, grueling battle for me to separate my self-worth from my wife’s actions. I’ve never tried to look at it from this point of view, but I think that if I hadn’t been able to untangle the two, (trust and self-worth) I would never have taken the risk of trusting anyone again.

Oddly, and partly because of the hard work needed and self-reflection after the affair, I trust people more now than I did before. I too did not make it to adulthood unscathed.

Thank you for this conversation, it causes me to process where I am now verses decades, years, and months ago.

Asterisk

Totally normal.

I think the 2-5 year timeline for healing is just the tip of the iceberg.

I feel like the years beyond that started to address the things you are mentioning.

My husband I believe did trust I wasn’t cheating or thinking of cheating. And over time I think he realized there were areas I didn’t break trust- I continued to manage our finances. Or if he asked me to do something or work on something I always followed through.

I think in a very odd way his affair ended up being one of those tests that you are talking about. I don’t think it was like "If I can cheat and she stays then this will fix it" and then went o pursue an affair. But I do think when it all blew up he was waiting to see if I would try to reconcile the way he had or if I would just say we are done. That sounds really screwed up, but you know, I think things were very screwed up.

I do think that it’s natural for a bs to look for proof of love, or proof of no love, after all the ws has greatly called everything into question.

Trust is the longest thing to get back. It’s takes a long, dedicated, time in which there is high level of consistency. Believeing they love you and are willing to do the hard work is the tip of the iceberg.

And I think it’s uncomfortable to have things absent that should be present in a marriage and that can create a pressure or a weight on the bs to try and fix it or heal it or worry about if it can come back. Reconciling is a big exercise in proceeding in uncertainty and you have to give yourself a lot of grace because your reaction of not having trust is not only natural, but necessary.

And the ws who will earn it back will also have to be the one certain in the uncertainty, the rock of the marriage for an extended time. And I think for me that role was easier because in many ways I was always the rock in our relationship prior to my affair. For the partner who hasn’t been that can be even harder.

It sounds like your husband is performing his role very well, and that causes you both the feelings you should be able to relax but the distrust is deep.

That can still reconcile at some point. Many bs describe this as "You will never have the rose colored glasses trust, but you will be able to take stock and feel like you trust them as much as you can and likely as much or more as someone in a new relationship."

I know it sounds odd for some but when my husband cheated, it shattered my trust. People think well you did the same thing. And yes, I did, and in many ways understood how someone could do it and maybe took it less personally than a non-madhatter situation. But I never in a thousand years would have thought he would stoop to the low I did. I always perceived him as having been made with much better fabric than myself.

And there were no signs which chilled me to my core. When I was cheating, there was a lot obviously wrong he just didn’t know what at first. I wasn’t myself. It made me question, if he could compartmentalize so well, what else is there I do not know. This resulted in me asking for a lie detector test on if there had been others, which wasn’t something he even considered when I confessed because again, it was so apparent I was acting batshit crazy. Still we agreed we would come up with the questions and we would both do it.

That did help, and probably because I had done it myself, it did make me know what to look for when I asked him to go to therapy and do a lot of the work I did. I asked him a lot of hard questions that were insightful to the mind of a cheater because at this point I had done so much research and work myself. And he failed a lot in the beginning, just like I did but eventually I started seeing what I needed to see.

For me, I eventually decided to trust. It was a conscious decision. I had to shut down the thoughts that didn’t align with that goal and that still took a long while. I had decided that if I wanted this marriage to work I had to do that so I could get vulnerable again and help repair the relationship that I was the one to initially shatter. This part I am only sharing to describe another method.

Today, I think we choose to prioritize our relationship together and rather than worry if the other will lie or cheat we simply remind ourselves this is where we want to be and if the other chooses to lie or cheat that we have the full confidence we will get up and leave. Getting that confidence took some time but what I am trying to say is I think we have built the trust as high as it will go but it will never be a hundred percent. So we make up whatever that gap is by trusting in ourselves to not put up with anymore bullshit.

And I am crystal clear on that and I know so is he. I will never spend years of my life reconciling ever again. With him, it would be pointless. And if I remarried and the man cheated I would never have the history, family, or the many other factors that contributed to wanting to try.

[This message edited by hikingout at 3:20 PM, Thursday, March 19th]

I urge you not to dwell on your ability to trust in the future. Consistent behavior over time builds trust naturally. Consistent behavior over time will tell you that a specific person will or will not be reliable. But it's a lot harder to show oneself as reliable than it is to show oneself to be unreliable, especially so after being unfaithful.

IMO, if your H has changed permanently, your trust in him is irrelevant. He's changed for his own reasons; his being there for you is a result of his internal changes, not a way of manipulating you. And if he's changed permanently, have faith in yourself to recognize it on your own schedule. It took me 3.5-4 years to accept that my W had changed permanently; it may take you more or less time, but notice that it didn't happen all that quickly for me.

IMO, not trusting at this point is a very good sign. Your H seems to have changed, but it's too early to have any confidence the changes are permanent. Besides, I remember that I tried to raise the issue of not trusting my W in MC about 2.5 years after d-day, and our MC shut me down with, 'It's too early.' If you distrust everybody 4 years from now, maybe you've got a problem. At this point, it's trusting people that would be problematic, at least IMO.

I can’t say I didn’t have similar thoughts — and some really good observations that will help your healing, regardless of how things turn out.

Trust. Now trust is a big no no for me, I don’t trust anyone and I’m happy with that, life has taught me that, I’m not sure I can ever trust my H again and TBH I think trust is worthless. I think it’s depending on someone to not let you down, now I depend on myself now, I won’t let myself down. I trust him to provide for his family, he’s never once faulted on that one.

I do agree in regard to the concept of blind trust — all of us here got burned by that idea.

The first thing I figured out about trust is that I had to learn to trust MYSELF again.

Betrayal messes with reality, with self-worth and all the other pain we’ve experienced and I couldn’t figure out the human nature part of it.

We tend to look for the best and ignore the worst before an A happens.

And looking back we all tend to see the red flags we missed along the way.

Now, the blind trust blinders are gone forever, but I have learned to trust me again.

I know what the signs look like, I know what my wife’s behaviors actually mean.

Secondly, I need some trust for connection with who I am in a relationship with.

As Sisoon noted, that trust can be earned back with months and years of consistent actions, that show real change.

So, yes, in the early years of recovery it was all about SHOW me, don’t tell me, since words had lost their meaning.

Getting that confidence took some time but what I am trying to say is I think we have built the trust as high as it will go but it will never be a hundred percent. So we make up whatever that gap is by trusting in ourselves to not put up with anymore bullshit.

Interesting take Hiking.

I differentiate blind trust and 100 percent trust at this point.

Blind trust is gone, as it should be, but I need to trust who I am with.

However, blind trust has been replaced with that bullshit meter — as in zero tolerance for any games or dishonesty, etc.

We have built back so well, I can’t even remember the last time either of us attempted any kind of misdirect or blame game or any manipulations.

We called BS so often in the first few years of recovery, neither of us even try anymore.

That gets me to 100 percent trust, but I know all the signs if something seems even a little bit off.

It doesn’t make us bulletproof, no couple is.

I just like that I’ll know far enough in advance that I’ll be out of the relationship before it gets a chance to burn back down to foundation again.

Totally agree there is no energy to ever attempt R again.

I’m getting too old for that kind of effort again!