17 Jan How to Rebuild Trust After Infidelity
Beyond Breath TV: How to Rebuild Trust After Infidelity
If your husband has been unfaithful, you’ve had this thought: “How can I believe anything he says ever again?” Many of you have fallen into the same trap I once did; you’re checking his phone, thinking that it will help you start to trust him. You’re probably waiting for your husband to PROVE his trustworthiness to you before you fully hop back into your marriage. After all, why should you have to do the work? He’s the one that cheated. So it may seem reasonable that, in order to rebuild that trust, he needs to give you all of his passwords, never take his phone into the bathroom, participate in active recovery forever, and share his location with you at all times. Yet, even though you have all of his passwords, you can’t stop looking at his phone.
Even though he may be attending and participating in every individual and group therapy session, you still think he’s somehow fooling you. Plus, the second he leaves for work, you’re staring at your phone to see where he is and you’re wondering who is in the car with him. These are the kinds of problems you never intended to create when you decided to work on your marriage after his infidelity.
Am I Really Turning Into This Version of Myself?
All of this can go on for years. You may continue to gather ammunition as you search through phone records, credit card statements, and the nanny cams. You still can’t decide if he’s trustworthy or not. You start setting your own booby traps. As horrible as this is going to sound, you become a master manipulator yourself. You plot and arrange for different scenarios, like showing him a specific YouTube video on gaslighting. According to his reaction, you think you will be able to know if he’s trustworthy or not.
The foundation of your new marriage is being built on quicksand. If he changes the Netflix password without telling you or misses even one therapy session, it can feel like you’re right back at the beginning and that these kinds of behaviors are just as significant as the betrayals that started the whole process.
Meanwhile, trust is nowhere to be found. You white-knuckle it through every severe temptation to look at his phone. You muster every ounce of energy simply to breathe through these moments, and you’re exhausted at the end of the day and nowhere closer to the marriage that you want.
Time to Retire From the Secret Police
Esther Perel, the author of The State of Affairs, says, “Surveillance rarely breeds trust.” I know you believe that if you can just catch him doing something before it happens, somehow it won’t be as painful. I know you think that if you can somehow control what your husband says, who he looks at, what he thinks about, and how he acts, you can prevent further pain or suffering. I know you believe that if you see enough evidence, your answer will be shown to you and you will be able to move forward with your life.
The truth, however, is that the surveillance tactic decreases trust to the point that your husband may have stopped sharing information with you. He may not trust you. You’re thinking, “Hey, wait a minute. I’m not the one who cheated.” Now you’re trying to prove that you are trustworthy while also waiting for him to prove his trustworthiness to you.
Working With a New Set of Nerves
All of this increases your stress, and all of this affects your marriage, sometimes more than the infidelity itself. Bessel van der Kolk, the author of The Body Keeps the Score, says, “After trauma, the world is experienced with a different nervous system. The survivor’s energy now becomes focused on suppressing inner chaos, at the expense of spontaneous involvement in their lives.”
As a result of all of this, your marriage stays strained and you feel like trust will never be restored. You may THINK you’re rebuilding trust, but your marriage is stuck behind the walls of emotional trauma.
Well, what if there is a new way, a way that works, to create a healthy and healed marriage?
A Vision of a Different Kind of Life
Now, I know what you want. You desire real happiness. You want peace. You want to live, not just fake it anymore. You don’t want to be critical of your husband’s every move. You don’t want to live with resentment, anger, and frustration anymore. You don’t want to be triggered by a song or a word or a look. You don’t want to be wound so tightly in an attempt to keep it all together that you end up exploding shrapnel into everyone and everything.
You want to gaze at the beautiful blue sky. You want to feel the warmth of the sun on your skin. You want to hear your child’s laughter and smile with every part of yourself. You want to enjoy the touch of your husband’s hand and breathe in the scent of him, right?
That’s what you want and I want that for you too. Let me share with you what needs to happen in order for you to rebuild the trust that you seek so that you can have everything that you want. In order to rebuild trust, you have to clear emotional trauma. By clearing your emotional trauma, clarity is restored to you about what is safe. That will allow you to step back into your marriage trusting yourself, and ready to rebuild lost trust.
Now, you already know what it’s like to white-knuckle it through your days, convincing yourself to look the other way and telling yourself that things are fine. You’ve tried that. I’ve tried that. Every single woman I have worked with has tried that, and that is not what we are setting up here. This new way of building trust is superior because you will no longer be required to watch and wait and hold your breath for your husband to prove his trustworthiness to you. The feelings of helplessness and hopelessness cease. You finally experience peace and the life that you want to live. You are able to embrace it fully.
Now I want to hear from you. Answer these questions in the comments below.
Has looking in your husband’s phone or watching his location on the tracking app ever brought you anything more than temporary peace? How did you feel while doing these things and then afterward? I can’t wait to read your answers.
Are you ready to finally be free of the constant worry, insecurity, and resentment that now characterizes your days? Are you ready to put down his phone and do something that will actually start to rekindle the flames you knew when you married him? Then, click HERE to access my free training for married women. Learn a new way to decide if you should stay or you should go, especially if your husband is accepting zero responsibility. Let me help you clear the emotional trauma holding you back from living the life you deserve. It’s the greatest gift you can give to yourself. It’s time to be free of it all.
I hope to see you next time, my friends. I love you.
