A sense of relief always comes over me when I receive a phone call from my wife while she’s out of town. Just hearing her voice starts calming me. On hearing from her, all is well in my universe. At that point, I can take a breath and be at ease.
It’s not that my mind plays out fear of an affair. I am relieved that she made it to her location safely along with reconnecting with her. Even during the times she shares her challenges and frustrations, I enjoy hearing from her.
Although I can be at ease when she’s out of town, I know there are many of you who are terrified of when your spouse goes out of town. When they leave you, it’s like they go into a black hole of the unknown.
When you don’t have trust, even small things like business trips become major challenges. Each hour you don’t hear from them is one filled with visions of ‘what if’ scenarios.
Your mind imagines events and situations. During those times, you may find yourself having to stay busy in order to keep your mind from ‘imagining’. The longer there’s communication silence, the more your imagination comes up with.
When the trust is really low, you don’t even need a business trip to trigger things. You have those kind of thoughts with each ‘trip to the store’ or going off to work. When trust has been damaged, even routine events like these create fears.
When those routine tasks turn into times of fearfulness, what do you do? A common reaction to those times is with ‘control’. You may control where they go, or how long they should be gone, or even sink to monitoring the mileage on the vehicle after each trip they take.
The controlling may help you feel in charge, but those very actions undermine what trust remains. Controlling is a stop gap action that only works temporarily.
It makes you think you have control of an uncontrollable situation. It gives you an illusion of being in charge without improving trust at all. If anything, it poisons trust.
When you’re tired of controlling and want a better way of improving trust, my video, “How Can I Trust You Again?” provides a proven, solid way of improving trust without resorting to control.
Best Regards,
Jeff
