You may have come across the pernicious idea that “When trust is gone, your marriage is over“. One reader left a post with that sentiment on the Survive Your Partner’s Affair facebook page. The reader was of the opinion that whether it is cheating or spying to see if your spouse cheated, both acts are a violation and trust and are indications that the marriage should be OVER. I strongly disagree with that line of thinking.
Trust is a big deal, yet when trust is gone, it does not mean that the relationship is over. There are many times that your spouse may have violated your trust, yet you did not end the relationship for those violations.
I suspect that you have seen plenty of times when your spouse disappointed you by showing that they were not trustworthy. I doubt that many spouses have shown that they are 100% trustworthy. Whether intentional or accidental, things happen to where they fail to fulfill the trust you placed in them. They did not get something done when they said they would, they did not go where they said they would go, they did not pay the bills like you trusted that they would, or buy the groceries you expected them to buy.
There are times when drugs, alcohol or mental illness lead to behavior that violates trust. The spouse clearly showed a lack of being trustworthy, yet the marriage did not end. When your children show that they are not trustworthy, do you immediately disown them and end the relationship? There are plenty of episodes where you or your spouse has broken trust, whether intentionally or unintentionally, yet the marriage was not deemed as being over.
With all the lapses in trust, what makes the lapse with the affair so final for some of you? Is it that the trust level went below a critical level? Is it that a special kind of trust was violated? Is it that they failed to pass a secret test you gave them? Does your spouse know what they did? Did you tell them prior to the affair?
The really scary thing is that couples rarely have serious talks about trust. They ‘trust’ each other, yet never tell each other which specific behaviors will trigger a landmine of distrust or when things have ‘gone too far’. At least in Afghanistan and Iraq, people know what to look for in terms of explosive devises.Does your spouse know what your ‘explosive issues’ are? Do they know what trust issues you consider ‘no trespassing’ at all on? If they don’t know, or you assume they know, they are at a disadvantage.
When it comes to the landmines of trust, there are few tell-tale signs other than looks, glares or some other non-verbals. Most spouses never know until they trip across one of those issues, whether it be in terms of forgetting a phone call, going to a website their spouse does not approve of, talking to a friend they do not like or some expenditure that they did not tell their spouse about. All of these show violations of trust, yet are often not discussed.
Ending a marriage when trust is violated amounts to a form of legalism. Legalism is often easy to see when it comes to religion, yet you may be blind to it when it comes to relationships. Legalism is legalism, whether draped in religious garb or relationship garb.
When trust is gone, the dynamics of the relationship change. The change in dynamics does not automatically translate into the death of the marriage. When trust is gone, or I should say, depleted, work needs to be done. The work also needs to be done quickly, since the most favored substitute for trust is control. I have seen an inverse relationship between trust and control. The lower the trust level, the greater the control games are being used. For this reason, when trust is low, you need to do something before the control games start occurring and become a fixture in your marriage. I have seen more marriages destroyed by control games, than by the lack of trust.
When trust is gone, it is often never totally gone. The violator often broke trust in one or more areas. I have rarely seen where the trust is gone in all areas of their relationship. That means in terms of regaining trust, you may have to start with the areas where you still have some trust intact.
So, when trust is gone, the marriage is not over. It does mean that the relationship needs immediate attention, but it does not automatically mean all is over. You may want to consider the program “How Can I Trust You Again?” in rebuilding the trust in your marriage.
Best Regards,
Jeff Murrah
