It amazes me how many couples give up on the first or second ‘no’ response they receive from the cheater. Giving up that quickly sets off alarm bells in my head. They give up at first resistance.
Those couples don’t realize there are times that require you fight for your marriage.
Those alarms signal that the betrayed may want out of the marriage as well. It leaves me wondering if in their wedding vows they promised until ‘hope is gone’/’the going gets tough’ or until ‘death do us part’ in their wedding vows.
Consider how far you are willing to go in fighting for your marriage and rebuilding damaged trust.
One response I received stated, ” You can only do that (repair the trust in your marriage) if the other spouse wants to be trusted again. If it doesn’t matter to them then there is no fixing it”.
It struck me that whoever wrote that doesn’t believe one spouse can make a difference. He views trust as always being a two-way street. The comment indicates a ‘defeatist’ attitude.
Perhaps, he was burned by a previous spouse and bad marriage situation. I often see spouses burned like that rationalize their divorces.
In my experience, there are times trust is a lonely one-way street. There are times when your spouse is not being responsible or trustworthy and you trust them anyway.
Marriage involves being strong when your spouse is weak and falters. Dropping them at the time when they are unlovable or untrustworthy is when they need you the most.
I wonder about when trust dies. Does trust and your relationship die when the cheater does something untrustworthy or when you as the betrayed gives up? I suspect trust dies when you give up.
Trusting only when the cheater wants to be trusted doesn’t make sense to me. I’ve even encountered situations when the cheater fights efforts at trusting them.
At times, they even sabotaged efforts by the betrayed at trusting them. They wanted the betrayed to ‘give up’. This is a situation you see with ‘exit affairs’.
Trust can be lonely. It is also something that can be rebuilt, even when one spouse fights you trusting them. Whether or not the cheater comes back, you still need healing concerning the damage done to your ability to trust.
Those only wanting to work on self-improvement if the other spouse is willing are limiting the healing in their lives. Having a ‘conditional trust’ situation like that bothers me.
By conditional trust, I refer to the attitude of “I’ll only work on rebuilding trust if you do” type of approach.
That’s not the kind of trust I cover in the video “How Can I Trust You Again?”. It’s also not the kind of trust you need for recovering from an affair. You need a trust that’s strong when one of you falters. You need a healthy unconditional trust in recovering from an affair.
Keeping It Real,
Jeff
