After your spouse has lied to you while carrying out an affair, whether it was once or many times, it is hard to know whether or not he or she is ever telling the truth afterwards. Whether or not the cheating spouse deliberately lied or lied by omission, or both, it does not matter. Once the trust has been lost, it can be hard to get back.
Now you may be trying to save your marriage and reconcile with your spouse who cheated on you. But this can be very difficult when you have to constantly wonder if he or she is lying or telling the truth.
This article discusses what happens after one spouse lies and the two important elements you need to have to regain the trust and honesty in your relationship so you can get over the affair and save your marriage.
You Try To Avoid Pain After Your Spouse Cheated
After you find out about the infidelity, you will start to doubt whether or not you will ever be able to tell the truth from lies again. It can be a blow to your self-esteem to know that somebody lied to you and you believed it. Or even worse, if you had a feeling something was off but you went against your instinct and chose to believe the lies until they were too obvious to ignore.
First of all, you should stop being so hard on yourself because you are not to blame. Marriage is based on trust and you rightfully chose to trust your spouse. Just because you were deceived does not make you at fault in any way. This just means you are the victim of somebody else’s lies. It is natural to believe your spouse when they say they were working late or just having drinks with people from work.
Once your trust is broken by a cheater, you may be overrun with self-doubt and even start to lose trust in yourself and your capability to know the truth from a lie. It may help to know that you are definitely not alone. Just think of all the other people out there who have been cheated on and also lost trust in their spouses. Most people naturally wonder how they possibly could not have known what was going on.
People get lied to every day and they believe the lies easily. Just think of all the scams people fall for and end up losing a lot of money. Or more relevant to your situation, think of the other men and women who get involved with a married people. In many cases, they were lied to by the cheaters as well and had no idea that they were married. They may have foolishly believed they had a future with the married person. Or if they knew the other person was married, the cheater may have lied about how bad things were in the relationship and made it seem like they were separated already.
Knowing all of this, you still want to make sure you can protect yourself in the future and make sure you never fall for the lies again. This is known as pain avoidance. Even though you want to be able to trust your spouse again and think that the dishonesty is over, but you are looking for a guarantee.
Crucial Elements To Regaining The Trust
You should be aware that you will never get a guarantee that your spouse is not lying to you right now or that he or she will never lie to you again in the future. This does not mean that you will not be able to trust your spouse again. However, it does mean that regaining the trust in your spouse will be a process that takes time. Following these crucial steps will help you move forward to rebuild the trust in your marriage.
Element 1: Commit to Transparency
Is your spouse getting impatient and wondering why you cannot just get over it and trust them now? It is definitely not that easy. First of all, you spouse needs to start acting like somebody who is trustworthy. This means committing to transparency in you relationship, something that was most likely lacking before the affair.
It will help rebuild the trust to see your partner making an effort to be open and honest about their actions. That is why transparency is so important. When your spouse is consistent in their behavior and is continually transparent with you about where they are going and who they are with, you will start to rebuild the trust that you lost.
Element 2: Define Mistrust Triggers and Remove Them
You should talk with your spouse and identify what triggers feelings of mistrust for you. The partner who was cheated on should give specific examples of what scenarios make them feel as though they are being lied to again.
An example could be:
“When you come home late but don’t call to say you are running late, it leaves me wondering why you haven’t come home and what is going on.”
“When you answer phone calls and leave the room, I get suspicious about who is on the line.”
“I see you texting on the weekends, but you never tell me who you are texting, and I am left to wonder who it is.”
Another crucial aspect of this is that the cheating spouse needs to look at their actions in the past and own up to what they did. We all know when we are lying to somebody. This will help identify the triggers of mistrust and remove them.
Once you identify the mistrust triggers, you should communicate better to remove them. If your spouse texting was a trigger, then he or she needs to start telling you who is on the receiving end.
Regaining the trust in your marriage is a learning and growing process. You will need to change the way you and your spouse conduct yourselves, and also learn to to communicate better.
If you have experience with losing trust in a relationship and are trying to rebuild it, please leave a comment below to share your thoughts. If you were the victim, has your spouse made any effort to be more transparent? How has your spouse changed his or her actions? What mistrust triggers can you identify in your marriage? If you were the one who cheated, what did you do to keep the affair a secret? What are you now doing differently to be more transparent and gain back the trust of your partner?
