If your spouse had an affair, whether it happened once or multiple times, lies are still involved. The cheater told deliberate lies, omitted truths or combined the two in order to carry out the affair. You may already be trying to work on your marriage and forgive your spouse, but honesty, lies and your spouse’s trustworthiness still lingers in your thoughts. Read on to explore the effects brought on by lying about an affair and the dimension of trust you can work on to try and save your marriage.
Post-Affair Pain Avoidance
You may start to doubt your judgment about honesty after your spouse’s infidelity because you can’t believe that you have been deceived or that you ignored your gut feeling until it was too late that the truth already came out. Don’t be too hard on yourself. Marriage is built on trust, and naturally you trusted your spouse that there wouldn’t be lies involved. You kept simply kept your faith that he or she was telling the truth. Your deception was not your fault.
Having your faith or trust in someone broken by their lies and action may lead to self-doubt. You end up doubting your ability to discern a lie from the truth, but remember, you are not alone. There are so many who have been cheated on and they also had faith on their spouse. They feel just like you do. Any person, no matter how impeccable their judgment is, can be fooled by a liar, especially by a seasoned one. Think of all the con artists who can easily get their way, the scams that rip money off people. Even those who get involved with a married person are also being lied to. Some of them do not even know what their situation is, while some are just given false promises.
You may have already accepted your spouse’s infidelity, but you still would like to make sure that it wouldn’t happen again, that you can protect yourself through pain avoidance. You want your spouse to be trustworthy again and know that his dishonesty is done for good.
Critical Dimensions of Rebuilding Trust
Although there are no guarantees when it comes to honesty, it doesn’t mean that you can’t trust your partner ever again. Rebuilding trust within a marriage will take some time and you and your spouse need to work on two critical dimensions of rebuilding trust.
1. Assurance of Transparency
Even if your spouse is being impatient about your lack of trust in him or her, he or she has to act in trustworthy ways. The commitment or assurance of transparency is important, especially because it wasn’t there before. Transparency is a good way of gauging honesty and rebuilding trust. Explain to your spouse that you need to see that he or she is open and transparent about everything. Consistent behavioral patterns helps assess honesty and rebuild trust.
2. Mistrust Triggers
You and your partner should define and help each other understand mistrust triggers, or actions that lead to doubt. The affair victim especially needs to be clear and specific about this and give examples, such as:
“When you don’t call me when you can’t get home by dinner time, I can’t help but wonder what is going on.”
“When the details of what you’re saying are inconsistent.”
“When you take phone calls on your phone and you suddenly leave the room when I’m there.”
“When you are constantly texting someone but don’t say who it is.”
The spouse who cheated should also analyze their actions in the past and own up to them. Both partners should be truthful in order to define the mistrust triggers and eradicate them. Rebuilding trust and honesty in a marriage is a process of growth and involves both spouses to make it work. The two of you may need to change the way you act and communicate with each other because trust and honesty is crucial when you’re trying to save a marriage
