rebuilding trust in a relationship

Honesty, Lies and Your Spouse

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

How Much Do You Trust Your Cheating Spouse

It’s safe to assume that your answer would not be 100%. Affairs have devastating effects, not just on your feelings, but also on the foundations of your marriage. Nothing breaks a person’s trust like an affair, and you know that without trust, there’s no way of saving a marriage. But, what if you would find out that you could trust your spouse again? Let’s say 25%, 50% or 75%. How would that impact your feelings about the possible success of saving your marriage? Read on to learn about the three forms of trust in a relationship, so you can find out how much you really trust your spouse.

Post-Affair Emotions Impacts Trust

The days that come after discovering your spouse’s infidelity seem like hell and you have a whirlwind of emotions. You still can’t fully believe it but the pain you go through is indescribable. Over time, you realize that you have to heal yourself and try to save your marriage. You work on most aspects of your marriage but sometimes you still ask yourself if you can trust your partner. Reestablishing trust may be difficult, but it is not impossible. There are different forms of trust and there is no “one correct way” of trusting people. Unlike what most people believe, trust isn’t black and white.

Three Forms of Trust

There are areas in your relationship where trust still exists, even after your spouse’s affair. Understanding this can help you feel better. All is not lost and you can work on building up the trust you have left. Despite the infidelity, it is possible to have some trust left because there are different forms of trust in a relationship. There is potential in rebuilding your trust from each of the forms.

1. Physical Safety

If you have, and hopefully never will, experienced, domestic violence, then you may not have appreciated this form of trust. You trust that your spouse will never physically harm or threaten you, and in case of emergencies like earthquakes or fire, you trust that your spouse will keep you out of danger.

2. Financial Security

Financial partnerships naturally exist within marriages. Whatever your agreement is on your income and expenses, whether you pool your income together or each shoulder particular expenses, having this agreement is a great sign that you still trust each other. Financial security means that you trust your spouse to do the responsible thing with the money you. Trusting each other that each of you will do their share in keeping a roof over and putting food on the table, is a definite sign that you still trust each other.

3. Emotional Predictability

You know your spouse well enough to trust him or her to be somewhat predictable in expressing their emotions, and you might have taken this for granted. Imagine if your spouse’s emotional response was unpredictable. You wouldn’t be able to trust that he or she wouldn’t do crazy things in public, like throw things at you because of some random reason. You wouldn’t be able to know how your spouse would react

How Much You Trust Your Spouse

Now that you’ve learned about the different forms of trust, try to rate each of them to find out how much you trust your spouse. Rate your level of trust for each of the three forms of trust on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the highest level of trust, meaning you trust your spouse 100% to give yourself an idea of how much you still trust your spouse. If you have discovered that you do, on some level, trust him or her, then you still have the foundation to rebuild trust and let it grow once more. This could be the glimmer of hope that your looking for in saving your marriage.