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 Trust - Amberle
Any ideas on how to trust? To be brief, my boyfriend
of 8 years and I live together. He revealed an
"attraction" to a woman at work but wants to
work it out with me. After many talks, I agreed. Now, it
has been 3 months since we have been trying to rekindle
our old flame. We are progressing, albeit slowly.
Yesterday I found in his wallet a receipt for drinks for
the same day. I have a problem with not respecting his
privacy. He lied to me (for the first time?) and said he
was at work until 6pm. The receipt says he paid for the
drinks at 5:35. It was for $15.00, and he was NOT drunk,
because he won't drive with more than one drink in him.
Judging from the cost, I'd say there were three or four
people there, so he wasn't with "her" alone. I
wouldn't even care if he hadn't lied & would have
told me! He thinks (I assume) that I would flip out. Now
I find myself trusting him less and hating myself for
peeping. Any advice? Thanks for reading!
 From: Punpkin
You are not alone in not trusting you boyfriend. I
also lived with my boyfriend for about a year, although
he never gave me a reason for not trusting him, I just
couldn't trust him completely, and it kind of drove us
apart. The billfold looking through I have done too, and
every chance I get I still go through it, I guess since I
have once found a telephone number in there of a girl who
he works with and I just cannot stand. First time I met
her, call it instinct or something, but I got really bad
vibes from her, and now her number was in my boyfriend's
billfold. He told me she is just a friend and that is all
he thinks of her as, but as a woman I know how others
think when they set their sites on people's boyfriends.
She is known to sleep with married men and go after
boyfriends. He has always told me he loves me and me
only, but this nagging little voice inside says what if
he is ever tempted. The thought of him actually cheating
on me drives me sick. I have always been cheated on in
the past in relationship, I have never cheated, but
always seem to be the one cheated on. You kind of always
wonder if there is something wrong with you. I am trying
to learn there is nothing wrong with me, but with the
slimeballs I seem to attract. Like you I am trying to
rekindle what we once had. They seem to think that we
will freak out if they told us the truth, but in reality
we would probably be upset, but not go total ballistic.
We will survive. Good luck and if you want to talk about
things just write. I thought I was alone in not trusting.
From: Amberle
Thanks P., it feels better knowing others are out
there. I forgot to mention that her phone number is in
there on a post-it note, tucked away. He said she has
called before (always after I'm in bed) to talk about
work. At 11 at night? Please! But at least he told me
that. Of course, it was on our caller ID. Our problems
are based on previous problems in a vicious circle. How
long can I torture myself? What bugs me about myself is
that I keep taking the pain. I don't feel strong enough
to go out on my own. As you can tell, I'm not very well
adjusted. Does anyone have any good experiences with
therapy? Boyfriend said he would go, but I think I may
need it for just myself first. Again, thanks for reading
& for your help!
From: hugger
This may not be what you are looking for but my opion
for both of you is...don't live together or get married
for that matter without committment...committing to one
another involves a vow to build trust...a vow to be true
to one another...to not inflict pain...to be careful..and
so much more...i think you have both settled for less
with this living together arrangement...too easy for
either of you not to go the extra mile..that is why
marriage does work if there is committment to making it
work and i don't see that in your relationships...i say
get out and then if you both are still interested in a
long term relationship with each other begin dating again
and courting and not sleeping together unless there is a
committment of long term love for each other...i firmly
believe in the marriage day...yes it is only one day in
your life, but you and he make a vow in front of God,
your friends, your family, and each other to be legally
and spiritually responsible for each other... don't sell
yourselves short... everyone deserves this type of
committment.
From: Dusty
Well, you are not alone in having problems with trust.
I think once you have experience a betrayal it is very
hard to learn to trust again. I, too, have snooped
through wallets and pockets and I always feel bad
afterwards. But sometimes our instincts are justified. I
think originally I trusted my instincts but then I was in
a relationship where my husband played head games with me
and made me question all my instincts. I believed him
when he said I was wrong about certain suspicions only to
learn years later I had been right all along. Now I'm in
another marriage and I feel that I have carried alot of
baggage with me into this one. It's not fair to my
husband now but but he says he will try to help my with
my insecurities. You must learn to believe in yourself
and love yourself first I think. It is usually a problem
with your own self than with someone else. If we could
just learn to really love ourselves then we would not
find ourselves in these relationships of insecurity and
untrustworthiness. Do you think so, too?
From: Bernd
I suspect both of you are having difficulty with being
honest with each other, and with yourselves - in
different ways. It’s OKAY for you to “flip
out”, to feel angry about betrayal. And coping with
dishonesty about an outside relationship is not something
a lot of us have practice at; I did a whole bunch of
“peeping”. And yes I felt shame, but I also
just wanted to KNOW, damnit, one way or the other.
I’d guess that one of the things that attracted
you to this man was “his honesty”, and seeming
stable nature. This was a big part of what attracted
Lynda to me - and I ended up cheating on her again and
again.
There are 2 big traps that seem to be part of the
“Trust” struggle dealt with, and that I’ve
seen many others deal with. First, we don’t really
trust ourselves. Sure, we do in certain logical ways, and
in some areas of our lives, but when it comes to dealing
with other parts of our lives, we don’t really trust
our inner voice when it tells us very painful things, and
we don’t trust it to help guide us thru very
confusing situations in our lives. This lack of
self-trust didn’t happen by accident; it’s
often forged during childhood, when trust in our own
worth and safety were ripped apart by abuse, shame,
family secrets, and/or other crap we had to live thru. As
children, we HAD to shut down that inner voice that was
screaming “THIS ISN’T RIGHT!”, because to
accept it meant others would sense WE KNEW, and they
would do whatever it took to put us back under their
control. That would be very dangerous.
The other trap - and this is the example most of us
see in others - is that you either trust someone, or you
don’t. Black or white. When someone deceives us
often enough, or with a lie that shakes us inside, a rage
volcano usually erupts inside, and the dearest lover
becomes a bitter enemy, or the worst scum.
When I was going thru my hell of trying to cope with
Lynda’s ongoing affair, I jumped into both traps
again and again, and all it did was keep crippling me
even more. Funny thing about pain; it’s a helluva
teacher when you let it be. But sometimes it has to whack
you over the head often enough with a 2x4.
The 2x4 I found was a book on trust at a local
bookstore (I became a regular book buyer of
self-help/psychology/relationship books during this
period) that helped me see my version of trust/untrust
wasn’t working very well for me. It spoke of trust
being something that comes from inside, not from someone
else. The more I practice learning how to trust my inner
voice, my intuition, the more it guides me to healthy
choices in ANY situation. When I made the decision to
leave home for 2 months after Lynda moved back, it was
because I finally was letting myself trust my inner
voice. Leaving didn’t make any logical sense, but I
accepted that I no longer felt safe, and I needed some
time away from the turmoil of the relationship get in
touch with that inner voice even more. That’s why I
left; not to split up, but to give myself time to listen
to my inner voice more clearly.
The other insight I discovered was that trust is very
much a gray scale kinda thing, not a black/white one. All
of us have a mixture of honesty and dishonesty, that
varies depending upon circumstances and our own emotional
and spiritual cycles. My honesty and dishonesty slide up
and down that scale constantly; so does my
trustworthiness. What helps me from getting too much in
the hole is that I know inside that dishonesty - even
though it might seem to give me something super or help
get me out of a jam in the present - comes back around
like a boomerang and hurts me somewhere down the line. My
affairs ended up being HUGE boomerangs; if I could have
only seen how much, I would have run from the thought of
having those affairs in terror.
The kind of trust I have now is “appropriate
trust”. That kind accepts that others - including
Lynda - will always be somewhere on that scale, and it
isn’t my place to judge where they should be. When
I’m a totally honest being, THEN I’ll start
judging her. But not before, cause the judgment boomerang
hurts like heck too!
Appropriate trust means that I don’t expect more
honesty of others than they are willing to give. It means
I don’t rely on their version of the truth when it
doesn’t feel solid inside. It means I don’t
place any more of my heart or well-being in their hands
than I feel safe doing. When they are dishonest, I take a
step back, to keep clear of the boomerang I know is
flying back towards them. When I give someone more trust
than they deserve an get hurt, I chalk that up to a
learning experience on my part, and allow that experience
to make me a little wiser.
At least I try. The more I stay out of the old traps
though, the easier the whole trust thing becomes. If
Lynda had an affair tomorrow, it would be very important
for me to listen to my inner voice, and trust that,
because if I didn’t, I would go right back into the
insanity I went thru the first time, and that isn’t
a pretty picture. Plus, I’d keep getting in the way
of her boomerang, and she’d have a lot harder time
discovering how her dishonesty hurts HER. But neither of
us wants another affair, not so much because of how much
we’d hurt the other, but more so because we’re
tired of hurting ourselves in such big-time ways.
My guess is that, as long as you need honesty from
your boyfriend to ease the alarm bells ringing inside,
you’ll never learn what those alarm bells are trying
to tell you. Listen to them; don’t jump to
conclusions, either about his honesty or dishonesty. If
“appropriate honesty” is something that rings
echoes inside you, do what you need to begin using it in
dealing with your partner. Get help in listening and
understanding your inner voice, and get help in
rediscovering how to trust it, and yourself. I suspect
that’s where this part of the relationship is trying
to guide you, back to a type of trust you can REALLY rely
on, no matter what your boyfriend or anyone else does or
says. A trust in yourself. Search for that, and the rest
of the answers you’re looking for will fall into
place, one by one.
Oh, and don’t get in the way of the boomerang
coming back to him. It’s gonna be a biggie. I know,
only all to well.:)
Hope this helps a little.
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