How do you recover trust?

[moonfacebaby]

I am struggling to recover the trust in my marriage after my DH infidelity.

Apparently, it was only a kiss - but I will never know if that is the case, and I am losing my mind thinking about it. I can't believe a word that comes out of his mouth. We are still in the very early days of the discovery, and the OW is out of the picture - I have checked on FB and she is living in NZ now.

We are starting couples counselling and he has made a commitment to change his work patterns and wants to find a way to resolve this mess. However, although he says he loves me, he apparently has some doubts about us as a couple, but thinks that he is just in a mess. We have been together for 16 years and have 2 small children.

All I can think about is that he deliberately sabotaged our marriage as I have always been clear that I would struggle to get over infidelity.

He has taken everything that I thought was sacred.

I haven't thrown him out - it just seems that I would be left with the struggle of caring for our children and the house. I am finding it exceptionally difficult to look after the children and I feel awful about this - I never expected to feel like that.

I can't eat and veer between being very positive and then crushing lows. I have bought Shirley Glasses book, but it just does my head in.

I'm so sorry moonfacebaby :( Have you told anyone in RL? My parents were really helpful with the kids. Mine watched A LOT of cbeebies for a few weeks. Cereal for dinner won't kill them, etc. You need to look after YOU - it's like you've been hit by a bus your H was driving.

I don't think you ever totally regain trust in someone that has betrayed you. You'll always be a little wary of what they do and say whether you mean to or not ... 'once bitten, twice shy' and all that. Some people can live with a base level of niggling doubt and it doesn't seem to bother them at all ... others find it eats them alive or makes them depressed. I'd be rather suspicious of someone that tries to lob their 'doubts' about the relationship into the argument at this early stage. If he's trying to make excuses, that only adds insult to injury.

Oh the doubting you as a couple thing. Yes, I got that.

I really hope your couples counsellor is on the ball. You are dealing with two things here: the choice to cheat (100% HIS FAULT AND HIS RESPONSIBILITY AND HIS ISSUES), and then only after that has been resolved, the issues in the marriage - every marriage on this planet has issues.

So I really hope that your counsellor knows this and calls him on this. He needs to 'get' what he has done and how much he has hurt you, and work on healing this. Unfortunately, it takes a long time. Good luck.

How did you find out about OW, would it help to tell your story?

What is he trying to do to fix things Moonfacebaby You say he has made a commitment to change his work patterns - has he actually done it?

Is he open when you ask him questions or aggressive? Do you think he's lying when he says it was only a kiss?

I don't think you can get trust back when you find out someone has set out to deceive you .. but I'm in the 'eats them alive' category that Cogito decribed above

What has your H said about why/how this happened? How did it start/finish? How did you find out?

To have a hope of regaining trust your H has to be completely honest, and has to be willing to work on changing what it was about him that allowed him to cheat in the first place.

I think it can work, but is bloody hard and takes years! :(

That's how I feel Cogito - he thinks that the infidelity was a product of his messy head about us, so I'm struggling to see how I can handle that. He has been apologetic about the incident and is blatantly struggling to see what kind of man does what he has done.

I can see how someone would do what he has done if they were questioning their relationship - but I still don't think that I could do the lying and the actual infidelity.

I do have family support, and his mum has been brilliant too. I just want to go somewhere, curl up and go to sleep, and wake up for it to be all to be the same as it was, or for me to have got through the hard stuff.

Yes, his work patterns changed straight away.

I found out with some nifty detective work, and he fessed up straight away.

The trouble is, I just don't know how to believe what he has told me about it. I can see that it could very easily have been just a kiss. Either way, the extent of the infidelity is irrelevent on some levels - he's done it, regardless of whether it was a kiss, a fumble or sex.

He claims that he is being honest now - but what does that mean coming out of the mouth of a man who has lied to me, his children and his family?

It's the basic concept of cheating on someone that I struggle with.

It's the avoidance of accepting grown-up responsibilities - it's what he knew it would do to me, and thinking that he could get away with it.

He isn't the man I thought he was, and it breaks my heart........

It's not for you to handle his problem. His behaviour is not your responsibility. You can only tackle the way you feel and, FWIW, you have to be brutally honest with yourself and not get pressured into forgiving or 'moving on' out of some sense of obligation. Personal relationships, because they are so intimate and private, require a much higher level of trust than any other situation I can think of. You may be able to carry on being friends with someone you don't quite trust. You may be able to do business with someone you know to be a little bit wide. But living with someone?

Ultimately, it's yours to give or withhold and it goes entirely on your gut feel rather than anything that he does. So trust your judgement. Good luck

Oh I so recognise your pain and sadly there's no short cut to recovery once the person you loved and trusted most in the world has bettrayed that trust.
A couple of years on for us and we are together and will remain so.And mainly it's very good,but then by his own admission it was pretty damn good before his 'inappropriate friendship' with colleague.
But if your DH has implemented changes and is willing to talk and answer any and every question - and believe me they kept re- occurring for months and months with me - then you can recover a sort of trust.
But I must be honest it's the hardest thing we've been thro in our long marriage by far.Redundancies,lost business and worries over DC's we weathered together and they made is closer.This very nearly ripped us apart.And to this day there's an ache in my heart that never quite goes away completely - but I feel it less often and less keenly so onwards we go.
Good luck with your counselling - hope you get a good one.