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Relationships

Mumsnet has not checked the qualifications of anyone posting here. If you need help urgently or expert advice, please see our domestic violence webguide and/or relationships webguide. Many Mumsnetters experiencing domestic abuse have found this thread helpful: Listen up, everybody

Trust Issues

5 replies

javierbademswife · 16/02/2015 22:51

My husband works abroad a lot - about 1 quarter of the year. I recently discovered that the information he gives me about who he is with/ where he is going while he is away is not the full truth. For example, he will say he is meeting his boss in the bar of the hotel he's staying in, but he will miss out the female colleagues who are also there. Or that they went on somewhere else afterwards. I feel like huge chunks of the truth are missing. He says he has been doing this for an easy life because I have issues with trusting him - this is mainly because he was very unreliable when we first got together, he would go out drinking with his friends and often just not come home at all.

I know that I am far from blameless here but I feel so angry and upset. I am at home alone with the kids while he is away and I just feel totally in the dark. It feels like he he can and does tell me whatever it suits him to tell me. It has got to the point now where I don't feel able to ask him anything about what he is doing because I would rather not know than feel I am being lied to. I recently told an old family friend what has been going on. She told me that it was my fault for not trusting him and that I owed him an apology. Maybe she's right - but I feel so angry with him. We have argued about it a lot and have now stopped discussing it. But I just cannot shake the feeling of betrayal. He is away at the moment and I just feel awful.

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CogitoErgoSometimes · 16/02/2015 22:56

The argument 'I lie because you'd be annoyed/upset if I told you the truth' is a total non-argument. If he has a track record for being unreliable the correct way to regain your trust was not to lie and cover up more, but to be more open and honest. Basic stuff.

The old family friend is talking out of her arse..... You're entirely blameless.

CogitoErgoSometimes · 16/02/2015 22:58

Oh and you don't have 'trust issues'..... you're not reacting in some paranoid, irrational manner for no reason.... you have 'a husband who is untrustworthy'. Quite a different thing.

javierbademswife · 16/02/2015 23:09

Thanks CogitoErgoSometimes - I think this is why I feel so angry. He has lied to me (mainly through omission) which is the one thing I have been paranoid about in the first place. It's not necessarily that I
think he has been unfaithful to me - more that I haven't even been given the most basic information to start with. That he has told me whatever the hell it is convenient for him to tell me. How do I work with that?

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CogitoErgoSometimes · 16/02/2015 23:51

Liars are second only to bullies in my personal list of people I can't abide. It's not even what they lie about especially. It's the fact that they are taking you for a fool. It's contemptuous, disrespectful and patronising behaviour.

If you're in a relationship with someone that spends a lot of time away and if you don't trust that person, then I think the prognosis is wall to wall suspicion and misery. I don't think you can deal with it except to reject it.

javierbademswife · 17/02/2015 00:05

Yup - I feel like I have been 'handled' or 'managed'. :(

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