Don't trust my husband

[Dunnowat2do]

Name change here in case i am guessed!

OH cheated on me 1 year ago. After a short separation we decided to give things another go. He had contact with OW which initiated and I found out about a few months ago but again, we have decided to move past that given the circumstances (i won't get into the why he contacted her but it was a valid reason -i was more hurt by the fact i found out rather than him telling me before the contact).

So I've never been able to trust him since and I find that any time i bring it up, he becomes defensive and just says he doesn't know what more he can do to regain the trust. I understand this takes time, but its been a while now so everytime he wants to go out with his friend(s) or works late/needs to travel with work, naturally i get quite upset inside and i start to feel resentment that he doesn't understand why I dont want him to go.

He is still super protective over his phone and I have never looked through his emails or phone since we gave things another go.

Basically what i am asking for is to know when this feeling will go away? How long did it take others who worked on their marriage to regain the trust in their spouse after the deceit?

Please don't jump in with comments like "leave the bastard" or "what are you doing, ditch him" because I have decided to work on my marriage so leaving him not an option and something i do not want to do.

Yeah the phone thing is the reason you can't get past it. Why not just be open about that with him?

"We can't get past it because despite me bending over backwards to save the relationship you almost destroyed, you continue to be secretive and deceitful. Can I see your phone please? I'd also like to know your password. Complete openness is the only way this will work."

To be honest he already sounds like a dick but that's the only way you're going to know for sure whether he's really serious about fixing things.

Why is he protective of his phone? I am long time married and I can access my husband’s phone anytime, and he mine. We never do that, but neither of us would have an issue with giving the other access to our phones. He has an email I don’t know the password to, but if I asked him the password, he’d give it to me. Similarly, he doesn’t know all my email passwords (could guess them), but I’d give them to him.

The point is, we don’t have secrets. You have to ask yourself, and him, what is in his phone that he doesn’t want you to see.

He won't let you access his phone/emails/social media

He's not working at the marriage, he's being selfish and unhelpful

You don't trust him and you're holding back from being who you used to be , around him

It's a toxic situation which will only get worse and which the kids will be picking up on

You are minimising his behaviour by calling it a mistake.

You are doing all the work here OP.

He just wants you to move past it but he is still at it by the sounds of it!

You may not ever feel any different. Why would you? He has shit all over your marriage and done the minimum to put it right. Your spidey senses are pinging left right and centre. Try and quell them at your peril but I bet if you had an hour with his unlocked phone, your eyebrows would fly off the top of your head !

The feeling won't go away because he is still hiding things, therefore is likely continuing the affair.

Mine told me I should trust him. I did, then he left to be with her.

There is no 'valid reason' for a cheat to ever again contact the affair partner. None.

He's 100 per cent still cheating, and he knows damn well you will always put up with it. After all, if you wouldn't put up with it, you'd be binning him for his phone secretiveness.

You are the one making all the effort. If he wanted to save this, he'd give you his phone whenever, he'd NEVER contact the OW again, and he would do whatever you asked in order to regain your trust - at the moment you would be an idiot to trust him. He is untrustworthy.

He understand why you don't want him going out with friends etc, but he doesn't care. Because he knows you will accept anything in order to save this marriage.

Here's ChumpLady talking about your husband:
www.chumplady.com/2013/07/real-remorse-or-genuine-imitation-naugahyde-remorse/

He's still cheating

Your gut is screaming at you. Dont ignore it. Our instincts are there for a reason.

To protect us.

The feeling you have wont go away because it's not time for it to go away, your senses are telling you not to drop it...theres more.

He HAS to be transparent with his phone. NOT locked, or give you the password.

If he cant or wont - then he is not trying to fit this and is probably hiding something

My god...please dont waste years and years trying to "come to terms" with this , trying to explain away his truly awful behaviour. I've seen this happen so many times.

You didnt leave him when you first discovered
You didnt leave him when more contact was made and he lied about it

Why do you think he believes you're serious about the third strike and its over? History shows him this probably wont be the case, hes got away with it. X

'I'm not ok with you being secretive with your phone. Hand it over now, or we're done - there's no point in messing around ay more, I want to be happy, so shit or get off the pot.'

You'll never say this to him because you know he'll refuse, and you will have to meet your ultimatum or roll over... again.

So forget 'he knows there will be no further chances.' He doesn't give a shit about any of your blustering - why should he when you sit there watching him keep his secrets from you and you say nothing?

Ask yourself instead why you're afraid to ask for REAL change. Why are you afraid to set the ball in motion - because you know it means breaking up?

This ^

I know it's hard. My ex once threatened to throw his phone out of the car window when I suggested we swap phones for the day. I knew then that he was still lying, but wasn't ready to face up to it.

You say it's 3 strikes and it's out... but you're not doing that.

Strike one - the affair
Strike two - the lies
Strike three - not being open and honest with his phone

The man doesn't seem to be making any effort to fix this. It seems he just expects you to deal with it. I can almost guarantee you'll be back on mn at some point as you'll have caught him up to no good again.

Quit whilst you're ahead and leave him. Life is too short to put up with untrustworthy partners

May I ask you, if you have any hard lines in this situation at all, OP?

My guess is that if the is clear evidence that he has cheated again, that's one.

Any others? The "if he ever has secrets again" one isn't a hard line, because of the phone.

when this feeling will go away?

It won't. Ever.

How long did it take others who worked on their marriage to regain the trust in their spouse after the deceit?

20 years and counting...

I have decided to work on my marriage so leaving him not an option and something i do not want to do.

Then this is your new normal. If you chose to stay and continue on then you have to accept that you will always have this feeling, you will never fully trust and you will always wonder what he's doing, who he's contacting etc. So it's great that you've decided to "work on it" but by work on it that means work on yourself and accepting that this is what you need to get used to. So changing yourself and your own thoughts really, like it was you who did wrong I guess.

As someone who's been there I'd never recommend it. I am still not over it, basically it ruined my life.... I don't tell people IRL how I feel. I don't want them to know I want them to think we are super happy and that we won at life, got through it... But that's not the case, far from it and it never will be.

I know you only want positive happily ever afters but unfortunately that's not the reality.

Had to do a name change here as it seems my H is busy looking at mumsnet when I’m not there!! Thing is OP, I now do trust to a large extent however it doesn’t change the fact it’s almost nigh on impossible to trust unconditionally anymore if you get what I mean which I do feel changes a relationship dynamic. It’s not easy.

I had this. H had an EA and when I found out (message to her posted on the family WhatsApp - idiot) he vowed he'd stopped it. But he closed his phone and changed the password on his account on the computer citing contractual professional confidentiality in his work email.

However he'd actually done this so he could carry on the affair. I found out when OW sent an email accidentally to his home email address that I still had access to. On threat of divorce, which I will carry out and he knows it, everything was opened up. What I have seen shows he has no idea how to cover his tracks, but also that he has had no contact with OW, although she tried to get in touch with him incessantly over the first few months until I sent her an email telling her to pack it in.

We are trying to work through this, but I continue a year down the line, to find it very difficult. I have just started sessions with a psychologist and am trying mindfulness. Our lifestyle and his image to the outside world is very important to him. I didn't sack him off (yet) because I like our life too and we have over 40 years history together. But absolute transparency is non-negotiable.

Just ask him why he is locking his phone
Judge by his expression what the real problem is

The only way your relationship has a chance of surviving is with total transparency. You need to be extremely clear with him that his phone/laptop etc must accessible to you at all times. This is the price he pays for cheating. If he is unwilling then you need to either be prepared to walk away or live the rest of your life with him in a constant state of anxiety.
He should be bending over backwards to gain your trust. Why is he not willing to do that? Do not let him hoodwink you or manipulate you into believing a lot of rubbish to keep you quiet. If you keep living like this you are effectively handing him all your power. Remember we set the bar for how we want to be treated.

You’ve said that he had the affair because he wasn’t getting enough attention as one of the reasons. Have you actually worked through why he did what he did? If not, it’s likely to happen again. If he can’t be trusted to keep it in his pants when he’s not getting you fussing over him then what happens if you get poorly or go through a tough patch where your attention has to be somewhere other than him. Have you actually got to the root of all of that or are you just papering over cracks? The reason I ask is that this happened to a friend of mine and it took over 18 months of weekly counselling to get to the point where they could give it another go. You’ve jumped back in very quickly. How much therapy has he done? If it’s less than a year then I think you’re deluding yourself, sorry.