How Do You Trust Again After Emotional Affair?

[ZekeZeke]

Sorry for the long post.

My wonderful, kind beautiful sister has been married to her husband for 30 years.
She is 55, as is he.

In February this year her H ent a whatsapp message to me in error.
The message was meant for someone with a similar name to mine.
It said Zeak I love you so much, you are drop dead gorgeous, you mean the world to me*

I initially thought this is a joke but read and reread the message and realised it was sent to me in error. I replied I don't think my sister would be very happy with you messaging another woman with this.

I thought long and hard about what to do, and rang my sister.
We are very close but I wouldn't have been in a position to tell her face to face (due to my having surgery). I would have preferred to see her.
I told her about the message.
She rang him and he said he thinks he loves this other woman.

Anyway, they had counselling both joint and single. BIL never had sex, kissed, held hands nothing. All that happened was he and this other woman (work colleague) walked together at breaks. He told my sister the usual lines he didn't think she loved him, mid life crisis, depressed, his brother had died, they were not spending any time together etc....

He doesn't walk anymore and this other woman doesn't work in the same office as him (huge multi floor building).

They both agreed they love each other and want things to work. The thing is she doesn't trust him.
He has handed over his phone, tells her word for word what happens in work, gave access to emails, bank etc....he is home every evening, goes nowhere but she still doesn't trust him.
He has offered to get a transfer.

I hate what he has done to her. I 100% support her. She cannot afford to leave (joint mortgage, she doesn't work, house prices are crazy, we live in Ireland).

What can I do?
I listen to her. I don't tell her what to do, how could I? I've no idea what I would do in that situation.
I did ask if they could live as housemates, both of her adult children will be leaving home in the coming months. But she loves him. He loves her.
She swings from hand holding to wanting to physically hurt him.

She asks him a question, he answers but then she asks the same question a different way and they argue.over and over.

I've suggested more counselling.

But how do you learn to trust someone again after an emotional affair?

I just couldn't. How awful for your sister.

It’s not possible. Accept a new relationship where you will never trust him again with high likelihood he will do it again, or walk away

Those are the only 2 outcomes, in my opinion

Theres the EA and then there's your sisters lack of financial power in order that she can make the choices she wants rather than compromised ones. Id say she needs to find work enough that if she wanted to, she could move into a place of her own. Then she can actually decide whether its worth working on or not.

She cannot unsee what he wrote.
She cannot unhear what he said ie He thinks he loves this OW

Oh, by the by, he told the OW face to face that he thinks he is falling in live with her (same age as him) and she told him not to be silly, they were both happily married and he is obviously going through a mid life crisis.
However she continued these daily walks.
I am NOT putting any blame on her BTW.

Also, he deleted ALL messages as did the OW. So my sister has no access to anything that they discussed which I think is making things worse (not that they could be worse). We tried to reinstall the messages but couldn't.

My sister called the OW (she had worked with BIL for years) and OW confirmed nothing is going on and she is happily married (bit she also deleted all messages)

She swings from hand holding to wanting to physically hurt him

This is because she's lying to herself. She knows deep down that he's hurt her too badly for the relationship to continue, and yet she continues in the relationship. She has 2 opposing truths occurring at the same time. It's call cognitive dissonance. Have a google.

You don't 'learn to trust' someone who has broken your trust. Feeling that you're not able to learn it leaves you in a situation where the failure of the relationship is your own fault, for not being able to accept harm being done to you. Not being able to trust someone is nature's warning sign to not trust them. She doesn't need to learn better, she needs to respect her own feelings and accept that once trust is broken, it's not possible to force it to come back.

I 100% agree with you. Once trust is broken you can't force it back.

She is such an amazing person and this has shattered her. Some days I regret telling her but I wasn't the one that betrayed her and I would want to know if it was me.
She needs someone she can trust 100% at the moment and that person is me.

The day he messaged the OW he also messaged my sister telling her he loved her.

What a pig.

She needs someone she can trust 100% at the moment and that person is me

Then tell her that you trust her distrust in him. Be on the side of her feelings, rather than her thoughts. Encourage her to talk about what's happening for her inside, rather than what she thinks should be happening. Be the biggest fan of her natural, distrustful response to this. She's probably been arguing with her feelings all her life over various things, otherwise she wouldn't be doing it now. It's habitual. The only way to stop swinging from loving him to hating him is to accept the feelings she wishes she hadn't been put in a position to feel. They are her reality. They are her. They are what she needs to respect, and stop trying to squash.

You don’t. Certainly not in this case.

With great difficulty. My DP was the same, woman at work, didnt think he loved me, strung me along etc. 3 years later we are still together and things are good, i dont trust him as such, i will always have that niggle of doubt that he did it to me once. I dont check his phone or really question him anymore, he goes out with his friends and does his hobby.

I let it all the suspicion go, i didnt want to be his prison warden, the paranoid, mistrustful, on edge person that it made me be so i stopped checking on him. I found it very hard to get to this point, accepting that he was all him and not me helped. But for my mental health i had to let it go.

Yes he will probably do it again, but thats on him, there wont be any more chances, he screws up he is gone.

Do i trust him? Not really, have i forgiven him? sort of, have i forgot? no, does it still hurt me? yes.

hes in love with someone else how do you overlook that?

What a brilliant post.