How do you trust your partner?

[Confused506]

I am really struggling to trust in relationships. Friends, family but mostly partners.
I am suspicious by nature and have been in therapy on and off for years but nothing seems to help.

I don’t understand how people can go about their lives not worried that their partner will cheat.

I have had friends and family members who have been very trusting of their partners and been cheated on and it’s always things like, I didn’t think they could do this to me, I thought we were happy etc etc.
I see it on here too people completely blind sighted by their partners affairs that they can’t believe their partner was capable of it.

People that can trust, please share with me how you manage this?

Thanks

Whether you trust them or not, if a person is going to cheat then they are going to cheat. Not trusting your partner is a choice that only hurts you. It doesn’t benefit you in any way. I know it is easier said than done, but you need to step back and realise that if it’s going to happen, it’s going to happen and you being suspicious constantly is not going to change that (or if it does, only for the worse!)

Exactly. You make a choice to trust someone until and unless they prove they can’t be trusted 🤷🏼‍♀️

Of course there are levels of trust, eg most people wouldn’t trust a stranger to look after their child. Most women wouldn’t accept a lift in a car off a random man. Because the potential risks are huge, and you know nothing at all about the person.

But if you’ve chosen to be in a relationship with someone and they’ve chosen to be in a relationship with you, then you have to trust that they want to be with you and won’t deliberately hurt you.

Maybe easy for me to say though as I’ve been in the same relationship for decades and Dh has never given me any reason not to trust him.

My husband is in the military, we have to trust each other or the relationship wouldn’t work, we are apart a lot of the time. We’ve never given each other a reason to think we’d cheat, we’ve been together since we were young.

It was definitely something that came up very early on in the relationship, going to uni separately, that’s a hard transition, you have to build trust, especially when we both come from divorced families with issues in this space. You have to take a bit of a leap I guess, you build trust, you mature. I’d be devastated if he did, I’m not naive to think he couldn’t ever do it, who knows what could happen in the future we are human, but I have no reason to worry about it, and I don’t.

Because the alternative is to live a life of misery, and who wants to do that?

Rather than focus on trusting the other person not to hurt me, I focus on trusting myself that I’ll survive whatever happens.

If you ca believe you can survive whatever happens, it is easier to stop focusing on what the other person may or not do.

Trust is something that has to be earned, the longer you're with someone, in theory, the stronger the trust should get, unless they give you a reason not to trust them. When you first meet someone you should make the decision to trust them regardless because at that point you probably don't really know them.

Where it gets difficult is if someone gives you a reason not to trust them and you decide to stick around, re-building trust is one of the hardest things to do because they've already broken it once, what stops them doing it again. It will mess with your head.

Yes. This is what I was going to say. You cannot ever control the actions of others. Only how you react to it. So it’s best to work on yourself to know that you are strong enough to deal with things that may (or may not) happen to you. If someone breaks your trust then it’s their loss!

I trust myself more to no longer tolerate any bollix.

Trust for me is not being lied to. That’s what I thought you meant from the thread title.

But your focus is on sexual fidelity?

Is it really the end of the world?
If it happens you can stay or you can leave.

All relationships carry the risk that they will break down.

Accepting that is a really important life skill.

Maybe try some therapy to discuss your feelings in more depth?

It’s not something I think about. Went out with plenty of bad boys before I got married. Wasn’t exactly a saint myself… It was what it was.

With DH, I’d never looked at his phone or asked where he is or who he’s with. If he wants to be with someone else, good luck to him!

Mostly by being self-reliant I think and having a healthy self-esteem. If my DH cheated or left me for someone I else, I'd be initially devastated but ultimately I'd think 'his loss'.

If he's stupid enough to fuck up a good relationship and everything we have, then fuck 'im. I can get by perfectly well on my own. As long as I believe that (and I do, I've never been very romantic about love) I don't need to worry about what would happen if he cheated. The question of trust doesn't even come into my mind to be honest. Do you see what I mean? I can safely say I've never once worried about trusting him to be faithful or not, it's irrelevant to me.

I'm sorry you find this hard, I read your second post and it made me realise that my mum is the same as me - utterly unromantic about love. And my mum and dad are rock-solid as parents, they are always there for me and have always had my back. They are human and make mistakes, but trusting them was never an issue.

Maybe you can work on your own self-esteem?

With DH we were good friends for a year before we get together. So I really know him quite well anyway, and I had seen him to be an honourable, trustworthy, loyal person because that's how he was with his friends and his family.