Trust is a huge huge thing in any relationship. Especially when you live with someone day in and out, sharing your lives with each other.
How do you rebuild trust after you've cheated on your partner? And how do you even learn to trust yourself?
If you were the offending spouse, which I was, I think its important to answer all the questions honestly and do your best to be an open book. But even more important than that is being very honest with your feelings. Things I would think and feel but keep silent about before, I made a point to tell my husband. I tried my best to be totally open for him as much as I could be, no matter how uncomfortable I was.
And I also had to understand that he couldn't just trust me over night. When he checked my phone records or asked me strange questions, I understood and answered without getting angry. It makes sense for him to have questions. Our counselor said from the beginning, "trust but verify".
This meant for Husband to put his trust in me (and in God too), but to also verify that I was living up to that trust. This gave him peace of mind and each time he'd check up on me and see that there was nothing to find, he verified that I was being trust worthy and he began to trust me more.
I think trust building is extremely important, work together with a counselor to get that back and start rebuilding your relationship.
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Being the one who was cheated on, I completely understand the therapist's statement of "trust but verify." However, eventually I stopped verifying, not because I had this absolute trust for my husband at that time, but I realized that I could never trust him again (not to mention driving myself crazy) if I never stopped asking myself "is what he's saying really true?" But, I've come to realize that while we have a fairly good relationship now, the trust I have for him is different that it was when we were first married. I don't say that in a bad way, but it's different in the sense that there's a scar that I can live with, but that will always be there. A lot of healing and repair has had to be done, but the scar is always there. Yet, we can still have a fulfiling and happy relationship borne out of respect that was cultivated and built after the affair.
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