I’ve known several people who’ve been in relationships involving cheating on the part of one partner or another. I’ve read many posts from people here who’ve experienced it.
A few questions/thoughts:
If trust is broken, can you get it back? Can you make the relationship work again?
I love my husband with all my heart and I trust him completely. He trusts me, too. But if he cheated on me, I’m not sure I could stay married to him. That trust is a huge part of our relationship and if it was gone, I don’t know if the other things we have would be strong enough glue to help us patch it back together. Thoughts?
In a relationship, is the person who is more suspicious and less trusting more likely to be one who has been cheated ON before, or one who has cheated before?
I’ve known a couple of relationships where the person who did the cheating was very suspicious of the other partner, like they expected to be cheated ON. Is that a common mindset? My husband’s former fiancee used to sneak and check his wallet, and would pick up the phone and dial *69 to see to whom he had been talking. A co-worker’s girlfriend doesn’t believe him when he says his pager didn’t go off, even though it’s been known to have problems before. She’d rather believe he deliberately didn’t call him back for some reason. She also went balistic because she found someone’s email address in his pants pocket.
I have no personal experience with cheating or being cheated on, but it’s a subject that has come up a lot lately with different friends, etc. in my life and it got me wondering. I know we had a thread a while back on “Once a cheater always a cheater”, but I don’t think the posts there completely answered these questions for me.
What do you wonderfully intelligent and expressive people have to say about this?
All long relationships, friendship or conubial rely on making up after breaking up. If you’ve never had a quarrel, but the relationship has gone on for years (say a poker buddy you only see at the game), then the first rift can still be the last.
Only when you’ve made up a few times does that seems like a logical way to go.
As for layers of “trust”, all arguments are based on someone letting us down somehow, even if it’s by not holding an opinion we think is obvious. So don’t put too much stock in the concept of “trust”. A strictly honest-speaking person can also let you down, betray you in the future, etc. It’s not whether the words are lies that makes it hurt, and it shouldn’t be important there were lies once you’ve made up.
I think I could forgive almost anything, except for my partner trying to kill me or something. That’s a clear sign that things aren’t working out.
When watching movies & sit coms where the writers have people breaking up after 25 years of marriage because one of them had a moment of weakness, I just can’t believe that happens. Who here would throw away a life-long achievement because of that? I underatand that things might be rough for a while as the wounds heal, and it might take some time for the trust to return, but to throw away a third of your life because your partner fell down for a moment? If you really do care, you should be there to pick him/her up and help the two of you begin the healing process.
Unless the other woman was your daughter, then forget everything I said.
I can only speak for myself, but once “it” happened, it was not possible to rebuild the relationship. In all honesty, however, I don’t believe (now) that there was anything “solid” (if that makes any sense at all) worth rebuilding in the first place. Had there been, “it” wouldn’t have happened to begin with.
I am not putting this the right way, but hopefully, you understand what I’m attempting to say…
trust,n.1. The right, enforceable solely in equity, to the beneficial enjoyment of property to which another person holds the legal title; a property interest held by one person (the trustee) at the request of another (the settlor) for the benefit of a third party (the beneficiary).
– from Black’s Law Dictionary, Seventh Edition.
I think in the example of the twenty-five year marriage, if it were really just one moment of weakness the person cheating would be forgiven, if there is a divorce, there is usually deeper reasons for it even if the people involved denie them. My first husband cheated on me and later in the marriage, I cheated on him. That was just a symptom of a really sick relationship that should not have existed in the first place, going really bad. I’m now married to someone I love unconditionally, who I could never cheat on. If the trust is really there, on both sides there won’t be any cheating.
Someone who has cheated is more likely to be less trusting, at least in my opinion.