Why Do I Have All Of These Trust Issues With My Husband?
By: Leslie Cane: One of the recurring issues that I hear about regarding saving marriages is that of trust. Let’s face it. Often, your spouse is the person whom you have to trust most in the world. We often combine our finances with theirs. We share parenting responsibilities with them. Should we not be able to make our own medical or financial decisions, this would fall to them. But more than all of this, we trust them with our delicate hearts. We trust them to return the love that we give them. We trust that when we leave our hearts vulnerable, and when we trust them not to break it, they will come through for us. Sometimes, even when our spouse has done nothing to encourage our fear, we spend a lot of time worrying if this trust has been misplaced. We can have a lot of anxiety about getting hurt, which means that we can’t trust freely. As a result, we can develop recurring trust issues. Many of us are confused about this. We don’t understand what drives these fears. And we are worried that this is hurting our marriage.
A wife might have a concern about a scenario like this one: “Over the past couple of years, I have developed trust issues with my husband. None of this is his fault, necessarily. He has never cheated on me. He has never told me a huge lie. For the most part, he is extremely trustworthy. But he is also incredibly good-looking. I see women staring at him all of the time. Some openly flirt with him. Most of the time, he tries to deflect this. He doesn’t do anything wrong, really. But more and more, I find that I panic at the thought he might like the attention. Or that, if the conditions are right, he might cheat on me. Or want a divorce. Or not love me as much as I love him. When I question my husband because of these trust issues, or I cling too tightly, my husband gets a little angry and frustrated. He rightly says that he hasn’t done anything wrong. He’s right. But I can’t seem to stop. And I don’t understand why I’m doing this. Why do I have all of these trust issues? And how can I stop before it destroys us?”
Look At Your Past Issues With Have Nothing To Do With Your Husband: I’m not a mental health specialist, but I, too, had a lot of trust issues in my marriage. And it damaged my marriage horribly. In fact, it was probably one of the contributing factors to my separation. I did spend some time exploring this issue. And I determined that much of my trust issues came from my parents’ divorce and its aftermath. Once my parents abruptly separated, my father left our home and never returned. His presence in my life was much less prominent once the divorce was final. It was a huge loss for me because I was extremely close to my dad. It wasn’t a conscious thought, but I think somewhere along the way, I internalized the idea that people who you love the most might leave you.
A couple of years after my parents’ divorce, I met my first love. We were together for many years. I had never loved anyone as much as I loved my dad – until I met him. I poured my entire heart into the relationship. But when I was in a college that was about four hours away, he cheated on me. Somewhere in my mind, I started to think that if you give your whole heart to someone, they’ll eventually betray you or leave.
Ask If Your Husband Is Paying The Price For Someone Else’s Mistake: I think that all of us have experiences with a loved one letting us down. And regardless of how much we tell ourselves that we have moved on or forgotten, it still hurts. We can’t forget. My husband had to pay the price for my father and my first love. He did nothing wrong, but I didn’t trust him because these two men hurt me. This isn’t fair to anyone.
Understand The Role Of Vulnerability In Trust: I also think there’s a universal fear of feeling vulnerable. Vulnerability doesn’t feel safe, which feels uncomfortable. Vulnerability feels like risk. So, as much as we may want to love someone unconditionally and without fear, it’s quite hard because almost no one goes through life without having their heart broken. And that is so painful that you never want to repeat it. And so you are always on your guard, which erodes the trust.
Another issue is a lack of confidence. We think that our spouse is much more attractive than we are. So we worry that eventually they are going to find someone better once our back is turned.
How do we stop this? Here are just a couple of suggestions. First of all, boost your own confidence. Wouldn’t it help if you had the confidence to see those women look at your husband and think something like: “That’s right. Have a good look. He’s gorgeous, isn’t he? And he’s all mine.” And then, rather than look at your husband with anger because of the attention (which he can’t help) give him a hug and think about how lucky you are to have him and how you are going to enjoy every minute of it.
Another thing that you want to do is to understand that you do not want your behavior to become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Sometimes our fear of losing our spouse actually drives them away. Vow to not act on your distrust unless your spouse gives you a reason to. If your spouse is doing nothing wrong, then you may have to literally stop yourself from acting on your distrust. Because when you do, you almost encourage your spouse to be secretive to avoid making you anxious. And this only reinforces the trust issue. Sometimes, you just have to dive in and stop the behavior. Once you do this, you’ll often see that you had nothing to worry about to begin with.
I try really hard not to let these issues continue to erode my marriage. I worked too hard to get my spouse home after our separation. So I refuse to make him pay for the mistakes that other men have made. There’s more to read on my blog at http://isavedmymarriage.com
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