Hello everyone!
The betrayal that has occurred by your spouse with his/her marital affair tears apart any trust or respect that you once had. Both can be rebuilt, but to do so is tough. In my opinion both must be regained in order to get past the affair and save your marriage.
With this in mind… After the affair has it been harder to rebuild the trust or the respect with the cheating spouse? Have you been able to rebuild either? Why or why not? Feel free to explain in detail how you were able to rebuild the trust and/or respect.
Please be sure to respond to each other’s comments!
Have a great day!
Doug & Linda
For more information on rebuilding trust after an affair, check out our e-book “Journey to Trust: Rebuilding Trust After an Affair” and learn how we were able to regain trust in our relationship. There are also some great bonuses included where experts share some of their valuable trust building strategies. Click here now!
16 replies to "Discussion: After the Affair Is it Harder to Rebuild Trust or Respect?"
This is a tough one for me. I’ve completely lost all respect for my husband, and I don’t feel proud to call him my husband. He disrespected me in so many ways. Respect is hard to get back. He disrespected me, my children, our family, our marriage, and himself. It’s amazing the things someone will do for their affair partner. They will give up everything that is sacred for bullshit. I’m not sure if I will ever get that respect back. Only time will tell. I hope that one day I can look at him and be proud to be his wife, and be proud of the person he is.
Trust is hard. I just told my husband yesterday that he should value the trust he has in me. That he should appreciate that every morning he can leave the house and feel secure knowing that his wife will be where she says she is. I told him that he robbed me of a normal life. A life where I don’t have to second guess and question his every move. I wonder what I would be doing now if the affair didn’t happen? I would be able to enjoy myself and not worry about what he is doing. I would be able to go away for a few days or a weekend without worrying if he’ll seize the opportunity to go back to his old ways.
Yesterday I took my children out to the zoo and while I was there, I kept thinking well this is not so bad. I can do this alone. I actually enjoyed being out with them, and not having him around. I started daydreaming about divorce and what a relief it would be for me to not have to worry about him.
On the way home I started thinking… I’m wasting my time. I need to live my life. I need to get out and do things. I need to realize that this affair has shoved me into a deep dark hole and I need to come out and start living. I’m wasting my time checking up on him and constantly worrying about what he is doing. He is not WORTH it. He didn’t worry about me when he had her.
I hope to get back on my two feet and start enjoying my life like I once used to. I know that I can make it on my own. He doesn’t define me or own me.
Don’t get me wrong… marriage is wonderful and amazing when two people can make it work and love each other. It provides trust, respect, security, and a foundation for a fulfilling life. But when respect and trust are lost, what’s left? Am I going to keep battling to save my marriage? Or am I going to battle my depression and anxiety and work on getting my sanity back? I think now that I come first.
I don’t know for sure if I will ever get the respect or trust back, or if I will even be able to stay married. I’m trying to gain the trust back, by allowing him to tell me his whereabouts, check his voice mails, emails, and phone. We spend almost all our home time together. I don’t know how to get that respect back, but maybe by him showing me that he is a changed man. That now I and his children come first. These are some of the things I assume they can do to get that trust and respect back. You know…. even if some of the trust and respect is gained back…. I will ALWAYS look at my husband with a crooked eye. I’ll always wonder in the back of my head if he is telling the truth, if he changed, and if saving my marriage was worth it. I’ll never look at him the way I did before. And I think that is a good thing. It’s a way of protecting myself from someone who hurt me like no one ever had before. I can’t stand to have this repeated, and if that means keeping my guard up then that is what I will do.
my next comment is going to seem strange but i firmly believe that your husbands faith and trust in you allows him to stray. you are his rock and will always be there. youll be there no matter what happens. he can take risks with a new person because he knows he can always fall back on you. i believe my doing things on my own and not always being available, in a known area/space has my wife questioning at times. its not revenge. its not tit for tat. instead she has to work on our relationship or it wont be there. when your worried about your spouse, there is a lot less time to stray or be with someone else.
ppl… in some ways I am sure that you are right. I think he was in lala land when he thought I would be his “rock”, because I wont. I will not allow him to use my weakness to his advantage. At this time in my life, because of circumstances I can not be out and about at all times. But when my life allows it, I will be. I see my life with different eyes now. I wont always worry about him and his whereabouts. Eventually my infatuation with that will pass and I will start to move on. When that times comes, and it is quickly approaching, I am sure that he will wonder why the sudden change. I think my focus is slowly changing from him to me. I do believe that what you are saying is right, when one spouse puts too much effort and the other doesn’t, someone gets taken advantage of. To some degree he has taken advantage of me and my ability to be a loving and devoted wife. But when someone takes advantage of someone else, they never win, it’s just the way the world works. He wont win if he sees me as some doormat. I know he wont. I know that good people with good intentions always come out on top.
NotBroken, I believe that you are now focusing on yourself more than you are the affair and that is a great place to be. I wondered why it took me so long to get there but when I did I felt so much better. I stopped spending all my energy wondering what Doug was doing, keeping him faithful, doing everything to save our marriage and I started to focus on what would make me happy. I stopped taking all the responsibility and stepped back and allowed Doug to do some of the work and worry. I stopped being afraid that he wouldn’t step up because I finally believed that I was worth the effort. Saving a marriage after an affair takes equal partnership and I realized that if Doug just wanted to be along for the ride that I would survive on my own. Obviously that was not the way I wanted it to turn out and thankfully Doug did step up and take equal responsibility for the problems in our marriage and the recovery. Sometimes it just takes a little less effort on one person’s part to get the other to work a little harder. Linda
NotBroken-I to question every move I make torwards saving the marriage! I question every word that comes out of my husbands mouth. I also think why the hell am I still here? I dont’t know if I will ever truely trust or respect my husband the same way I did! I don’t even know who he is anymore. So just know your not alone!
Trust will need to be built first. Respect comes secondarily after trust. Rebuilding trust requires that you trust your spouse, you trust yourself, and that your spouse trusts you. In the months and years leading to the affair, may spouses learn to ignore and distrust their initial reactions and suspicions. Part of rebuilding the trust involves learning to trust their own ‘gut’ reactions again. Learning to trust their own eyes and judgment. When the cheaters tell them they are imagining things, it often undermines their ability to trust themselves. The damage from that undermining has to be overcome.
I believe that the notion that my wife would never do anything, and her the same feeling for me, help lead to this happening. I was unaware of what she was doing and she had me as a backup. We both shared with each other the statement “if you think the grass is greener somewhere else, go for it”. So was that statement a self fulfilling prophecy? It was said more as a joke, or was it? Did it allow for a distance in our life.
Well those notions were tested in this affair. I now know that its not beyond either of us. And I hope she sees that in no way am I willing to let her leave without trying.
Trust-
That’s hard. I don’t know what it will take to feel that trust again. Or that I will ever have the same trust at all. Yes I may trust what she tells me. I may trust that she’s not out looking for the next guy. I may trust that he hasn’t called her. But I will never trust the feeling that she will never leave again. Or trust that her heart is focused on me. Why should I.
I know that at times feelings come back to me about past relationships. Why should she be different. My hope is that we become close enough that we can share those feelings with each other and use them to better our life.
The only trust I need in her now, that we need to work on, is trust that she is being honest. I can work with honest feelings. I can’t work with lies about how great things are or were.
With honest feelings plans can be made. Help can be given. Trust can be earned. Faith can be felt. At least we know what road were on.
Respect-
Whether any of us believe it, I think respect is a lot easier to have or loose. For me it goes back to honesty. I believe that my lack of respect comes from what I see as her dishonest personality..
I respect her for standing up and saying “I feel bad that I’ve been doing this and I don’t know what I want.” When I had no idea what was going on. I respected her that in the early part of the affair after I found out. She told me her feelings and was honest about talking to him. She wasn’t honest about his intentions or the ones in the back of her mind. But she did tell me she was speaking to him.
I could have respect for someone that will stand up and say.
“I f-ed up and this is what I’m doing.
I need this.
I don’t know if I love you.
I love you but I need this person in my life.
I have feelings for this person, let me figure this out.”
But to tell me “I love you and I haven’t talked to that person. I’m in a much better place”. All while continuing contact. How can you respect a person you can’t trust.
But how can you trust someone who you don’t respect their true feelings. When they tell you how they feel about this other person or something about you. If you turn around and tell them why their feelings are wrong or unacceptable. What are they left with but to try and tell you what they think you want to believe. I’ve done this, I admit it. And its lead to changes of they story. And how can you believe it when the story isn’t always the same.
And how can she trust me that the next time she tells me her feelings I won’t fight with her about them.
So in my mind trust and respect inversely affect each other. One building the other. One damaging the other at any given time.
Sorry so long winded. It just flowed out today. Don’t know if its all there or if I missed something I was thinking. But feel free to ask.
I forgot, if it ist apparent, to mention that I haven’t regained much trust yet. Like I said the story changes. She isn’t forth coming with information. Its as if she doesn’t know, I don’t know if I even know, what its going to take to set my mind at ease.
Yes she says I love you a lot more now. And I know she is honest about that. She seems to try a little harder on my bad days. But its not consistent. She feels she is beating herself against a wall. That I just don’t see what she is trying. I think the key triggers that I tell her about, she just doesn’t think she can do anything about.
The blocked numbers.
Finding things out through her facebook and not from her.
Her telling me today that while I thought she was at our sons practice, and she was too busy to call, our son didn’t practice at all on Monday. She was just helping out the league.
She says she feels that I don’t even want to get past this. I don’t think she understands the impact that this has had on me. Its been said on here that the cheating spouse had their cake and they have us at home waiting for their love. So either way they are safe.
Brings to mind a line from a Maroon 5 song
“How does it feel to know you’ll never have to be alone, when you get home?”
Food for thought?
I wish I knew that feeling.
Michael-My husband has also told many lies and its really hard to try and piece a truth puzzle togeather if you don’t have all the piceses does’nt it? I dont know if they truely realize how their actions push us farther away. My husband said that just because I am stuck he is not he is ready to move on! Well we havent even begun to deal with the reasons why we are here and to move on would more than likely end in Divorce right now at this point. He dont see it that way! He can not even believe that I would want to see his cell phone even though that was his life line to this other person. He told me it was a slap in the face when I requested records! Well I can tell you a slap in the face is better than a Divorce I hope. I think sometimes he wants to make us work but he is so busy trying to get me to make some kind of guarantee and at this point I can not! Respect maybe some day! Trust-I trust this man with my kids, with my finances, with everyday life but not with my heart!
respect for me isn’t much an issue at this point, 7 months later.
My husband is intelligent and good, he just took very poor decisions by having an affair, and then by lying about it and trying to cover it up and minimize it.
He faced a dilemma and instead of speaking up and expressing his emotion, insecurities, confusion, he tried to work through them by having an affair…truth is that he is not good at expressing his emotions, or even being able to acknowledge what he feels, what affects him and why it does….. oh boy was it stupid ! yes, but I know he is not a bad person…
trust now is some what of an other issue… but it is slowly coming back , we re rebuilding it, and I am surprised sometimes how, slowly it is actually coming back.. couple of weeks, months ago I really didn’t think it would be ever possible to trust him again… I am at a much better place these days.. that said I do not trust him fully, and probably won’t for some time…
Most specifically I do not trust that he really understands why he did what he did to a deeper level…and I feel like if he doesn’t now how will he be able to avoid such situation at a different moment in life if he is faced with a similar dilemma again…
I sometime feel like I understand the affair much more than he does, and I have pushed on him many conversation on the whys, but I mostly am the one that manages to make sense of it all…he just has a terrible time talking about it all and I sense that it is because of the guilt he is carrying… talking about it with me forces him to face what he has done and the ugliness of it all Consequently it makes himself feel inadequate…
That said I have decided to stop working through this with him…it is up to him to figure it out. I can give him my opinion all I want and make him see what I want him to see, but at this point, it matters very little to me what I understand of it all.
What matters to me is what he comes to see and understand. By not talking so much about it anymore and by trying to have quality time with him when ever possible, I hope to be able give him the space he needs to figure himself out…
In the meantime I need to be patient, I try to focus more and more on myself.
I dont believe that “respect” is that hard to earn. I believe there will be things you dont like that people has done but if they are honesty about piece of their story you have no choice but to respect them for some sort of honesty they tried to put forward. My husband told me about affair after I asked if something was going on.., on two different occasions. I respect him for it even through the lies because he could have kept lying about the affair completely. So to me respect is something that can be gain or lost quite quickly…. But with trust, I learned that it can take years to build up, seconds to destroy it t and a life time “hoping” they can get it back..
Thanks for response Stupid and Trusting ….her latest fiasco is maybe she can have both of us…unbelievable! I am off to attorney this monday and see how she suggests I move forward. Thanks for all your support.
Charles
Charles, You may also check to see if their is a BAN network (beyond affairs network) in your area. They have a website and a way to find out if their are support groups in your area. Best of luck. Linda
its been five months…it doesnt seem any better. i dont really care what he does anymore, he still treats me as if i am going to run out and do what he did, questions every moment of my day, as if i were the cheater..gets mad if i dont act like anything matters. tells me im crazy if i think he’s doing anything like before. but in all honesty, he does nothing to win us back. so why believe anything has changed. waiting for a moment when i will be happy.
Lostinlove,
I know all to well what you feeling. I’m at a year and a half after the first D-Day. And still recently I discover or she has said more. And to this day she can’t/wont talk about it. Not saying this is the case with you but the “I’ve told you everything” line gets real old. At some point the “I’m sorry” goes unnoticed. Here it is a year and a half after and she still says “I still feel like you will leave if I talk about it” So what are we doing wrong? Or more to the point, why do they feel this way?
For my wife, I know she has had more than her share of abandonment and abuse at a young age. But we’ve been together for almost half of her life. And almost all of her adult life has been us and our family. Why does she still feel this way?
i understand how this roll gets so twisted up, but i dont undrstand how the betrayed becomes the bandaid! i have a high profile hospitality job, everyday i can not speak about my job, without the questions..who’d you meet, who hit on you today..blah blah..when do they realize. i didn’t cheat! he did, and all the while said the same things..how do i let go.i cant help feeling lost in love..but not wanting to waste the rest of my life..feeling lonely and married