Long after the initial pain of a betrayal has faded, the negative impact on your ability to trust persists. You can choose to never trust again. Or, you can refuse to let the betrayal limit you and take these steps towards learning to trust again.
I had another…episode…a couple weeks ago. It was another convoluted mess of abandonment fears, distrust of my perceptions and feelings of not being enough.
In other words, the usual.
Not the usual as in that I usually feel that way. But the usual in that whenever I have a rough day, that’s always what it’s distilled to at the end. And I’ve learned that these rough days don’t usually occur in isolation; there’s a smattering of them over a period of weeks or months until the particular offending mental remnant is identified and hopefully neutralized.
I always end up feeling sorry for Brock in these exchanges. He ends up having to deal with the effects of my tsunami divorce – my lack of belief in words, my distrust of the security of a “good” marriage, my continual struggles with self-doubt and my conviction to never allow myself to be in that same position again.
The morning after (no emotional hangover this time!!!) this particular exchange, I found sticky notes with various declarations of love and affection around the house.
And then I saw this one. And I felt another layer of my old wounds close.
It referenced a statement he made the previous night when I mentioned my continued difficulties with trusting my own perceptions and judgment.
There’s no disappear here.
Four words. Big meaning.
A promise to face problems rather than to run away.
A promise to refrain from stonewalling or retreating.
A promise to put effort into the relationship.
A promise to step up rather than step out.
Those words don’t expect perfection. They don’t deny that there will be challenges. They accept that we will have hard times and that we can overcome most anything if we both make the promise to show up and speak up.
And for some reason, even though Brock has expressed similar in words and actions for the duration of our relationship, this simple phrase resonated in a way that I could actually hear it.
And hopefully even start to believe it.
Whenever I go to a climbing gym, I always follow the same routine. I pick an easy route and pick my way through the handholds until I’m at a height that causes my breath to come just a little faster and my brow to start to moisten. And then I intentionally let go.
Not to fall.
But to feel the security of the ropes and my partner on the ground catch my weight and hold me aloft.
And once I’ve learned to trust that I won’t fall, I am willing to climb.
If only life were so simple.
———-
I used to view trust as a simple concept. Black and white. You either trusted someone. Or you didn’t. A person either earned your trust or deserved your mistrust.
And I trusted my ex husband. Completely. Totally. The trust filling any gaps like caulk around a window, not allowing for any passage of sharp and biting winds.
When I said I trusted him, I meant that I believed that he would never do anything that would intentionally harm me. I was convinced that he would always be there. And that his future actions would always be as loving as his past ones. I felt secure in my trust. I felt secure because of my trust.
We speak of trust as though it is an absolute.
A guarantee.
That when someone is branded as “trustworthy,” that they are safe. Incapable of causing pain through actions or motivations.
And wouldn’t that be amazing? If we could have some sort of promise that the people around us would never hurt us. Never stir up doubt. Never cause us suffering.
Amazing. And also impossible.
Because trust, like love, is organic. Breathing and changing. Described in actions rather than words. And more like the ebb and flow of the tide than the still waters of a static lake.
Because no matter how honorable a person is, he or she will falter sometimes. There will be oversights that cause harm to another. Mistakes that lead to pain. Decisions made without sufficient consideration. And moments of pure weakness and conceit.
Trust doesn’t mean the person will never hurt you. It doesn’t offer a money-back guarantee against the cold and biting winds of the world.
Rather, a trustworthy person will admit to his or her shortcomings. Be willing to take responsibility for any mistakes and work to correct them. Trust isn’t about never screwing up. It’s about owning up.
We speak of trust as being earned. And it is. When actions match words. When commitments are kept and promises honored.
And I think that’s where it’s easy to go off course. To assume that at some point, the deposits are made and the trust is ensured. As though the previous actions were collateral against harm.
We all desperately want to feel safe. Secure. We want some assurance that the way things are now is the way they will always be unless we act to change them. And it’s easy to confuse trust with surety. To believe that promises made will never be broken and that there are people that we can always depend on no matter what.
But that’s not reality. From the loving and well-intentioned parent who makes a poor decision for his or her child without fully considering the effects to a spouse who underestimates the impact of his or her words on a partner, we will all hurt and be hurt.
And when that occurs, we feel as though our trust has been breached.
And maybe the problem is that we focus too much on trusting others.
And not enough on trusting ourselves.
Trusting that we will see what is around us.
And be able to handle anything that comes our way.
There is a reason that the phrase, “blind trust” exists. When we focus too intently on trusting others, we lose sight ourselves. We either become complacent or suffer an anxious suspicion that can never be sated.
Learning to trust again after betrayal is less a matter of finding a person worthy of trust (although that is certainly a key element) and more about listening to your own emotions, intuition and instincts.
It is accepting that trust is no promise against pain and that there are no guarantees in life.
And most importantly, trust is believing in yourself.
It’s not a place of security, but rather a place of calm.
Where you may not always know what is coming, but you know that you have what it takes to face it.
———-
I’m often asked how I’ve been able to trust again after the immense betrayals of my ex. It is a process. And sometimes it’s not so smooth🙂
My ex was quite brilliant about covering his actions – I saw pictures of the auto show he was supposedly working only later to find that he was on his honeymoon and the photos were culled from the internet. His phone was always accessible and unlocked. I can only imagine that there was a second device used for the second life. The mail was intercepted. The phone line cut. I was carefully isolated from the truth so slowly and so gently that I never even knew it was happening.
And the lingering effects of that gaslighting mean that I have a very difficult time accepting even what would seem like “proof” to anyone else. I always have (and probably always will have) that slight tug that whispers that maybe what I am seeing isn’t real.
And so I’ve worked hard to separate the anxiety from the past from what I am actually seeing in the present. I’ve learned to listen to my gut and trust it when it tells me something is off. And I’m no longer blind; my brain is always assembling little bits and data points, ensuring they line up.
Throughout, I’ve been very careful not to give in to suspicious and snooping behavior. First, I think that it only feeds anxiety and mistrust and secondly, I believe that it creates a toxic environment for any relationship. There is a difference between spying and seeing. The former leads with the assumption of wrongdoing whereas the latter leads with an open mind.
I mentioned earlier that finding a trustworthy person is also a component. Here are the characteristics of my now-husband that have made it easier for me to trust:
-He does not hide from uncomfortable truths. And he openly admits his screw-ups.
-His initial words are often unpolished. Sometimes, this may sting, but it is also evidence that the words were not carefully chosen and rehearsed to elicit a desired effect.
-He trusted me early and often. I have found that people who are distrustful of others are often hiding something themselves.
-He doesn’t hold back secrets. I always know of my birthday present (or any “surprise” present) the moment he clicks on “submit payment.”
-His friendships are lasting and he demonstrates intense loyalty to them.
-And the funny one – He struggle with attention to the little details. And after the carefully-crafted facade my ex built and meticulously maintained, I find comfort in this:)
But at the end of day, all of that is just the supporting evidence. It ultimately comes down to trusting myself to see if there is a problem. Trusting myself to make the right decisions.
And trusting myself that I’ll be okay no matter what happens.
Trust doesn’t mean that you’ll never fall.
It means that you have faith in yourself to get back up.
I had a bit of a freak out earlier this week. Actually, to be completely truthful, I’m still trying to tame the freak out.
The specifics don’t really matter here. What you need to know is this – I saw a small thing. A no-thing. A thing with no supporting things to make it into some-thing.
And I initially brushed it off as the no-thing it is.
But my brain had other ideas. You see, in my first marriage, I was naive. Completely ignorant, partly from an inability to face the reality and partly because I had complete (and blind) trust in my husband. And once you’ve been fooled, you feel pretty stupid. And you vow to never be fooled again.
And so my brain, completely ignoring the facts and the current reality, tapped on my dreams, whispering, “Are you sure? Remember what happened before? Don’t be stupid.”
I awoke the first two times from those nocturnal nudgings agitated and also annoyed. Unlike marriage numero uno, I am not afraid to face reality (no matter how ugly it may be) and I also don’t have a husband that leaves maybe-they-are-things-but-his-explanation-sounds-legit behind him like a trail of breadcrumbs. So I wasn’t freaked out; I saw those questions as what they were – ghosts of marriage past.
And I feel strongly that it’s important not to punish a new partner for the sins of the old.
But then the dreams came a third time. And this time was different. I awoke at 4:00 am and made my way downstairs. I felt sick from the anxiety that was building within my body. The questions took over, roiling in my mind like water on a hot stove. And as I sat there, waiting to start my coffee and my day, the no-thing grew into a big thing.
I still thought the questions were misplaced, asked years too late and directed at the wrong person, but after the third dream, I realized they needed to be asked.
And I’m so glad I did. Not only was Brock’s response perfect, but I felt my fears lift as I uttered the questions. I think my brain was just insisting that I not only face it alone, that I trust the marriage enough to face it as a team.
Now the voices have quieted, leaving me with only the residual mess to clean up.
But it’s not easy.
Finding the sweet spot between perpetual suspicion and willing blindness.
Between panic and naivete.
Learning to distinguish between past and present.
And trusting that you will see the some-things and learn to brush off the no-things.
Because if you see some-thing in every-thing, no-thing grows to fill the expectations.
Brock asked me what he could do to help. And it made me realize the futility of his position. He did nothing to cause my freak out and there’s nothing he can do to help ease the anxiety. Other than be himself and be patient with me.
Because one of the side effects of my past is that I no longer trust words (and even actions after-the-fact). They’re simply too easy to manipulate.
I feel like I spend the majority of time comfortably toeing the line between the two extremes. And it’s been quite a while since I had a freak out like this one.
And this was a good reminder not to ever get so comfortable with anything that you become complacent.
Navigating the sweet spot between naivete and panic cannot be undertaken on autopilot.
I jumped out of a plane last Saturday.
Go back and look at those first two words again. They’re important.
Skydiving was added to my bucket list shortly after my divorce. And, thanks to a friend’s encouragement and leg-work, it was finally scheduled to happen last weekend. I spent the hours (almost a two-hour drive from my home) and minutes leading up to the actual jump thinking about one moment in particular – the one spent in the doorway when the decision is made to leave the relative safety of the plane’s bare metal floor for the unknown of the sky, with the nearest floor 14,000 feet below.
And I wasn’t sure I’d be up to making that decision.
My instructor, strapped to my back while we both straddled the narrow bench seat in an awkward parody of two high school students sneaking in some PDA, walked me through what to expect:
“We’ll slide up the bench together. Stand up when you reach the end and duck walk over to the door. Stand at the opening with your legs bent. You can either have your toes at the edge or you can hang them over the edge. I’ll say ‘ready’ and rock forward, ‘set’ and rock back and then when I say ‘go,’ jump.”
“Oh, my toes will definitely not be hanging over the edge,” I said laughing at myself.
“Oh come on,” one of the other instructors said, “What’s the worst that could happen? You might fall out of a plane?”
Wait. Yeah, I guess that is the worst that could happen.
His words had a way of putting it all in perspective.
Although I thought differently at the time, I am now so thankful that my first marriage ended the way it did. I never had to take that leap of faith, leaving the relative security of a known marriage for the unknown vastness beyond. I didn’t jump; I was shoved off the marriage. And by the time I realized what happened, there were no choices left to be made.
On Sunday, I took that leap of faith. When I heard the hard “g” of “go,” I made that jump. It’s funny. I had spent so much time thinking about leaving the plane, I never spent much energy thinking about what free fall would feel like. So it caught me by surprise.
There’s no feeling of falling. The main sensation comes from the wind, stealing away breath (and taking my screams away with it) and buffeting the ears. The closest experience I can compare it to is the wind when you’re on a motorcycle with an open helmet or the feeling of being at the bow of a speedboat (without the hard slaps of the nose of the boat on the water).
But the best part of free fall is that you have only one choice: acceptance.
After all, there’s only one way to go.
Once the chute opens, the wind’s assault is replaced with a calm sense of floating. Even though you’re still moving rapidly towards the earth (about 15ft/sec at that point), your brain doesn’t register it as falling. In fact, from the moment I stepped off the plane, my brain seemed to be screaming, “What the $@#%?” It took it most of the day to process what just happened.
Interestingly, when I stood up after the soft landing, my legs were not shaky as they usually are after a release of adrenaline. Instead, I felt peaceful. Calm. Happy.
And lazy. It’s funny, whenever I thought about being productive that afternoon, my brain kicked up the excuse, “What you just jumped out of a plane. And now you want to do laundry???”
I acquiesced and spent the remainder of the day at the pool.
I started my divorce in free fall. I had to accept the situation even as my brain was screaming that we were going to die. Although it was a solo jump that time, I was lucky to have others coaching me on how to orient myself again and how to activate my chute. That landing wasn’t as gentle as the one last Sunday, but it felt just as good to be back on the ground.
I often talk with people when they are contemplating leaving the known space of their marriage. A marriage that has become a malfunctioning plane. And they are trying to decide if they have the tools to repair the engine, if the plane is in less distress than it appears or if they will be more likely to survive by jumping off.
And it’s funny. Just like I was on Sunday, they’re so focused on that leap, the rest blurs into some vague prediction. But like my instructor last weekend, I’ve been there and I know they’ll be surprised by the experience and that they’ll land safely when it’s time.
It’s a leap of faith.
It’s trusting that you have the ability to navigate.
It’s trusting that your team has the knowledge to coach you through the transition.
And it’s trusting that you’ll make it to solid ground again.
Peaceful. Calm. And happy.
Lessons From the End of a Marriage 