Home › Forums › Dating and Sex Advice › How to build a mans trust again
- This topic has 5 replies and was last updated 4 years, 6 months ago by
Jippity.
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Jasmine
My boyfriend and I have been on and off for about 8 years, we were high school sweethearts and to say the least, we’ve had quite the ride. Including infidelity on both of our parts, him being young and promiscuous, mistrust and rejection. So, to sum it up we’ve just gotten back together again and it’s serious, but he’s still dealing with some of the things that happened prior in our previous far less mature relationships. It started off really well, and I thought we were falling in love again, but in every argument the past does come up. He says he’s let it go but can’t trust me.. and I trust him to a certain extent and he’s trying for me to trust him more. The trick is that I don’t know how to make him trust me, and trust that I love him and want it work with him no matter what. I’m completely committed to the relationship and we have plans of starting a family together. I would just like to stop revisiting the past and move on in a positive way for the future. How can I “make” him trust me again?
Raven
Yeah, no… This isn’t worth your time or energy-
Paige
I’ve been married since 1976 and in my experience, you just live with it. If you can compartmentalize your life, you’ll be able to push down most of the hurt after a few decades.
As for the guy – well, I think that this is where the double standard that permeates real-life relationships rears its ugly head.
In general, guys think that girls should forgive them (over and over and over, usually) – even when they don’t apologize for their actions (the most I ever got from my husband is “I’m sorry you were hurt,” but that’s like telling me he’s sorry I fell when HE’S the one who pushed me over the cliff) – but THEY don’t have to do the same.
Your behavior will always be thrown back at you, but if you bring up HIS “indiscretions” (as my husband likes to refer to his wh*res), you have committed the unpardonable sin of thinking of yourself for a few minutes.
I’m not telling you that this is a good way to live. It’s certainly not a happy way to live. It’s not fair, but life is what it is and it isn’t what it isn’t – and one of the things life isn’t is “fair.”
I know others on this forum will vehemently disagree with what I have to type, but I can give you advice from my experience only – and here it is:
Either learn to suck it up and keep swallowing sh*t until you die or get out while you’re young enough to build a new life.
(Also – and I don’t mean for this to sound snotty – the tone of your post makes me suspect that you still have some growing up to do yourself. You’re going to do what you’re going to do, but my opinion (and we all have opinions and we all know what they are like) is that you need to not even THINK about being in a serious relationship without taking a long, hard look at yourself and getting professional help in growing YOURSELF if you can’t do it on your own. You can’t change the guys you are with. You can change only yourself – and YOU have to be the one to want to do it. Good luck with whatever you decide to do.)
kaye
First of all, when you are someone’s first serious relationship in high school and have never experienced anything else and dated that person for 8 years, it’s going to happen that both of you want to know what else is out there. Which means either there will be infidelity or you two will break up and get back together multiple times and during those times you will see if the grass is greener so to speak.
As Paige said, I do think there is a double standard and men are much less likely to forgive and forget infidelity than women. And as she said he’s likely to throw this up in your face every time you get in a fight. My ex husband was crazy jealous. If I didn’t answer the phone when I was at the office he would leave some scathing voice message asking if I was getting it on with one of my coworkers in a closet somewhere. But his language wasn’t that nice if you know what I mean! Every ex boyfriend I had, any guy who had so much as smiled at me, or any male coworker or boss would be dragged into our fights. Now, he was an alcoholic and most of these time he was drunk during these but this went on for over 20 years!
My advice to you is if the two of you are really committed about marriage and a future, to get some pre-marital counseling. See if you can’t work through these past trust issues and have an impartial 3rd party telling him he’s not supposed to me throwing your mistakes up in your face every time you fight. I do believe you can grow as a person and I don’t believe once a cheater always a cheater, especially if those things happened when you were young. But unless you two are going to have the maturity and wisdom to leave the past in the past and move forward, you are set to have the same arguments for the rest of your life. Decide if that’s something you can live with as Paige says, or if you would rather start over with a clean slate with someone else. It could be the two of you have grown up and grown apart in this time or you could have matured and be able to make it work. It’s hard to say. Usually one and off relationships are toxic with infidelity, lack of trust, etc.
Lane
Just tell him “look, we were young and dumb! I swear, I will not repeat what happened as long as YOU don’t repeat what you did.” Let’s make a pact to never stray, deal?” Then let him chew on that for a bit :o)
Jippity
It sounds as though you’d both benefit from couples counselling to get these issues resolved. You don’t have a future together if they go unresolved and it sounds as though you’re struggling to do that by yourselves.
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