{"id":38587,"date":"2018-06-18T08:00:18","date_gmt":"2018-06-18T15:00:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/?p=38587"},"modified":"2018-06-18T09:01:33","modified_gmt":"2018-06-18T16:01:33","slug":"how-do-i-fix-trust-issues-after-being-caught-cheating","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/dear-gt\/how-do-i-fix-trust-issues-after-being-caught-cheating","title":{"rendered":"How Do I Fix Trust Issues After Being Caught Cheating?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dear GoodTherapy.org,<\/span><\/p>\n

I cheated on my girlfriend. Yes, I\u2019m a cheater and I\u2019ll never live it down. I don\u2019t deserve forgiveness<\/a>. I don\u2019t deserve her, period! I made the biggest mistake of my life and now I\u2019m on the verge of losing the only person in this world that I can\u2019t live without.<\/p>\n

The backstory is that I got too close to a coworker and let my worst instincts get the best of me. We were together 10 or 12 times and I kept rationalizing it somehow in my head. Like, I knew it wasn\u2019t going to be a long-term thing, but I selfishly wanted \u201cstrange\u201d sex before the prospect of no longer having it disappeared forever. There was also a time when my girlfriend made out with a guy in a bar. I know that\u2019s not on the same level as what I did\u2014not even close. I just think it was part of my stupid rationalization. I feel so ashamed and disgusted with myself.<\/p>\n

\n\t

Find a Therapist<\/a><\/h2>\n\t
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I ended things with the other girl the same day I was caught, but obviously my girlfriend doesn\u2019t trust me now. I don\u2019t really blame her. She says she doesn\u2019t think she can ever trust me again. I have offered to give her all my passwords and go to counseling<\/a>, whatever it takes, but she says she\u2019s not sure it would matter. Knowing I broke her heart is the hardest thing I\u2019ve ever had to know.<\/p>\n

She is taking some time to think about things, and she doesn\u2019t want me to call or text her until she figures out what she wants to do. I am giving her the space she asked for. I am just hoping that when we talk again I can reassure her that I can be trusted. I want to make things right. I know I would never make a mistake like that again, but fixing her trust issues<\/a> feels impossible. Help! I\u2019ll do anything. \u2014Astray<\/strong><\/p>\n

Submit Your Own Question to a Therapist<\/a><\/p>\n

Dear Astray,<\/span><\/p>\n

Thank you for writing. I\u2019m not here to judge. Besides, judgment befogs understanding.<\/p>\n

I feel your remorse. This does not mean I want to downplay the harm your behavior has caused to all three parties, including yourself and, presumably, your coworker. Sometimes such actions are indicative of a deeper issue that is not resolved by altering the offending behavior.<\/p>\n

I urge you to focus on yourself during this \u201ctrial\u201d time needed by your girlfriend. (I would take it as a good sign, by the way, she did not end it outright. The two of you must have built a strong connection prior to your affair.)<\/p>\n

You can\u2019t make her trust you again. It may sound counterintuitive, but the best thing you can do for her is to come to a rigorously honest (and empathic) understanding of yourself<\/em> and what might have motivated this. You might consider couples counseling<\/a>\u2014or, if she is not willing, individual counseling<\/a> in the name of compassionate but unyielding self-reflection. Here is an opportunity for a reckoning that could greatly benefit you and your relationship, assuming it survives. Even if it doesn’t, it would benefit your next one.<\/p>\n

There is a stark up\/down contrast in your descriptions of your girlfriend versus sex with your coworker, which might reflect a good\/bad way of perceiving yourself. To hear you tell it, your girlfriend sounds almost unassailably perfect or wholesome (\u201cup\u201d), while your desire for sex with the coworker is \u201cstrange\u201d or almost seedy-sounding (\u201cdown\u201d). This is a bit of a catch-22 in that you appear to judge something that also remains desirable, that you have misgivings about letting go of \u201cforever.\u201d<\/p>\n

You can\u2019t make her trust you again. It may sound counterintuitive, but the best thing you can do for her is to come to a rigorously honest (and empathic) understanding of yourself<\/em> and what might have motivated this.<\/span><\/p>\n

You might be surprised at the relatively simple human desires that become camouflaged in sexuality<\/a>, which itself becomes a way of attaching to a desired other. Perhaps sex with your coworker was a way of soothing whichever vulnerable part of you felt \u201cless than.\u201d Perhaps sharing your vulnerability<\/a> with your girlfriend felt too risky. (This is all speculation, mind you. I\u2019m just reflecting on examples I have come across over the years.)<\/p>\n

You also describe yourself as the lowest of the low, which indicates a struggle for self-esteem<\/a> or perhaps some self-loathing<\/a> that was likely present (perhaps unconsciously) before all this started. The behavior confirms what lies dormant. It is as if some part of you were saying, \u201cGo ahead and mess around with your coworker. You don\u2019t deserve your girlfriend anyway. You\u2019re only going to lose her once she discovers the \u2018real you,\u2019 so why not?\u201d I imagine this all fed into your rationalizing.<\/p>\n

Or, quite possibly, there was a rebellion against feeling less than (\u201cno woman will tell me what I can or can\u2019t do!\u201d)\u2014an assertion of sorts of your freedom before giving up something \u201cforever.\u201d Maybe there was a combination of these two (or more) threads running through this sexual detour.<\/p>\n

As for \u201cfixing\u201d your girlfriend\u2019s trust issues, decisive action on your part would go a long way toward showing her you mean business: a genuine effort to understand not just that your behavior was painful, but that something else was \u201coff\u201d\u2014and owning it, examining it, and working on it. Nothing is more courageous than facing one\u2019s own psychological struggles. It never ceases to amaze me how many are simply too afraid or unwilling to do this. Many would rather just \u201cchange the channel\u201d or \u201cswipe left\u201d and forget it.<\/p>\n

Showing her that you want to use this crisis as an opportunity to better understand yourself, which can only broaden your relational and sexual options in the long run, might show her you intend to grow from this. You might even start to see her as an equal, as opposed to her holding a standard you can never reach (which might create unconscious stress<\/a>, resentment<\/a>, self-criticism, and so on).<\/p>\n

The worst thing you can do is try to shove all this back in the closet and quickly move on. Doing so practically ensures it will happen again in some other form. I can assure you there is nothing innately “bad” about what is behind this. You may discover, with help and diligence, that what lies behind it all is something stunningly human.<\/p>\n

In the meantime, be patient and accepting of what your girlfriend needs. Talk is indeed cheap. Show <\/em>her you will do what it takes to make this right. If you\u2019re going to earn back her trust, it will start with respecting her needs during this difficult time. If you use the space to work on yourself, you will be better prepared to provide what she needs in the future.<\/p>\n

Best wishes,<\/p>\n

Darren Haber, PsyD, MFT<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“I want to make things right. I know I would never make a mistake like that again, but fixing her trust issues feels impossible. Help! I\u2019ll do anything.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1061,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[625,542,623],"tags":[1072,522,384,41,388],"class_list":["post-38587","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dear-goodtherapy","category-featured-articles","category-issues-treated","tag-cheating","tag-dear-gt","tag-infidelity-affair-recovery","tag-marriage-counseling-relationships","tag-trust-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38587","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1061"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38587"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38587\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38587"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38587"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38587"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}