Trust After Cheating

In relationships, one of the biggest actions that break trust is cheating – whether that’s a physical affair or inappropriate texts/conversations with another person or even an emotional connection that starts to take the place of the one that you have with your partner. Many people wonder how others can stay with someone who has cheating on them. However, sometimes when you have been cheated on, there are so many factors that are influencing your thoughts and emotions. 

If both people want the relationship, both may have to make sacrifices to get through the time of healing. I say both, because trust needs to go both ways and the rebuilding of the relationship has to happen on both ends. Sometimes negative patterns in the relationship has caused one or both partners to seek positive attention and affection elsewhere. I’m not saying this is the right way to handle the situation; I’m just saying that this is sometimes what happens. Finding out what was missing within the relationship leads to both partners making changes to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

However, as for trust, there may be certain things that the other partner wants to do temporarily in order to alleviate anxiety that comes with broken trust. This could be on a spectrum of checking the other person’s phone, replying to text messages after work hours more quickly, being clear about what activities are being engaged in, checking in more often when running late, not going to a certain place or activity without the partner. These things will be time limited and may be revised or revisited every so often to see how the trust is building or not building.