Staying Focused

When discussing things that are a concern, we often start bringing up old arguments, situations, and experiences that may or may not have anything to do with what is happening currently. It’s important to try to stay away from this as much as possible and I’ll explain why.

When you bring up several situations – whether they are similar or not – it can muddle the discussion and confuse the other person. They tend to lose thread or reason of the discussion (the concern). This often results in the concern not being addressed. If your goal is to solve the problem, stop yourself from overwhelming the other person.

Furthermore, if you and your partner are trying to change your communication patterns, bringing up old arguments that weren’t part of that new attempt will not help keep both of you on track. Old arguments often have no grounds when changing your communication styles because in those arguments, no one was using positive attempts at problem solving. 

If you are the person who is engaged in a discussion and the other person starts pulling example after example out of past experiences, ask them politely to stop. Let me know that you hear their concern but you would appreciate if they would stick to the current situation so that you can work together to solve the problem for the future.

When it comes down to it, if you are concerned about making sure it doesn’t repeat, “venting” or repeating several incidences of the other person’s ‘mistakes’ isn’t solving anything. It’s just complaining.

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.

Trust

Trust isn’t easy to rebuild after it’s been broken. Even with forgiveness, trust may not easily come back for most people. The biggest thing that breaks trust is hurt. Hurt from being betrayed, hurt from being lied to. 

We’ve already talked about the first steps on what one partner can do – admit to mistakes and make actions to change negative behavior and stick to those actions. What about the other partner? How do you build that trust back even if you are willing to forgive the mistake?

Sometimes it’s a leap of faith into trusting again. This means knowing that you want the relationship to succeed and forgiving as well as forgetting. This means that you do not hold the mistake over the other person’s head and ‘punish’ them for it by saying ‘You did this to me so you need to do this now’ or ‘You did this to me so I’m doing this now’ or ‘You owe it to me.’ That is not forgiveness. That is resentment and retaliation. Some people can make this huge leap of faith and not look back. 

However, most people cannot. Most people have to start with small leaps/steps. Learning to trust smaller actions and words and promises and working up to the larger ones. You still may be willing to forgive but the forgetting and trusting takes longer. Be open with your partner that you want to work through the mistake and trust again but you are hurt. If both of you are open and working together, it can help to heal the relationship well.

Forgiveness

What makes humans great is the ability to make up for mistakes and change for the most part. If the other person is willing to forgive you, you can talk about how you plan to do things differently so the same mistake doesn’t happen again. Then do it. Don’t just let it end at promises. Write down the things you are going to do differently if it helps you to remember them and stick to them. Hang it up where you will see it. If you don’t follow through, others may be less willing to forgive in the future – especially if it’s the same situation. 

Forgiveness may take time. The other person may want to forgive you, but there may be their own hurt and fear getting in the way. This might happen if they feel like you didn’t protect them or stick up for them or if you cheated on them. There is fear that the situation will be repeated – even if your behavior isn’t indicating that at the moment. This is because they were hurt and nothing can take that away right then. Being patient may be hard to do but that in addition to validating and supporting their feelings – and making your changes – will help to ease their pain and learn to trust again (more in next post).

Another part of forgiveness is forgiving yourself. Often, we feel that embarrassment and shame and when we know someone else is hurt because of our actions, it brings that shame back time and time again. However, nothing can take away the mistake and erase it. Accepting that you made the mistake, admitting to it, and making changes are the only way to improve. But forgiving yourself is also important. Otherwise, you’ll punish yourself time and again.

Admitting Mistakes

Nobody likes to admit that they are wrong. It’s much easier and feels much nicer to be right. But when it comes down to it, nobody is perfect. But even when we tell ourselves that rationally, everybody makes mistakes; it doesn’t take away the embarrassment of making that mistake. 

The fear that stops most people is that they may not be sure that someone else will forgive them. And because it takes a lot of guts and courage to admit to those mistakes, it’s an uncertainty that we often can’t predict the outcome. However, most people have found in the long run that others respect them more for admitting to their mistakes and they also respect themselves more. 

The number one thing to remember when admitting your mistakes is to acknowledge the effect on others. People rarely forgive or understand mistakes that others make if they are rationalizing their actions or making it about themselves. Examples might include, ‘I know this impacted you because it makes others view you/our relationship differently’ or ‘I can understand if you are upset but I’m hoping we can work through this’ or ‘I know how much these things meant to you and I hate that you must be hurting and I caused that hurt.’

One of the things about mistakes is the shame we feel inside. Everyone always has choices on how they handle this shame. You can choose to ignore the mistake and not own up to it. This puts you at a greater risk of repeating the mistake. Or you can own up to it and clear your conscience. Admitting the mistake is the first step at looking at what lead to the mistake and making changes for that mistake to never happen again.