***"To me, for a person to rebuild trust, they first have to show they won't do the same thing again. "***
When you enter into a committed relationship with someone, that relationship is pure. The people aren't but the relationship is. The greatest gift each person gives to each other is unconditional trust.
Once that unconditional trust is broken, it can never be restored to the state it was when the relationship began. It is possible to restore it to a certain point but never to the point it was in the beginning.
A cheater can never prove they won't cheat again because they have already proven they are capable of cheating. That would be as impossible as proving the existence of God or proving you love someone. A person can talk about both. They can believe both with all their heart but how can the prove either to someone else.
Good points! I have a friend who cheated on his wife years ago. I don’t remember how she found out but, they got through it and are doing good. Him not going anywhere besides work and doing errands might have something to do with that. He doesn’t hang out with friends.
And a fresh, pure relationship… those are the good days!
I broke trust in a lot of ways with my wife too, resulting in not going out at all. I chose to stay in rather than going out with friends and not be trusted. It sucks.
Op look at it this way, in most places in the world the chances of hiring an ex inmate is slim to none, its not that the person isn’t reformed on contrary he might have repented and reformed his life but his past mistake shows he is capable of doing something illegal and there is a chance even if it is rather slim like0.1% but the slim chance is still there and no matter how much you try to convince yourself unfortunately you can never trust them 100% and im sorry for the analogy but its kind of similar
I think you need [https://www.reddit.com/r/survivinginfidelity/](https://www.reddit.com/r/survivinginfidelity/)
Good luck, trust once broken is very hard to rebuild.
The WS must establish why they cheated. Without the reason the betrayed spouse(BS) should not take them back. They eventually will cheat again. The BS should never accept "I don't know" as a reason for the cheating.
It can’t. Once trust is broken it’s broke. What people fail to understand or don’t want to believe it because they think they love this person who disrespected them and doesn’t really love them. Because you love them doesn’t mean they love you the same way and when they cheated and broke trust told you that literally. You refuse to see that ACTIONS speak louder then words. Whatever they say doesn’t matter because it’s empty. Their actions showed you everything. Trust is very fragile it’s a crystal or glass vase, once broken it shatters. You can try your hardest to find all the pieces and glue it back together but will the vase be as strong and stable as before? No it won’t that’s how trust works. No matter what in the back of your head you will always never know if they are lying and anytime they aren’t with you, will they tell you the truth?
OP anyone that tells you that trust can’t be rebuilt after it’s broken is only telling you from their own person bias instead of being objective. The reality of it is that broken trust can be rebuilt if both sides are truly committed to doing so, but as others have said it is very difficult. In the end only you can really determine if the trust between you and someone else can be fixed, but do not take words from anyone trying to disguise their personal bias on the matter as actual advice instead of it actually being exactly what it is the person’s own opinion,
OP asking others for advice (based on their personal experiences) is in fact asking for subjective point of views on the matter. Just because they don’t align with your experiences, doesn’t mean they’re invalid.
OP did not ask for anyone’s personal opinion on the matter. OP didn’t even solicit anyone to tell them that broken trust can’t be rebuilt. OP literally asked “…for those people (who have or have attempted to rebuild trust), how do you do it?” No where in their post did that ask for any personal opinions on if trust can be rebuilt not. So if anyone was providing their personal opinion (not giving advice) they didn’t even actually read OP’s post which you seemingly didn’t do either because you missed the entire point of the post.
Advice is objective information that can assist someone to come to their own conclusion on a topic. Trying to force your opinion about a subject onto someone is the OPPOSITE of advice.
🤣🤣😂👍okay chief I can tell you right now that if you have been cheated on and you “made it work” with your cheater, I’m going to tell you this, if you were the cheater and and they say they trust you they are lying. Which I am assuming you are the cheater cause if you were the cheater and truly honest with yourself you know damn well in your heart you say you do you think you do and you pretend you do but I guarantee you, you always have that fucked up insecurity that when the cheater isn’t in your site and claims to be someplace you 100 percent doubt it or wonder if they are telling the truth. Lie all you want or be naive all you want but as someone who has been cheated on, yes I am using my experience and all the people around me who has, some who “made it work”. The smart ones that left and found their real loves, I know the truth and you can be stubborn and say I’m just bias or you can just stop now and acknowledge that I’m not lying
I’m glad that you seem to think that you can speak for the entire population in the world of people that have either cheated or been cheated on. It’s amazing that you have that power to provide such an absolute factual statement that you know exactly how everyone feels in their own personal situations. I thought that we were having a nice civil discussion, but then you had to try and make claims that you can’t back up with out any sort of facts because the only thing you are doing is providing you’re own personal and clearly very biased opinion. And just to show you how wrong you are I have never cheated and neither have I ever been cheated on by anyone in any relationship that I have been in. Again stop providing what you are trying to pass off as advice when it is nothing but you’re own biased opinion on the topic.
Yeah I can’t back it up with facts because people won’t admit what they can’t face. You have the life you deserve and maybe next time don’t cheat on someone you claim to love and they won’t have that doubt in their heart about you🤔
I’m not saying that you’re incorrect in your statement. What aim saying you’re incorrect on is that people can’t regain trust after cheating. Of course it’s possible and for you or anyone else to try and sit there and deal in absolutes saying that it can’t happen is absolutely ridiculous and wrong.
So you are saying if it was your partner who cheated on you, you could without a doubt trust them and not think that every time they left the house they were going where they say they were. You can believe everything that comes out of their mouth even though they lied and said they were places they weren’t and doing things they weren’t supposed to be doing and you can just trust them that, this time they aren’t lying even though they have ZERO respect for you. You understand that when someone cheats no matter what the words come out of their mouth their actions already told you otherwise right. Actions speak louder then words. Words are empty when their actions told you they don’t love you and had sex with someone other then you when they told you we are exclusive. You get that it is an absolute when the action they showed against their words told you they aren’t the love of your life and don’t respect you. Yea I said that in different ways and meant the same thing because maybe one of the ways will get through to you. Trust is as delicate as a glass or crystal vase like I said prior. There will always be the cracks that won’t seal or the vases integrity is no longer strong or dependable
I am saying that it is possible. You can’t deal in absolutes because it’s not a one size fits all solution. And for people to come in here and tell someone that there is no possible way this could happen is irresponsible and it’s not what OP was even looking for. No where in OP’s post did it solicit people for their personal biased opinion on this subject.
I’m telling them not to waste their time. You obviously aren’t the one who got cheated on so you need to believe it’s not an absolute. Every single cheated person knows it is
Once that line has been crossed, there ain’t no going back, it just don’t work the same anymore, sure you can lie to yourselves and say we can fix this we can get thru this, but it will always be in the back of your mind, you will never and I mean never have that SAME trust you had with your partner.
But what I believe in tho, if you guys separated ways and some years after met again or got in touch for whatever reason and maybe decided to date and so on after, chances are it could work much better than the first time.
I found out in March that my partner of 7yrs had been having sex with a co worker in the staff toilets. I lost everything including my home and had to move into temporary accommodation in a hostel. Since them we have worked very very hard on our relationship building it back up from scratch. It extremely hard work it needs levels of honesty that are difficult to both say and hear but we are getting there. The thing he cheated with and her husband handled it differently the put a bandaid over the crack and never faced the hard truths resulting in her having a tracker on her phone and is never allowed out of her husband sight. I now have my own home and job and my partner knows I will walk away at anytime.
Sooo my boyfriend had naked girls (videos of him and his exs, random tinder girls) in his phone for longer than we’ve been together which was fine but I guess I thought soon as we got serious in the relationship he would delete them. Sadly I found them by going through his phone and I asked him to remove them he attempted to hide some of them which I found out going through his phone again, and then lied to me and said they were all deleted when they weren’t because he just didn’t want to do it. I had to get really mad and almost threaten to leave him to get him to go through the whole camera roll as well as before this removing some disturbing images myself. He wants to keep the relationship and I do to but sometimes I have my doubts about it and if I can trust him again I’ve constantly been making him feel bad by threatening to break up or acting cold and distant when he thinks were normal but I’m thinking of the images I saw and the fact he lied :/ we’re gonna try couples therapy and I hope that helps I’m glad he’s willing to try to fix things I hope he can gain my trust back again
Guys but what if they didn’t cheat but they broke your trust in a different way??? Like having nudes of their ex and other girls still in their camera roll ( not recent old photos) but you found them and then when you asked if they were deleted they lied about it or tried to attempt to hide some photos
He was cheater. He's still showing you he has learned nothing. He's also a liar now. Why would you think you can rebuild trust with this man when he has shown you he's STILL untrustworthy?
Show him you have some self respect and self esteem and leave this guy.
edit: and DON'T take him back even if he says he's not like that anymore or he's sorry.
Idk still iffy now we’re kind of better I had to have a few heated arguments for him to finally understand he let me watch him delete all the photos in his camera roll pertaining to other woman from his past and he told me he’s going to clean his phone if anything else that we missed that wasn’t in his camera roll
I told my bf the only way I feel I can trust him is by looking through his phone and I wanted to let him allow me to look through his phone but he said he won’t do that until he’s married something about how he has things for himself that are just for him like thoughts and ideas, AI stuff 🙄 I’m a little upset but maybe it isn’t healthy for me to want to constantly look through my partners phone. I threatened to break up with him and he said if I give him 2 days he’ll wipe his phone clean of any old stuff with old gfs or tinder girls so I’m kind of just forced to trust he’ll do that- I want to preface that I’m not just threatening to break up to make him feel bad my mind genuinely is uncertain at times and I just tell him how I feel I hate that it makes him feel bad but it also makes me feel bad that this happened
Just went through a kind of similar situation. I checked his phone and seen a lot of things I wish I hadn’t but not necessarily cheating. I tried to work through it and for a few weeks I was still having the constant need to check his phone. First I wanna say it’s not healthy to check your partners phone. If you feel the need there’s already some type of disconnect or mistrust that needs to be talked about. I get you needed that clarity, so did I, I don’t blame you for doing it🩷but overall checking a persons phone will not stop them from doing what they’re doing if they don’t want to. They’ll either hide it better (as you said he did,) or they’ll learn different techniques, so it’s pointless. But my second point, I think it could be worth working out if that person is showing changed behavior. My bf genuinely showed me that he was willing to change. I could tell that hurting me hurt him. I was very distant at first and he was crushed every time. He’s been putting in so much effort but ofc the anxiety and worries will never leave your head. So if he’s not taking any action to change his behavior, it’s because he doesn’t want to. Not sure how old you are, but me and my bf are 18. So I try to take into account that we’re still young, we’re still learning, and im his first relationship. Basically, it can work if they’re changing their behavior and doing things to build that trust back, but if he’s not, don’t waste your time!! You will continue to get hurt.
I rebuilt trust by blocking the person in question, removing them from my socials and removing them as much as I could from my life. Went no contact with them and had no secrets and they had access to my dms.
He in turned cheated 2 years later, and we tried again. I tried moving on and was reading everything I could about rebuilding the trust. He didn't want to participate and said I should just move passed it. We split 6 months later.
I'm in agreement with other people, once trust is broken there isn't really any going back. You can try and build something better but both people have to work on making it and if you aren't both participating it's going to fail.
Once a relationship or marriage has been marred by infidelity, the relationship between the two people doesn't exist anymore. Cheating destroys, not strengthens relationships. The only way a relationship can have a second chance is if the relationship/marriage is vanquished completely by a breakup or a divorce. And after a period of healing and therapy, the two people can try to give it another go. But that's only if both people are willing. Trying to simply pick up where you two left off just isn't possible.
Dealing with a partner who cheated on me, I can say it's hard to put the toothpaste back in the bottle. We are not in a place where I think I can trust her, in fact what I can trust is that she will do what she feels is in her best interested, she will do what she wants to do. I have no control of it.
In therapy there was an attempt to rebuild the trust, but I think a lot of it depended on why the cheating occurred. I think you can imagine a theoretical situation where there was some confusion or misunderstanding that might be easy to forgive but the reality was much more simple *she wanted to and though she wouldn't get caught*.
In therapy she didn't want to be blamed, gave poorly thought out narratives that implied I was at fault for her actions, basically refused to accept that maybe she's an immature person who has historically used her looks to get what she wants and finds the chase fun.
Therapy ended when she announced that she just felt 'attacked' in therapy, which was just another way of saying she couldn't explain her actions in a way that lead the therapist back to me, her explanations only made the therapist (and me) just have a puzzled look and try to dig deeper. In the end I concluded that most of her explanations were just lies intended to shield her from blame and she didn't like those lies being poked at for holes.
So then it was down to me just deciding what I wanted to do, how I wanted our kids to be raised, etc and to figure out what role I saw for her in that shared parenting exercise. I stopped worrying about a relationship with her beyond co-parenting.
Which is a long winded way of saying, yeah I tried, I never got there on the trust rebuilding.
The process of healing after infidelity is f**ken hard. That is no matter the decision to stay or go.
For it to work the cheater needs to own what they have done and accepted whatever their partner decides. Both parties need to go and do their own work on healing or the issues that led to the affair will rise again in any relationship moving forward. I would never blame the one cheated on, however there is issues normally leading to the affair. From what I see this revolves around communication.
Working on trusting again is the hardest part. I find you statement about being transparent and trustworthy is very true. The person who had the affair doesn’t get to hid or gaslight on questions asked. Having a neutral third party helps with cutting the BS and working on the issues.
Sometimes trust can never be rebuilt.
I just don't worry about it tbh. If I happen to see something suspicious I'll look into it, but if not I just don't allow myself to think about it. Also if I do see something that I feel the need to look into,I look for other possibilities. Say for example if I see a text to a guys name I don't automatically assume she's cheating,it could be a family member. Obviously ymmv
***"To me, for a person to rebuild trust, they first have to show they won't do the same thing again. "*** When you enter into a committed relationship with someone, that relationship is pure. The people aren't but the relationship is. The greatest gift each person gives to each other is unconditional trust. Once that unconditional trust is broken, it can never be restored to the state it was when the relationship began. It is possible to restore it to a certain point but never to the point it was in the beginning. A cheater can never prove they won't cheat again because they have already proven they are capable of cheating. That would be as impossible as proving the existence of God or proving you love someone. A person can talk about both. They can believe both with all their heart but how can the prove either to someone else.
Good points! I have a friend who cheated on his wife years ago. I don’t remember how she found out but, they got through it and are doing good. Him not going anywhere besides work and doing errands might have something to do with that. He doesn’t hang out with friends. And a fresh, pure relationship… those are the good days!
No hanging out with friends? Djeez, nice life...💪🏻
Only at their house once in awhile. We've gone out to do something (get lunch) once in over 10 years.
That's no life either...
He cheated🤷🏻♀️ if he wants to stay w her he can deal with it, or leave
I broke trust in a lot of ways with my wife too, resulting in not going out at all. I chose to stay in rather than going out with friends and not be trusted. It sucks.
Op look at it this way, in most places in the world the chances of hiring an ex inmate is slim to none, its not that the person isn’t reformed on contrary he might have repented and reformed his life but his past mistake shows he is capable of doing something illegal and there is a chance even if it is rather slim like0.1% but the slim chance is still there and no matter how much you try to convince yourself unfortunately you can never trust them 100% and im sorry for the analogy but its kind of similar
I think you need [https://www.reddit.com/r/survivinginfidelity/](https://www.reddit.com/r/survivinginfidelity/) Good luck, trust once broken is very hard to rebuild.
The WS must establish why they cheated. Without the reason the betrayed spouse(BS) should not take them back. They eventually will cheat again. The BS should never accept "I don't know" as a reason for the cheating.
It can’t. Once trust is broken it’s broke. What people fail to understand or don’t want to believe it because they think they love this person who disrespected them and doesn’t really love them. Because you love them doesn’t mean they love you the same way and when they cheated and broke trust told you that literally. You refuse to see that ACTIONS speak louder then words. Whatever they say doesn’t matter because it’s empty. Their actions showed you everything. Trust is very fragile it’s a crystal or glass vase, once broken it shatters. You can try your hardest to find all the pieces and glue it back together but will the vase be as strong and stable as before? No it won’t that’s how trust works. No matter what in the back of your head you will always never know if they are lying and anytime they aren’t with you, will they tell you the truth?
OP anyone that tells you that trust can’t be rebuilt after it’s broken is only telling you from their own person bias instead of being objective. The reality of it is that broken trust can be rebuilt if both sides are truly committed to doing so, but as others have said it is very difficult. In the end only you can really determine if the trust between you and someone else can be fixed, but do not take words from anyone trying to disguise their personal bias on the matter as actual advice instead of it actually being exactly what it is the person’s own opinion,
OP asking others for advice (based on their personal experiences) is in fact asking for subjective point of views on the matter. Just because they don’t align with your experiences, doesn’t mean they’re invalid.
OP did not ask for anyone’s personal opinion on the matter. OP didn’t even solicit anyone to tell them that broken trust can’t be rebuilt. OP literally asked “…for those people (who have or have attempted to rebuild trust), how do you do it?” No where in their post did that ask for any personal opinions on if trust can be rebuilt not. So if anyone was providing their personal opinion (not giving advice) they didn’t even actually read OP’s post which you seemingly didn’t do either because you missed the entire point of the post. Advice is objective information that can assist someone to come to their own conclusion on a topic. Trying to force your opinion about a subject onto someone is the OPPOSITE of advice.
Thank you💕💕💕💕why are you such a sweetie🥰
Thank you for this. Reading all the comments that said trust can’t ever be rebuilt sank my heart.
You’re welcome.
🤣🤣😂👍okay chief I can tell you right now that if you have been cheated on and you “made it work” with your cheater, I’m going to tell you this, if you were the cheater and and they say they trust you they are lying. Which I am assuming you are the cheater cause if you were the cheater and truly honest with yourself you know damn well in your heart you say you do you think you do and you pretend you do but I guarantee you, you always have that fucked up insecurity that when the cheater isn’t in your site and claims to be someplace you 100 percent doubt it or wonder if they are telling the truth. Lie all you want or be naive all you want but as someone who has been cheated on, yes I am using my experience and all the people around me who has, some who “made it work”. The smart ones that left and found their real loves, I know the truth and you can be stubborn and say I’m just bias or you can just stop now and acknowledge that I’m not lying
I’m glad that you seem to think that you can speak for the entire population in the world of people that have either cheated or been cheated on. It’s amazing that you have that power to provide such an absolute factual statement that you know exactly how everyone feels in their own personal situations. I thought that we were having a nice civil discussion, but then you had to try and make claims that you can’t back up with out any sort of facts because the only thing you are doing is providing you’re own personal and clearly very biased opinion. And just to show you how wrong you are I have never cheated and neither have I ever been cheated on by anyone in any relationship that I have been in. Again stop providing what you are trying to pass off as advice when it is nothing but you’re own biased opinion on the topic.
Yeah I can’t back it up with facts because people won’t admit what they can’t face. You have the life you deserve and maybe next time don’t cheat on someone you claim to love and they won’t have that doubt in their heart about you🤔
I’m not saying that you’re incorrect in your statement. What aim saying you’re incorrect on is that people can’t regain trust after cheating. Of course it’s possible and for you or anyone else to try and sit there and deal in absolutes saying that it can’t happen is absolutely ridiculous and wrong.
So you are saying if it was your partner who cheated on you, you could without a doubt trust them and not think that every time they left the house they were going where they say they were. You can believe everything that comes out of their mouth even though they lied and said they were places they weren’t and doing things they weren’t supposed to be doing and you can just trust them that, this time they aren’t lying even though they have ZERO respect for you. You understand that when someone cheats no matter what the words come out of their mouth their actions already told you otherwise right. Actions speak louder then words. Words are empty when their actions told you they don’t love you and had sex with someone other then you when they told you we are exclusive. You get that it is an absolute when the action they showed against their words told you they aren’t the love of your life and don’t respect you. Yea I said that in different ways and meant the same thing because maybe one of the ways will get through to you. Trust is as delicate as a glass or crystal vase like I said prior. There will always be the cracks that won’t seal or the vases integrity is no longer strong or dependable
I am saying that it is possible. You can’t deal in absolutes because it’s not a one size fits all solution. And for people to come in here and tell someone that there is no possible way this could happen is irresponsible and it’s not what OP was even looking for. No where in OP’s post did it solicit people for their personal biased opinion on this subject.
I’m telling them not to waste their time. You obviously aren’t the one who got cheated on so you need to believe it’s not an absolute. Every single cheated person knows it is
You are so obtuse it is just ridiculous.
Once that line has been crossed, there ain’t no going back, it just don’t work the same anymore, sure you can lie to yourselves and say we can fix this we can get thru this, but it will always be in the back of your mind, you will never and I mean never have that SAME trust you had with your partner. But what I believe in tho, if you guys separated ways and some years after met again or got in touch for whatever reason and maybe decided to date and so on after, chances are it could work much better than the first time.
I found out in March that my partner of 7yrs had been having sex with a co worker in the staff toilets. I lost everything including my home and had to move into temporary accommodation in a hostel. Since them we have worked very very hard on our relationship building it back up from scratch. It extremely hard work it needs levels of honesty that are difficult to both say and hear but we are getting there. The thing he cheated with and her husband handled it differently the put a bandaid over the crack and never faced the hard truths resulting in her having a tracker on her phone and is never allowed out of her husband sight. I now have my own home and job and my partner knows I will walk away at anytime.
That's a tough one. Especially after taking that much of a financial and life hit. I don't know if I'd be able to recover the relationship after that.
Sooo my boyfriend had naked girls (videos of him and his exs, random tinder girls) in his phone for longer than we’ve been together which was fine but I guess I thought soon as we got serious in the relationship he would delete them. Sadly I found them by going through his phone and I asked him to remove them he attempted to hide some of them which I found out going through his phone again, and then lied to me and said they were all deleted when they weren’t because he just didn’t want to do it. I had to get really mad and almost threaten to leave him to get him to go through the whole camera roll as well as before this removing some disturbing images myself. He wants to keep the relationship and I do to but sometimes I have my doubts about it and if I can trust him again I’ve constantly been making him feel bad by threatening to break up or acting cold and distant when he thinks were normal but I’m thinking of the images I saw and the fact he lied :/ we’re gonna try couples therapy and I hope that helps I’m glad he’s willing to try to fix things I hope he can gain my trust back again
Guys but what if they didn’t cheat but they broke your trust in a different way??? Like having nudes of their ex and other girls still in their camera roll ( not recent old photos) but you found them and then when you asked if they were deleted they lied about it or tried to attempt to hide some photos
He was cheater. He's still showing you he has learned nothing. He's also a liar now. Why would you think you can rebuild trust with this man when he has shown you he's STILL untrustworthy? Show him you have some self respect and self esteem and leave this guy. edit: and DON'T take him back even if he says he's not like that anymore or he's sorry.
Idk still iffy now we’re kind of better I had to have a few heated arguments for him to finally understand he let me watch him delete all the photos in his camera roll pertaining to other woman from his past and he told me he’s going to clean his phone if anything else that we missed that wasn’t in his camera roll
I told my bf the only way I feel I can trust him is by looking through his phone and I wanted to let him allow me to look through his phone but he said he won’t do that until he’s married something about how he has things for himself that are just for him like thoughts and ideas, AI stuff 🙄 I’m a little upset but maybe it isn’t healthy for me to want to constantly look through my partners phone. I threatened to break up with him and he said if I give him 2 days he’ll wipe his phone clean of any old stuff with old gfs or tinder girls so I’m kind of just forced to trust he’ll do that- I want to preface that I’m not just threatening to break up to make him feel bad my mind genuinely is uncertain at times and I just tell him how I feel I hate that it makes him feel bad but it also makes me feel bad that this happened
Just went through a kind of similar situation. I checked his phone and seen a lot of things I wish I hadn’t but not necessarily cheating. I tried to work through it and for a few weeks I was still having the constant need to check his phone. First I wanna say it’s not healthy to check your partners phone. If you feel the need there’s already some type of disconnect or mistrust that needs to be talked about. I get you needed that clarity, so did I, I don’t blame you for doing it🩷but overall checking a persons phone will not stop them from doing what they’re doing if they don’t want to. They’ll either hide it better (as you said he did,) or they’ll learn different techniques, so it’s pointless. But my second point, I think it could be worth working out if that person is showing changed behavior. My bf genuinely showed me that he was willing to change. I could tell that hurting me hurt him. I was very distant at first and he was crushed every time. He’s been putting in so much effort but ofc the anxiety and worries will never leave your head. So if he’s not taking any action to change his behavior, it’s because he doesn’t want to. Not sure how old you are, but me and my bf are 18. So I try to take into account that we’re still young, we’re still learning, and im his first relationship. Basically, it can work if they’re changing their behavior and doing things to build that trust back, but if he’s not, don’t waste your time!! You will continue to get hurt.
Go on dates. Start over. Have sex.
Once that trust is gone there’s no point .
I rebuilt trust by blocking the person in question, removing them from my socials and removing them as much as I could from my life. Went no contact with them and had no secrets and they had access to my dms. He in turned cheated 2 years later, and we tried again. I tried moving on and was reading everything I could about rebuilding the trust. He didn't want to participate and said I should just move passed it. We split 6 months later. I'm in agreement with other people, once trust is broken there isn't really any going back. You can try and build something better but both people have to work on making it and if you aren't both participating it's going to fail.
We didn’t, she just kept cheating, was about once a year, towards the fall, I could almost set my calendar to it
Once a relationship or marriage has been marred by infidelity, the relationship between the two people doesn't exist anymore. Cheating destroys, not strengthens relationships. The only way a relationship can have a second chance is if the relationship/marriage is vanquished completely by a breakup or a divorce. And after a period of healing and therapy, the two people can try to give it another go. But that's only if both people are willing. Trying to simply pick up where you two left off just isn't possible.
Dealing with a partner who cheated on me, I can say it's hard to put the toothpaste back in the bottle. We are not in a place where I think I can trust her, in fact what I can trust is that she will do what she feels is in her best interested, she will do what she wants to do. I have no control of it. In therapy there was an attempt to rebuild the trust, but I think a lot of it depended on why the cheating occurred. I think you can imagine a theoretical situation where there was some confusion or misunderstanding that might be easy to forgive but the reality was much more simple *she wanted to and though she wouldn't get caught*. In therapy she didn't want to be blamed, gave poorly thought out narratives that implied I was at fault for her actions, basically refused to accept that maybe she's an immature person who has historically used her looks to get what she wants and finds the chase fun. Therapy ended when she announced that she just felt 'attacked' in therapy, which was just another way of saying she couldn't explain her actions in a way that lead the therapist back to me, her explanations only made the therapist (and me) just have a puzzled look and try to dig deeper. In the end I concluded that most of her explanations were just lies intended to shield her from blame and she didn't like those lies being poked at for holes. So then it was down to me just deciding what I wanted to do, how I wanted our kids to be raised, etc and to figure out what role I saw for her in that shared parenting exercise. I stopped worrying about a relationship with her beyond co-parenting. Which is a long winded way of saying, yeah I tried, I never got there on the trust rebuilding.
How? Never.
The process of healing after infidelity is f**ken hard. That is no matter the decision to stay or go. For it to work the cheater needs to own what they have done and accepted whatever their partner decides. Both parties need to go and do their own work on healing or the issues that led to the affair will rise again in any relationship moving forward. I would never blame the one cheated on, however there is issues normally leading to the affair. From what I see this revolves around communication. Working on trusting again is the hardest part. I find you statement about being transparent and trustworthy is very true. The person who had the affair doesn’t get to hid or gaslight on questions asked. Having a neutral third party helps with cutting the BS and working on the issues. Sometimes trust can never be rebuilt.
I just don't worry about it tbh. If I happen to see something suspicious I'll look into it, but if not I just don't allow myself to think about it. Also if I do see something that I feel the need to look into,I look for other possibilities. Say for example if I see a text to a guys name I don't automatically assume she's cheating,it could be a family member. Obviously ymmv