Building Trust After Infidelity

Scripture: Joel 2:25

The Need for Restored Trust

While this devotional is primarily written to wives, it would be helpful if you and your husband read the remaining sections together, especially since it will take both of you to accomplish full marital healing. Trust in your marriage is foundational to your healing, so we’ll take a closer look at this ingredient.

Trust is like healing water. Over time your husband must deposit trust drop by drop into your relationship, and you must collect it. This is a joint endeavor, but he must initiate it. Like water, trust can be fluid. Its level ebbs based on the conditions of the surrounding environment. Initially, it requires daily maintenance if it is to remain at a sufficient level.

Just as water can saturate dry places and turn them into an oasis, growing trust creates a progressively more restful place in a relationship. In a very real way, you’ve been traumatized, and everyone, yourself included, must be patient and understand the complex effects of trauma on your body, mind, and spirit. However, with care and planful responses to your trauma, you can begin to experience moments of relief and eventually even refreshment.

Bear in mind, experiencing a stable sense of trust and consistent positive feelings in your relationship will take far more than a few weeks. Trust most often isn’t fully realized until a number of years have passed. Patiently and humbly follow a recovery plan that shows heart-level transformation and new, sincere relational skills, not merely a brief behavior change.

Husbands who have broken their wives’ trust may have to make uncomfortable adjustments until they can repair what has been broken. One way they can help themselves is to become part of a men’s recovery group. These groups assist husbands to develop a list of “best practices” that help them avoid overwhelming temptation during this period in their lives. They agree to abide by these specific practices and check in on a regular basis with their counselor and other supportive men in their group. If they have a slip or experience intense temptation, they discuss what it means and learn how to respond in a way that shows integrity.

Next, we’ll look at what to do if your husband yields to temptation. 

Scripture: 2 Corinthians 5:17

If Your Husband Yields to Temptation

Unfortunately, your husband is engaged in an intense battle, so successfully quitting “cold turkey” all pornography use, masturbation, or habitual forms of acting out is possible, but unlikely. The thought of this possibility can strike panic, or even deep anger, in the already-burdened heart of a wife in your situation. That’s why it may help to have general categories and terminology you can use should your husband act out in an inappropriate way in the future.

Preparing for this possibility is not a license for your husband to return to old ways. It’s simply a wise safety precaution that may offer some measure of predictability to both of you. Think of it like keeping a fire extinguisher under your kitchen sink. You never aim to use it, but it’s there if needed.

Let’s consider the words slip, lapse, and relapse.

· A slip is best understood as a brief failure in judgment that leads to an imperfection in recovery and a form of acting out that’s challenging to eliminate without some learned skill, effort, or empowering insight.

· A bit farther down the path is what some would call a lapse. This is when a poor decision or slip has developed into something more willful yet brief. Your spouse crosses a line but then returns to his senses, owns up to his lapse in judgment, and recommits to the recovery plan.

· When fully conceived and repeated, a lapse can become a relapse. During a relapse, your husband’s behavior looks very much like what was occurring before he started the recovery process. He returns to a secret life of pornography use or other sexual infidelities, along with lies, deception, and cover-ups, which often continue until he is “caught” again.

A man in recovery needs a well-defined safety plan to prevent further progression toward a relapse should he stumble or even willfully cross a line that goes against agreed-upon boundaries.

Next, we’ll examine why a structured plan by a counselor is so important. 

Scripture: Proverbs 21:1

The Counselor’s Plan Is Key

A wife cannot – and should not – be her husband’s “babysitter,” and especially not his primary or exclusive accountability partner. Yet she can’t remain fully in the dark either. A skilled counselor is the one to help you and your husband come up with a plan that includes various forms and frequency of communication about your husband’s progress and the challenges he faces.

Your husband will communicate with the counselor and supportive men in his life to stay accountable, and they’ll need to keep you informed of his progress. Plans often include periodic check-ins with the recovery counselor, and a pastor, and/or another stable, mature accountability partner.

Your husband’s forthright sharing at regular intervals and growing emotional intimacy with you are key. This is where the skills you both learned during intensive marital therapy will be especially useful. Eventually, the effort your husband invests in recovery can lead to greater safety and trust in your relationship based on what he’s said and done consistently over time.

Once your husband begins to make important and genuine efforts toward restoring trust, you can hopefully be ready to emotionally receive those trust deposits into your heart in a meaningful way. Your job is to maintain goodwill in the journey and rightly evaluate and discern these deposits for what they are. By now you’re probably able to view the overall situation and read whether your husband is sincere in his recovery efforts. If he is and you still have trouble even trying to trust him, something else may be going on within you.

If practicing self-care and maintaining spiritual and emotional health aren’t occurring in your life, it will eventually seem to you and your husband that no matter how many trust deposits he makes, it will never make a difference. At that point, either of you is more likely to give up on positive change. Hearts can become sullen or hard. But you and your marriage deserve the time and attention it takes to remove barriers to your peace and progress.

Next, we’ll examine the concept of the Three Bowls. 

Scripture: Ephesians 4:32

The Three Bowls

On this road to recovery, the journey toward healing can seem like an endless, confusing maze, and it’s easy to lose sight of the process as well as the goal.

To help you visualize where you’re heading and how you’ll get there, imagine three bowls nested inside each other, becoming a single unified stack. 

The bowl at the bottom of the stack represents forgiveness.

The bowl in the middle represents reconciliation.

The bowl at the top represents restoration.

An ingredient is being poured into them. That ingredient is trust.

In the recovery process, forgiveness leads to reconciliation, and reconciliation leads to restoration. They’re filled to the brim with trust.

Let’s look more closely at the first bowl: forgiveness.

Bowl 1: Forgiveness

Forgiveness is the largest “bowl” that holds the other two bowls and must be present for reconciliation and restoration to take place. However, forgiving doesn’t mean you should be naive or let your husband take advantage of you. Forgiveness does not have to depend on the other person’s actions; it’s an individual spiritual choice. But notice:

Forgiveness is not:

· To be tritely rushed; to be “forced” or “demanded of you” by another human being

· A way to simply bury emotions

· Immediately trusting the offender again

· Condoning or excusing the offense

· Minimizing or justifying the behavior

· Showing leniency or exonerating the offender from necessary restorative actions

· Balancing the scales (exacting revenge)

· Using a ledger system to measure out the amount of grace you “owe” based on your own shortcomings by comparison

· Reconciling with your husband (agreeing on the record of events) or restoring your marriage (coming back together again), although these two steps can be desired and eventual outcomes of forgiveness

Contrary to all of this, forgiveness is a matter of releasing yourself from bondage to the resentment and bitterness that may be holding you hostage.

True biblical forgiveness means:

· Giving up unhealthy anger, which is often revealed in bitterness, the silent treatment, or revenge

· Facing up to the true nature and personal impact of the offense and willingly dealing with the injury it has inflicted

· Turning over to God both the offense and the offender

· Choosing to release your own demand for justice in punishing the other person

· Staying open to the possibility of a renewed relationship

Next, we’ll examine the second bowl: reconciliation. 

Scripture: 2 Corinthians 5:18

Reconciliation

Unlike forgiveness, reconciliation is a joint venture. It means that you and your husband agree on what happened and are no longer in a battle over the facts and reality of where things stand. Reconciliation doesn’t necessarily mean restoration. Couples may agree on what happened and find a way to cope or make peace with it, only to return to separate corners in their lives. Oddly, coping may even include divorce or living virtually apart in the same home.

Sadly, if one or both partners aren’t willing to actively participate in the recovery process, protective distance might be necessary. Occasionally, though, husbands or wives settle for a less-than-full recovery because they might not realize there’s more healing to come, or they simply might not want to do the work.

These couples haven’t yet realized the deeper potential of restoration. Maybe one of them – it can be either party – lacks the vision, skills, ability, or assistance to get there. Ideally, however, your marriage will experience something better and greater ahead – something redemptive that’s in line with God’s character. It’s called restoration.

We’ll examine that next. 

Scripture: Jeremiah 33:6

Restoration

This part of the joint venture is biblical reconciliation in the fullest sense of the word. Restoration fulfills God’s heart and purpose in a way that puts His redemptive characteristics and love on display. It means that you and your husband have progressively forgiven and reconciled and are now working on repairing and rebuilding your relationship and intimacy. Restoration is the best relapse-prevention plan.

Consider Jeremiah 33:6, when God revealed to Judah and Israel His plan for restoration: “Behold, I will bring to [this city] health and healing, and I will heal [My people] and reveal to them abundance of prosperity and security.”

God’s lavish nature and desire are to restore your marriage beyond any of the good things you experienced before – blessing you with more relational vision, health, and enjoyment. At the end of this journey, you may even find yourselves enjoying your marriage in a deeper way for the first time ever! How do you get there? The investment and tools learned within professional couples therapy are often a major key in unlocking newness in marriages.

Next, we’ll examine how to help your children understand what’s happening in your relationship. 

Scripture: Ephesians 6:4

Helping Children Understand What’s Going On

If you have children, they’re also going to need some help working their way through this family crisis. Older children may already know what’s been happening; younger kids will have sensed stress in the home and will need someone to come alongside them as they deal with feelings they don’t really understand.

It’s especially important to assure children of all ages that they’re emotionally and physically safe, and you won’t allow anything to harm them or threaten their security. Resist the temptation to pretend that nothing is going on or keep your children totally in the dark concerning this serious issue in your marriage. Some parents might try to hush up the whole thing. Others may feel a need to lie about the counseling sessions they’re attending. That’s not a good idea. Honesty is always the best policy – allowing for, of course, age-appropriate language and content.

Whatever you do, handle the topic sensitively and don’t overload your children with unnecessary details. Depending on your children’s ages, you can use broad conversation starters, such as “Mom and Dad are getting help for our relationship,” or “We love each other, and sometimes disappointments and problems happen that God helps us solve through counseling. That’s what we’re doing because our family is so important to us. We want you to know where we’re going, but we don’t want you to worry. Do you have any questions?”

Follow your children’s lead. Don’t give them more information than they’re asking for, but don’t withhold or lie. These are tender and teachable moments, and your children need your reassurance while you’re devoting a lot of necessary attention to yourself and your marriage. If you have close friends, babysitters, or extended family whom your children especially enjoy and feel comfortable with, this is a time to enlist their help so your children are well cared for while you and your husband spend time in personal reflection, conversations, or counseling sessions.