He Cheats and I'm Confused: Can I Trust Him Now?

Dear Don,

I feel totally lost and confused in my relationship. My fiancé wants us to get married in six months. We have been together for about six years, and it has been hard. Our feeling of love is so strong, and we depend totally on each other for support. He started cheating on me, and when I finally found out, I confronted him, and then I called it quits. After a few weeks, I begged him to take me back, but he said “No,” so I moved on with my life. Then, he begged me to take him back. It was too difficult to refuse, because I felt he had changed.

Now that we are preparing to marry, I am afraid that he has not changed, and that he is still cheating but I just haven’t caught him. I know that he loves me, but I feel uncertain. Because of his cheating my parents insisted that I stop seeing him, but I saw him anyway behind their backs. I am keeping our marriage plans from my parents, and I don’t feel good about lying to them. What should I do? I am so confused. ~Is Something Fishy?

 

Dear Is-Something- Fishy,

You are not confused. You just don't like what you are seeing and feeling.

You are afraid to face it squarely and really investigate what is really going on in this relationship. Your gut tells you that something is off. TRUST IT. Something is off.

Your uncertainty about your fiancé and your secret marriage plans indicates that the painful issue of cheating is still brewing under the surface of your relationship. It often takes a year and more of the good, hard work of marriage counseling for couples to get beyond the denial and feelings of betrayal that infidelity creates. Before you can move forward with a relationship with this man, you must face the fact that you no longer trust him. Until you both do the work to rebuild real--demonstrable with actions--trust between you, the foundation of your upcoming marriage is seriously flawed. Words are NOT enough.The hope that your fiancé has changed is based on the feelings of emotional longing not real trust.

Affair Recover Resources

Longing is about emotion. Trust is about keeping agreements. It might feel good to have him back, but emotions change like the weather and are NOT a stable foundation on which to build a long-term relationship.  At the first sign of difficulty between you, this nagging hurt and mistrust will drive you apart again, and eventually make you want to punish him. If you are still hiding this relationship from your parents and are sneaking around, then you too are being deceptive, just differently than your fiancé. You both need to look at how deception plays a major part in how you deal with conflict. You need to face the fact that you both have the habit of lying about things that are very important to you.

My advice to you is to slow down and to trust your gut. Get some counseling that focuses on developing maturity--the ability to care about what is actually going on in terms of actions and trust that more than emotion. This your best long-term friend and partner. It won’t let you down when you feel confused. What is really happening in your relationship is BURNING IN YOUR GUT. Ask yourself what it was that caused you to end your relationship in the first place? Find out why he did not want to initially take you back? Through honest dialogue with the help of a skilled counselor, the two of you will uncover what you both fear and really want. From this place, you can find some traction to take productive steps instead of going around this same circle, whether it be together or apart.

Marriage--any long term committed emotional relationship--forces the inevitable conflict that each person has to the surface, either willingly or unwillingly. So, the real choice that you now face is whether you are going to confront what is going on inside of you, your deception, your fiancé and his cheating or wait until you have two children and a mortgage!

At the brink, people find the will to change.  Let the answer to marry or not come from investigating what is underneath all this emotional drama. No matter what it looks like on the surface, underneath you will eventually find the very best of you and your gut and your decision will be one of peace.

Investigate! You don't get what you expect, you get what you seriously inspect.

Now, let's get to it!

Don

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