Do you know the number one question couples ask in recovery?

I'll let you know in a moment, but first I want to share with you a story. When my middle daughter was in high school, she decided to be a cheerleader. I was fine with it; what type of trouble could she get into leading cheers, right?

I remember sitting in the stands for the first game, waiting for her début as a cheerleader. What I failed to consider in my risk assessment was her size. Sopping wet, she might have tipped the scale at 90 pounds, which made her the perfect candidate for the “team flyer.” When they threw my munchkin into the air, Stephanie had to use restraints to keep me from running out to catch her. Now don't get me wrong; it's not the fact that the activity was risky. Since she was a feather weight, I had thrown her high in the air thousands of times. It’s just that I was the one catching her…and I trusted me. This time, there were a bunch of girls I didn't even know, waiting to catch my baby. Lucky for them, they made the catch, but I still didn't like it. I didn't trust them one bit.

When I finally got to my little girl, I grilled her, asking how this could possibly be safe. She just laughed and said it wasn't, but that she trusted her spotters. "How do you know you can trust them?" I asked.

I wonder if my daughter would have felt the same if they had ever missed?

Are you ready for the number one question asked by couples who are trying to recover from an affair?

"How do I/we ever trust again?"

Engaging in a marriage after the affair is a bit like my daughter's cheerleading. We desperately need to know that our mate will be there when we need them. We need to know they will catch us when we fall. But as you know, affairs destroy all trust. It's hard to imagine how that precious commodity can be rebuilt after it's been destroyed.

You can always replace trust with lots of honesty. If trust is broken, then honesty is the only commodity that will allow the betrayed mate to feel safe after the affair. Free-flowing honesty feels scary, but it serves as the first sign in determining if a mate is committed to the relationship. Safety must be the initial goal, not trust. Creating safety lays the foundation for rebuilding trust.

How great would it feel if you could trust your mate again or if your mate could trust you again? Before that can happen, you and your mate have to explore what happened and what made your relationship vulnerable, then you need to see your mate taking the necessary steps to move forward. Without willingness from both partners to be safe enough for the marriage, it's impossible for trust to grow. Without the wayward spouse first trusting their mate with what happened, it's hard for the betrayed spouse to ever trust again. Without a mutual understanding of the problem, it's impossible to trust your mate. Without a belief that things can and will be better in the future, trust won't be reestablished. Until you believe your mate understands your pain and that they grieve over what they've done to you, it's hard to trust.

It's normal to wonder if it's even worth it as you decide whether to commit to the relationship long term. It takes patience, respectful communication, and dedication to the process in order to co-create a better relationship than you had before.

Before we look at how to rebuild trust, let's first see if we can define it. Trust is the confident belief that our spouse's intentions and motivations are thoughtful, kind, and compassionate toward us, that they have our best interest at heart; and we are similarly responsive to them in these same ways.

We are all born with the ability to trust others but, through our life experiences, many of us become less trusting and tend to protect ourselves by disconnecting in various ways. Think about the early years of your marriage. Your new life together was invigorating and uncertain all at the same time. Most of us had questions about our own or our fiancé's abilities to keep promises, to be dependable, and to not keep secrets. On the other hand, when you were first engaged and newlyweds, you might have said that “of course we trust each other.”

In reality, trust is built over time as we (or if we) continue to feel emotionally safe with each other. Marriage expert, John Gottman, says that the work of building trust occurs as we move through life together, where there are misunderstandings and miscommunications, we have to repair them. It is in the repair work that healing, learning, and integration happen.

In the book he co-authored with Nan Silver, What Makes Love Last?: How to Build Trust and Avoid Betrayal*, they suggest that we create attunement through the "art of intimate conversations," one conversation at a time, spread out over the lifespan of the relationship. Conversation is indeed an art, and intimacy is a fundamental element of trust. Remember, these conversations are hard. They are not always pleasant, and they may not make us feel close in the moment, but they are so important! Gottman and Silver developed a beautiful acronym to illustrate this work of creating emotional connection:

Awareness – Acknowledge each other's emotions. Consciously look for your spouse's emotional state.
Turning Toward – Address your spouse's emotion. Talk about it.
Tolerance – Accept the reality of your spouse's emotion.
Understanding – Momentarily put your own perspective aside and seek to understand their opinion.
Non-Defensive Listening – Help clarify your spouse's position first.
Empathy – Understanding what your spouse's experience is like.¹

The authors also say that intimate conversations include learning to put our feelings into words as well as asking thought-provoking, open-ended questions, making sure you understand what the other is saying and feeling. One way to do this is to respond in your own words with the emotion and words you heard them say. When your partner confirms that’s what they are saying, they will feel heard and understood, it will open them up to share more with you.

There is no better time than now to practice this. If you are reading this article, then you are likely going through the most difficult season in your life. I believe that betrayal trauma presents a unique opportunity to repair and heal, then increase safety and build trust. I am in no way minimizing the heartbreaking pain caused by infidelity. It creates a pain like no other, and you won’t be ready for all of this all at once. It is very difficult to reestablish trust, but believe me when I say, it is more than possible!

Affair Recovery's internal polling research shows that 85% of couples who have attended the EMS Weekend Retreat or the EMS Online Course report saving their marriage at the one-year point following participation. But you can't stop there, building a better relationship is a lifetime endeavor. Some of the best and strongest relationships I know are based on the hard work, repair, and healing that came after brokenness caused by infidelity.

Infidelity recovery is work and takes time. It's messy; you are both going to make mistakes along the way. In the beginning, the wayward spouse must lead the way in taking responsibility, expressing empathy, and reestablishing trust.

If you are the wayward spouse and need help with this, I'd like to invite you to consider enrolling in our Hope for Healing course. It is a 17-week, online course designed to help you in many aspects of your healing journey. It covers healthy communication, how to create safety for you and your spouse, the neuroscience of it all, and much more.