Trust & Relationships

I took a post it note – wrote “I’m done” – stuck it to his phone, and left it on his nightstand. This was the second time he had lied to me, and the second time he had involved a third party in our relationship.

Once he found the post it note in the morning he showed up to my house speechless and in tears…what could he say?

The night before we had gone out drinking and I was the DD, therefore by the end of the night I was the sober one. I had noticed him texting someone on our way home and had my suspicions about who it was. (Sidenote: All women have a sixth sense and they’re usually always on point)

When we got home I wanted to give him the opportunity to tell me the truth to my face. I really didn’t want to go through his phone or play any sort of games, we had an honest relationship and I wanted to keep it that way. I reminded him of how important the truth was to me and how lying was a deal breaker, especially since we had already had a similar situation early on in our relationship.

I asked if he was texting “blank” and he looked me in my eyes and denied it. I absolutely knew he was lying, especially because I was 100% sober and much more aware of what was going on that night. So I asked him the same question one more time to give him another chance to tell me the truth. He took that opportunity and lied to me yet again. I looked at this man dead in the eye and could feel my heart breaking. I knew he definitely had way too much to drink, but a lie is a lie, and a text is a text.

We were together for years and I had never gone through his phone, I refused to be that type of woman. Not to him, but to myself. I always believed that if I felt the need to do that, then I would remove myself from that relationship.

Yet here I was at 3:00 a.m., entering the password to his phone looking for what I knew I would find. It was there at the top, her name and their thread of text messages exchanged with each other that night. They previously had dated, which I knew and didn’t care, we had run into her that night, again, didn’t care, sending text messages behind my back to her, definitely cared. The truth is, it wasn’t even anything bad. It was more of a “good seeing you, good luck with everything” kind of vibe.

But like I said, a lie is a lie, and a text is a text. I gave him multiple opportunities that night to tell me the truth and warned him of the consequences if he was lying. He not only lied, but attempted to make me feel crazy for even coming up with this kind of “story.”

In all my relationships I’ve never been a jealous girlfriend, any of my exes could testify to that (Crazy? Oh for sure, Over Dramatic? Oh ya, right here – but not jealous). To me, trust is not only necessary, it’s absolutely vital if a relationship is going to work. My belief is if I don’t trust you, I won’t be in that relationship, I respect myself too much.

So now here I am.

It’s 6:00 a.m. and the man I love is knocking on my front door because he found me missing from his bed when he woke up with a note on his nightstand saying “I’m done.”

We laid side by side for an hour in silence. I wanted nothing to do with him. We had gone down this road before, he had done this exact same thing to me in the beginning of our relationship and I had promised myself never again.

When we finally exchanged words I could feel my emotions explode out of me. I was yelling and crying at the same time. HOW could he do this to me again?!? How could he hurt me like this? You don’t do this kind shit to people you love! I screamed that I wished I didn’t love him so much, that I HATED that I loved him so much, otherwise this would all be so much easier.

He sat there with tears running down his face taking in all of my words. He took full responsibility for what he had done, but had no explanation for why he did what he did… except for being really drunk and dumb.

I spent the next couple of days mulling over what I was going to do. I know what kind of woman I am, I know everything I stand for – this was EVERYTHING I’m against. This was everything I would never accept, this was everything I would walk away from and never look back at….but it was so different this time. This time I was in love, this time my heart was all the way in it.

I thought about the scripture Proverbs 4:23, Above all else guard your heart, for everything you do flows through it.

We spend so much of our lives protecting this vessel. We build walls around it, we cover it with layers and shields, making it almost impossible for anyone to get close or get through.

Then one day someone comes along and we not only expose it, we place it in their hands trusting them to handle it with the utmost love and care.

We give this person all the power in the world to hurt us, but trust them not to.

As I said in my last post, everyone we love will hurt us at some point – I don’t say this to be or sound pessimistic, I say this because it’s just a part of life. Just as they will hurt us, we will hurt them. Rarely do we ever intentionally hurt the people we love, but because we’re all human, there will come a time when we all will fall short.

Every single relationship I’ve had I’ve been lied to, and each time there was a third party involved.

I’m definitely not innocent in all of this…I’ve done my share of lying as well. I’ve lied in every single relationship I’ve been in…except for one. In that one relationship I was deeply in love, the kind of love where you couldn’t imagine hurting the other person in that kind of way. But then it made me think, he lied to me not once – but twice, and each time it involved another woman…so did he really love me if he could lie to me?

I know I’m not the only person to think and experience this.

Why do the people we love lie to us?
Is it that hard to have a relationship completely honest and truthful?

More importantly, once the trust has been broken can it ever fully be restored?

We decided to meet up to determine if we were going to move forward with our relationship or not. As I discussed in my last blog post, I had to ask myself, What kind of woman will I be if I stay?

I knew what kind of relationship I didn’t want. This whole situation was obviously something I didn’t want, but it happened and now we had to deal with it.

We chose to stay and fight for it. There was so much love there – too much to walk away.

It was important to me that I made a few things very clear:

“I will never bring this up again, I will never throw it in your face.
By choosing to stay I’m choosing to move forward.
I will absolutely never go through your phone again.
I won’t question where you are.
I won’t question who you’re with.
I won’t question what you’re doing.
What you tell me I’ll believe because I refuse to have that kind of relationship.
If from here on out you lie to me, that’s now between you and God.”

We never had another incident or issue with trust moving forward.

But does that mean my trust was fully restored in this man? I believe it was. However, I know it subconsciously created seeds of insecurity within myself – insecurity I never had before.

This would grow to effect me in different ways within this relationship…

 

 

(This post is continuing a series focused on relationships and the topics, challenges and experiences that present themselves within them.)