5 Ways to Know If You Can Trust Your Boyfriend After He Cheated
How Do You Know If You Can Trust Him Again?
Deciding if you should trust your boyfriend after he cheated online or in person is one of the most difficult decisions you can make in a love relationship!
These tips will help – they’re based on a reader’s question about her cheating boyfriend:
“My boyfriend and I have been together for three years,” says Liz. “I just found out he has been talking to three other girls on the internet. He says he won’t do it again but I am still not sure. I don’t know what to do anymore. What do I do?” (from 10 Ways to Improve a Bad Relationship).
One of the first steps is to find out why he cheated. Books like The Truth about Cheating: Why Men Stray and What You Can Do to Prevent It are helpful because they give an objective perspective (which you and your boyfriend don’t necessarily have).
And, here are five tips for trusting your boyfriend after an affair (even “just” online chatting with other women!)…
5 Ways to Know If You Can Trust Your Boyfriend After He Cheated
Figure out why he cheated on you
If he cheated because he wasn’t getting something from you or your relationship, then it may be easier to rebuild trust because you can change your relationship! It isn’t easy, but you can work together to rebuild trust after cheating. But, if he cheated because he was bored or it’s in his nature to roam, then you might not want to trust him again. The reason he cheated may help you decide if you can trust him again. But remember: you can’t do all the work in figuring out why he cheated, how he can overcome the problem, and how to get your relationship back on track. He has to step up and be a man — which means admitting he cheated and working to make your relationship better.
Figure out what you need from your boyfriend and relationship
If your boyfriend travels for work or spends a lot of time with his friends, you may need him to put you first more often. If your boyfriend isn’t willing to talk about his feelings, reasons for cheating, or your relationship, then you may need him to open up more. Before you can decide if you can trust your boyfriend after he cheated on you, you need to figure out what you need from him.
Ask your boyfriend what he’s willing to do to save your relationship
After you figure out what you need from him, ask him clearly if he’s willing to give you what you need. Will he spend more time with you? Go to couples counseling with you — or get online help from a marriage coach? Start individual counseling for himself, if he needs to work through his emotional issues? Read books about rebuilding trust after an affair (even if that affair was “just” talking to other girls online)? If your boyfriend isn’t willing to work towards saving your relationship, then you shouldn’t trust him again!
Learn how to tell when a man is lying about cheating
Gary Neuman is the author of Emotional Infidelity: How to Affair-Proof Your Marriage and 10 Other Secrets to a Great Relationship
Don’t let fear or insecurity trap you in a bad relationship
Both men and women stay in bad relationships because they’re scared they’ll never be loved again. If your self-esteem or self-confidence is low, find ways to boost it without relying on your boyfriend or a love relationship. Getting as emotionally, physically, and spiritually healthy as possible is more important that deciding if you should trust your boyfriend after he cheated on you! The healthier you are, the easier all your decisions in life will be — including your most important decisions about love and relationships.
And remember – learning to trust your boyfriend after an affair doesn’t happen overnight. Rebuilding trust is a process that involves good and bad days – and good and bad discussions with your boyfriend! But, if you’re both willing to work on your relationship, you can rebuild trust and strengthen your love and commitment to one another.
For more tips, read How Long Do You Wait for Your Husband to Get Over His Affair?
If you want to share your story here, it may help you figure out if you can trust him after he cheated…
Related Articles:
- 6 Ways to Solve Problems in Your Love Relationship
- How to Prevent an Affair and Protect Your Marriage
- How to Propose to Your Boyfriend – The Female Proposal
Category: Love, Marriage, Reconnecting, Reconnections, Solving Problems
One day i was at track practice before basketball. well when i finished track and went to our team room one of my team mates told me the she saw one of the JV players kissing my boyfriend! i really love him and he has said sorry a million times and i wanna trust him again i just dont know if i can! I NEED HELP
My BF was sent to San Diego for briefing before deployment. He stayed out all night and morning bar hopping with the other guys, Ended up at whiskey girls and hooters and many other clubs, Called me AT 4 AM and started rambling off about random nonsense then when I called around 10 the next night he was standing outside a club with a girl from his unit who he later took out to dinner. And he has a past of being promiscuous, Not to mention he use to live IN San Diego and knows his way around.
Wow, Janice.
Your relationship sounds like it’s getting you down.
If your husband can treat you like that, and you sound like it’s been upsetting you for a while I definitely think you’re better off leaving him, or at least going on a break for a while to show him that you’re not going to stand for this behaviour. Stay with your family, or move out and do things to make yourself happy. Get your hair done, get a hobby, make new friends… meet someone else who will treat you like you deserve to be treated.
I can imagine if must be really difficult standing up to someone you love and you’ve been with for 10 years, but from what you say your relationship seems going the wrong way, maybe you should prioritise your children and your happiness.
Wow, Lost In San Diego! You are really going through a long-term period of suffering. No wonder you’re feeling anxious, who wouldn’t?!
I think you know the truth inside yourself, but you want so deeply to believe what your husband tells you because it is what you would prefer to be the truth.
I was in a long-term relationship with a perpetual cheater. He would become angry and tell me how I must be crazy when I confronted him with the inconsistencies in some of his stories. I hate to say, but I was right every time I felt something wrong was going on. I did not want to be right, I actually preferred to think perhaps I was jealous and insecure with trust issues.
After some counseling, I realized I had no real trust issues other than not believing lies and having good intuition. Not believing lies does not mean you don’t trust, only that you have good judgement and intelligence.
Nobody can tell you what to do or what is right, but you can count on the fact that your husband is going to remain the same person with the same behavior. Your decision will be to measure the inevitable hurts that ambush you occasionally compared to the good times and decide if they are worth it.
Don’t let him change you and make it about you. It will only hurt your self-esteem and make you feel like you don’t deserve more. You do.
Hello,
I have been with my husband for ten years. We have four children together. Four years ago, my husband (who is in the Navy) went with a friend (also married), to San Diego and ended up going out with two single girls staying out until 4:30 a.m. The night he went out with them, I knew something was us because he started yawning at like 6:30 p.m. and told me he was going to go to bed. So, I said goodnight and let him go. Anyway he ended up coming home and eventually came out and told me what had happened, but denies anything happend and that he only went out as the D.D.???
Okay so let me back up a few years. Before I met him I had been in another long term relationship with someone who also cheated on me. Not only did he cheat on me but he cheated on me with my best friend. So we ended up ending our relationship because it wasn’t the first time he had cheated.
So back to my marriage. From the very start I was very suspicious of him. I didn’t trust him and caught him in a lie or two. However he lied to me about an important factor. I had a co-worker spot him picking up another girl at a barracks room every day. I confronted him about it and he lied. He continued the lie up until I told him that she had seen him everyday because he drives right past her house, and then back again. So he finally admitted to it.
Anyway after this “Trip” to San Diego he said he didn’t want to loose me and wanted to go to marriage counseling. So we ended up going to marriage counseling for nine months. I have a problem with trust. I know that I do. I can’t help it though because of my past. Anyway that was a big thing I worked on outside of marriage counseling on my own with our marriage counselor. I worked on two of my biggest fears. 1. Learning to trust my husband, and 2. Learning to trust women again so that I could make friends.
I didn’t realize it but after my ex and my best friend had betrayed my trust I realized with the help of our therapist that I didn’t trust women, and I tended to cling to older women as mother figures for many different reasons, one being because I wouldn’t have to be afraid my husband would cheat with them. So after nine months, I felt great! I felt like a different person and I had confidence in my marriage and my husband.
Anyway to make the long story short, we eventually ended up moving to San Diego, and I ended up making friends with a girl whose husband works with mine. Her husband ended up deploying before mine and I promised him we would take care of her. So she decided she wanted to move up by us. So I allowed my husband to go help her get thing’s in order while I watched the kids and helped my best friend. So after a few months, I started wonder if something might be going on with the two of them. She was around a lot, and she needed his help a lot. There were times I saw them making intimate gestures towards each other and there was even a time that I thought I saw something going on in the kitchen but they must have heard me and quickly resumed whatever they had been doing in the kitchen.
My husband was getting ready to deploy and we had all gone up to Oceanside for a halfway bash, and my husband and my best friend on two different occasions when the other wasn’t around, let me know they had feelings for each other. I HIT THE ROOF!!! I was an emotional wreck. My husband had been treating me like the crap on his shoe and now I know why.
I asked both of them on many different occasions if something had happened. Both of them said no, and when I confronted my husband with my suspicions he told me I was being psycho again, and I was making it all up. I felt crazy. I felt like maybe I was loosing my mind.
Well my husband deployed and the farewell was nothing but a party for me. I thought our marriage was over as I knew there was something he wasn’t telling me. I knew that I was normal, and not crazy. I had taken myself to see a psychiatrist thinking that something was wrong with me and maybe I was wanting to look into the situation more than what was really going on. He didn’t seem to think that anything was wrong with me, but that I was obviously anxious and prescribed me an anti-depressant and after seeing me for a couple of months an anti-anxiety. It helped a lot and I was able to cope for the rest of his deployment.
So after my husband comes home, I had received a mistaken text from a guy friend who was texting his girlfriend telling her he loved her too. So that’s when my whole world fell in. My husband tells me that he and my best friend had carried on an affair before he left, and he had lied to me about it the whole time. He had make me think I was the crazy one. So once again I lost my best friend and my husband.
My husband and I decided to try to work through it because we have four children involved, but I am back to my trust level -10 from where I was when we first started going to marriage counseling.
So now here we are a year later and he has deployed and I have noticed some odd things happening again. He has started to treat me differently again and I feel as though he may be cheating again, but he refuses to say anything and continues to tell me that I am trying to find things that “aren’t,” there.
I am in a total disarray. I feel like I am going crazy again. I don’t want to be this way, but I am being super suscpicious and I don’t trust him and continue to question him. Which I don’t want to do. However I just recently found an email and skype account that he says he know’s nothing about. He plays like he is dumb even though I am able to log into the skype account.
Before he left he had taken my laptop with him TAD and when he brought it home a new program “windows messener live” was installed and his username automatically populated the messenger but I can’t figure out the password and he denies it.
I feel like my life and my world are coming to an end. I don’t know if I should leave him or if I should stay with him and live with his constant betrayals until I have my degree and hand stand on my own two feet. I had a great job making a lot of money before we moved to San Diego but decided to go back to school.
I know that by staying in a relationship where my husband is cheating on me even if my children don’t understand what is happening, they will grow up and feel as if it is okay for their spouse to walk all over them and lie to them, or with my boys they will feel like it is okay to treat women like property and try to brainwash them and make them feel like my husband makes me feel.
I am lost, not to mention alone since my family lives more than two days away.
How can I talk to my husband and try to get him to open up about what he is doing, and why is it that he keeps lying to me. I want to check out completely and try to make it work and live together with our children but go our seperate ways as far as our marriage goes. I feel that I am being drug around on a chain and I don’t think it’s fair.
Thanks for listening;
LOST in SAN DIEGO!