Trusting Someone Is Difficult (But Not Impossible) When You’ve Been Cheated On

The truth of the matter is, darling, there was a break in us before we even began—a dark seed of distrust in our hearts, planted there by ex-partners too cowardly and cold to treat us with the honesty and devotion we deserved.

That is the true consequence of unfaithfulness – not the pain and harm it inflicts in the moment, but the scar it leaves lingering on the hearts of its victims long after the relationship is over. It is the feeling that we are not enough. That every time we turn, our partners will look somewhere else. It is searching for the residue of lipstick on his neck, or the scent of another man’s cologne in the fabric of her dress.

It is to examine every moment of unusual behaviour—stringing even the smallest, most trivial “clues” together into ludicrous tales of deceit and betrayal that begin to feel so real in your head, you actually start to believe them. It is that cruel, harrowing voice in your heart, whispering: It is not a matter of if, but when.

The fact is, we entered this love with knives in our backs, so we can forgive each other for being distrustful and guarded, but if we allow it, suspicion will rot away at the root of our love until it can no longer support its own weight and collapses. We can’t let that happen.

We can’t allow their mistakes to unmake us. We can’t allow their poison to sicken and drain the life from our love. It is ours, not theirs. And it is brilliant, not broken. We cannot grant them the satisfaction of dismantling our lives a second time. They don’t belong here.

Faith is a tricky thing. We can never really know with absolute certainty whether we have placed it in the right or wrong hands until it’s too late. But we take the leap anyway. We choose to trust because that is what we deserve — a fresh start — a love that is designed by our actions in the present, not the pain in our pasts.