20 Steps To Rebuilding Trust After Your Affair

Unfaithful Spouse Addition

Rebuilding trust after an affair is one of the most important keys in recovery. Trust is a part of what makes up the foundation of a good marriage. After my affair, I could tell my husbands sense of security had been ripped out from under him. I could see it in his eyes every time I drove off. The fear of not truly knowing where I was going was tormenting him. Even though the affair had ended, the fear of the unknown still remained. So I knew I had to do something to help rebuild his trust. I wanted to help him feel safe again. That is when I realized how much of an important key trust is in the recovery journey.

My Journey

Trust is all about feeling safe and secure with your spouse and when it's broken it can shake someone to the core. I want to share with you how I was able to get my husband to trust me again with his whole heart.

I knew my words of I'm sorry and I will never do this again was good but not enough. Because I had lied so much during the affair that now my words were just empty noise. Building trust was going to have to come from my actions. I was going to have to show my husband that I meant what I said and that I was still the woman he married.

After an affair, your spouse will look at you in a different light. you will become like a stranger to them. So your credibility must be built back up.

The very first thing you can do is to work on self-improvement. This is one of the greatest gifts you can give to your family and yourself, a better version of you. We can't go wrong in learning how to improve our behavior and our mental health. By improving how we respond to lifes challenges our husbands can begin to see the change in us and start to feel safe again. And we can grow as a person, one who is not tossed around by every emotion we feel but one who is stable and steady.

In doing my research for this post I came across an article on PyschCentral and they were talking about the five qualities that are important for you to possess in order to rebuild trust.

• Sincerity
• Consistency
• Integrity
• Reliability
• Commitment

All of these qualities are important and I would suggest working towards making these qualities apart of your character. But in this post, I only want to focus on the three that I relied on the most to help the rebuilding process.

3 Essential qualities

1. Reliability-  This is something that my husband is very good at. I can trust that he will respond and behave in the same most of the time. It's just who he is and over time this quality has made me feel safe and secure. So I knew I wanted to incorporate this quality in my behavior. I began to look for ways in which I could show him I was reliable. For an instant, if I said I was going home at a certain time I would be there at that time. I would also show him who would text me and what that message said. I did these things and others on a consistent basis and over time he began to believe me. He was beginning to see my behavior was lining up with my words. If you keep doing what you say over time trust will begin to be rebuilt.
2. Integrity- For me, integrity means being honest and trustworthy even when no one is looking. And let's be honest an affair is the complete opposite of integrity. So for this quality, I decided I would be honest and transparent with my husband. I did not keep secrets, even when he asked questions that I knew would hurt him. This caused him to see that I would not spare his feelings when it came to telling the truth and he began to trust me.
3. Commitment- Is another big step in rebuilding trust. Being committed to the recovery process is hard work but it will show your spouse how dedicated you are at saving your marriage and it gives them hope that you are in this for the long haul. And that you love them enough to fight for the marriage.

It's worth the hard work

The rebuilding process is not easy and I had to give up some things during this process but it was worth it to have my husbands full trust back. I had destroyed a part of him I thought he would never get back. And I once believed he would never see me the same again, but now I have to say that I marriage is better than before and I have his full trust back. So be encouraged today that there is hope for your marriage, just be willing to put in the hard work and time it takes and you will look back and say we made it.

If you find yourself struggling with same and guilt which can hinder your progress then you can check out that post here

I created a guide for you. I Share the 20 most important steps I followed in helping my husband trust me again.  If you have any questions or need to talk please don't hesitate to message or email me.