MAJOR Trust Issues- Do i need professional help?!

[csr14]

Ok I have trust issues that I'm starting to believe I may never get past. A little background on me and I'm going to explain to you the people who really screwed me up.

 

I'm 25, I have a four year old with my now ex husband (we will call him Alan) as of April 2011. We were together for 4 years. We basically got married because I was pregnant and weren't really in love. I was pretty invested in him but he wasn't really in me until I got pregnant. During our relationship I thought I loved him. I definitely trusted him and I loved him for giving me my daughter but not the way a wife should love her husband. I was comfortable and thought I would be with him for life. It did always bother me that we were brought together by a child and not our love for each other but still I was content. Not happy necessarily, just content. Where we started having problems was with a friend he had at work - a girl. He texted her constantly and she and her boyfriend would hang out with us and she became my friend too. This started in October of 2010. Everyone was telling me that they had something going on but I trusted him as my husband and didn't listen even though the signs were there. In April he left me. He broke my heart. I thought marriage was forever and he proved to me for him it wasn't. It turns out he did cheat with his friend from work and they are now together.

 

Fast-forward to Jack - Jack was someone I went on a date with in highschool 7 years ago. He found me on facebook and saw I was single so he asked me out. This was in May - WAY too early to be dating anyone yet. I think I projected all my feeling for Alan onto Jack. Jack was a liar - a lot of the stuff he lied about was for no reason and to this day never understood why. He would lie to me to get out of stuff, lie to me to impress me - whatever - he lied a lot. When we became official this girl he was seeing before me started texting. When he was single she didn't want him but as soon as we were together she was all about him. After a few weeks he broke up with me for her. It was so weird with him bc when he wasn't around I would get this anxiety in my stomach - like this worry. I don['t know if deep down I knew he was a liar or if I had it bc of what my ex husband had done to me. Jack is still with the girl who broke us up.

 

Fast-forward to Brock. I met broke on plenty of fish - he lived about 3 hours away. I started talking to him in late August, early September. He was even a bigger liar than Jack. He felt the need to feed me lines of crap to make me trust him. After about 3 weeks of talking I drove to go meet him bc we were hitting it off so well. I stayed at his place and we messed around but didn't have sex. 3 weeks went by and we talked constantly. I got to where I really liked and trusted him. After those 3 weeks he came down to see me. We had sex on this trip and he stayed two days and we kept contact. Then he started getting weird. He started blowing off my calls and texts and always had excuses. He would say he was sick, or working or whatever and it seemed weird. I went up to see him one weekend and he had changed towards me and was pretty secretive about me. After that I went home and his Grandpa died - which really happened bc I verified it on google. He really started blowing me off at this point - yes he was busy but he would make up all kinds of lies to screw with me. I got pregnant with him and ended up having an abortion. He continued to blow me off but said he still wanted to date. After about 4 weeks of blowing me off, I decided to message his ex girlfriend and ask her questions about him bc his lies weren't playing out. I caught him in a ton of lies including that he had been trying to reconcile with her for the last 2 months. He was so mad and cut off contact with me completely. I was so hurt bc for 3 months I tried so hard to make the distance work and it happened to me again. Brock got back with his ex and is still with her.

 

I don't care about any of these guys anymore - But the trust issues still linger.

 

I went single for about a month and a half. I dated but didn't get serious with anyone. Then I met Bob in December. Bob is the most amazing man I've ever met. In the beginning when he wasn't around I would get that anxiety that I would get with Jack but that stopped after a month or so. He is awesome with my daughter, he's a hard worker, he loves my family and he's always 100 percent honest with me. We have been together almost 7 months. We just got a place together and I have never been happier. But there's a problem - I don't trust him bc I know what he's capable of. If he hurt me I don't know if I could ever recover. I trust him - but it's just in the back of my mind ya know? I trust the man I think he is but I'm scared there could be another side who doesn't care about me and would drop me in a second. Its not anything he's done it's just the way I think bc of my past. I do realize he isn't any of those guys and he shouldn't be punished for what they did. I try so hard to invest myself 100 percent but I just can't get past the trust part. We've been together 7 months. Shouldn't I trust him by now? Any advice on how I can help myself trust him? I'm so scared bc I'm afraid I'm going to ruin us if I keep having these trust issues. He's aware of them and trying to help me work through them however he can but he doesn't know what to do. Does anyone have any tips? I think the one that messed me up worst than any was my marriage. Everything we owned was ours. We had so many things that were bonded and still he left. We were legally bound by marriage and a child. We had a house, 3 dogs, joint bank accounts, joint credit cards - and he left. If he could leave, how can I ever trust that anyone else won't?

[sodizzy]

Well Bob is not Brock, Jack, or Alan so that's the first thing that you need to realize. Second - you are moving so fast in these relationships (Honestly I'm not one to talk because I'm with the the first guy I met after my divorce) but I really sense that this is the issue. You're not taking any time to heal probably from Alan - your husband. Nevertheless - you're in it with this guy now and you just have to look at it like you can't change what will or won't happen. Bob seems to love you - Enjoy the love and make sure you take care of yourself emotionally in the process. Anyone who has been hurt before has trust issues - but all men AND Women are capable of hurting the ones they love and you can't control that outcome. Accept that you're worthy of Bob's love and enjoy that love. Also - maybe speaking to a counselor would help. The men who left for others - those are their issues not yours.

[nutbrownhare]

Yes, if Bob hasn't done anything untrustworthy, had any kind of dodgy past - then just relax as much as you can, and trust will come in time.

 

I think you've been moving way too fast, too. One of the problems of not having enough time to heal between relationships is that you then take all the baggage from the previous one into the next one, in an ever-increasing bundle. With your husband, you married because you were pregnant, and there wouldn't have been any real trust in his feelings for you. There couldn't have been, because you hadn't spent enough time together before you committed. You'd have been very lucky if your marriage HAD lasted, in fact.

 

With the other guys, you got involved with people that basically you knew nothing about.

 

One of the things that troubles me about internet dating is that you know a lot about a person factually (assuming they aren't telling porkies on their profiles), a load of stuff you find out about in the early days. If it were someone you'd met, say, through social activities, it would take you a lot longer to find out about their experiences, interests etc - and in that time you'd get the opportunity to weigh them up and really get to understand what their personality's like and how well it meshes with yours. So with internet dating, it's easy to have an illusion that you know the other person - when you really don't, in all the ways that matter. I know a few guys who are serial daters through internet sites - and I wouldn't touch any of them with a bargepole. But of course someone else will.

 

So, in a way, you were walking into a situation with untrustworthy guys and trusting them way before they had proven themselves worthy of it. Until someone has shown you consistently that you can trust them - you can't. But this doesn't seem to be the case with Bob, unless there's something you're not mentioning on here. He has freely chosen you, with no sense of obligation, unlike your ex husband. And he's a different guy.

 

Going to see a counsellor might be a good option to process the trauma from your previous relationships, certainly a lot better than risking sabotaging your current one with a pile of stuff which really has nothing to do with it.

[HeartGoesOn]

I'm confused. Who is "Robbie" whom you posted about in the thread below, and have been together with for the past two years?

 

 

[csr14]

I don't really know where the two years came from haha, I've known Robbie for about 2 years - and we lost touch - we "re-met" in December and I realized what an amazing guy he was. It's been 7 months together. and we've lived together officially for a couple of months. At that point it was about 6 months together and a month of living together and my divorce was finalized as of 3 months ago. Robbie - is Bob. I changed names to protect identities but I supposed I haven't done that in the past.

[lavenderdove]

OK, the pattern i see here is that you think trust is something that is granted in the beginning based on being in a relationship, when trust is someething that is based on experience and learning over time that you can or can't trust someone, based on how they are behaving.

 

re: your husband, everyone i know who married just because the woman was pregnant eventually ended up in divorce. the marriage is built on shaky ground because of a sense of obligation, but over time as the marriage goes on what usually happens if the couple was not in love and one or the other felt obligated but no real desire for the marriage, eventually they feel trapped and want out. So you probably shouldn't have married your husband to begin with just if there was a child and he wasn't honest about his feelings because eventually the marriage has nothing to sustain it emotionally. An early pregnancy is a great way to ruin a relationship becuase it spooks men away from you and can make them feel resentful and trapped like you did it on purpose even if it was accidental.

 

And re: Brock and Jack, you do have to kiss a lot of toads before you find someone who loves you back the same way you love them. Again, the relationship won't work just because you get pregnant or because he happens to be your BF, it will work because he is emotionally committed to you and has a good character that means he doesn't believe in cheating.

 

So if the new guy has good character, doesn't believe in cheating, is treating you right, and is in love with you and doing nothing that is untrustworthy, then you should enjoy it and not get too hung up in worrying based on past experience. Just because you once had a car crash doesn't mean you should give up driving, it means you should drive responsibly and try to avoid situations that might get in trouble.

 

For example, you've gotten pregnant by 2 men when you weren't even dating them that long or seriously. So you need to stop that and get some better birth control and perhaps double up on methods (i.e., birth control pills AND condoms) especially with someone you don't know well enough to consider parenting with them.

 

And if you are on your third man after you husband only moved out 15 months ago, you are jumping in with these men WAY too fast and expecting too much of them. In the early stages of dating, you should go slow and NOT trust anyone until you've been with them a long time and they have built up good credit and experience with you in the trust dept.

 

Nothing says you have to trust anyone at all if they haven't proven themselves trustworthy! So don't get hung up on that idea. If the issue is you are anxious and shell shocked all the time, then you probably didn't allow yourself enough time after the divorce to just be single and process the loss and that pain, and are applying it to any man who comes your way, and perhaps your judgment is not good becuase you are just jumping into things quickly with men rather than keeping them at arms length for a while until you learn what they are really about.

 

And the point is too that you could have all the trappings of security (home, house, kids, etc.) and life could throw you a curve ball and you could become a widow, or bad times befall you etc. In other words, nothing is guaranteed in life but that there WILL be changes, some good and some bad. So you need to learn to be more adaptable and not just have a bad experience or two and start hating all men or thinking none of them are trustworthy. There are good men and bad men and bad choices such as marrying someone just for the sake of a child when the man doesn't love you.

 

You need to start examining your reality rather than just fantasies, in other words, if the man is really behaving well and in love with you, you can proceed on with your life with him BUT don't marry quickly or marry for any other reason than you are both committed to each other and both feel the same way about each other and have given it enough time together that you are confident that he is a decent person and wants a permanent life with you.

 

So my suggestion at this point is to just relax and have fun... you're barely out of a marriage and are racing thru a bunch of men rather than processing that marriage/divorce, discovering who you are (you are still quite young), having fun and not taking this man too seriously too soon. I wouldn't even consider thinking about getting serious wtih him until you've been together at least 2 years, and he's given you only positive indications that he is a moral man you can trust.

 

So slow down, have fun, don't dwell on the past and keep watching for evidence he is trustworthy rather than obsessing about what MIGHT happen becuase you've rushed thru a bunch of other men who didn't work out recently. If he's still with you in a couple years and still behaving well, then you might consider him seriously, but not until then.

[lavenderdove]

btw, i've been lied to royally a couple times, and now I am just must more observant and don't at all think all men are jerks or that i'll never trust everybody.

 

Regaining trust has a lot to do with trusting YOURSELF to have your wits about you and pace a relationship such that you don't keep going in deeper and deeper with someone who is setting off alarms. I trust MYSELF now to know and watch for signs that something is not right, and at the same time know that i will be fine and survive if someone does do something that breaches my trust... i can and will walk away and not look back if it is a large breach, and if it is a small breach or misunderstanding, then i communicate very clearly what i want and need from the person and see if they adapt and compromise to give me what i need.

 

So you do need to toughen up a bit to realize you are in control of your life and part of that means not blindly leaping in with people you don't know that well, and also not doing something unwise like marrying someone who doesn't particuarly want to be married to you just because of a pregnancy. You have to be brutally honest with yourself about life as well and not yield to too many fantasies just because you want them to be real (i.e., we'll have a baby when i'm 20 and we're both young and everything will be fine even if he doesn't really love me or want to be together). So ground your feet in reality and observation rather than romance and fantasy, and things will end up fine.

 

I would have suggested that you don't move in with someone when you haven't even been separated from a husband barely a year yet, and who you've only dated a few months before moving in together, but that is water over the dam. What i'd do now is just not make any more commitments (i.e., no pregnancies, no wedding) until you have allowed sufficient time to pass to be sure that he is really committed to you and someone who is consistent in his behavior over time. If he isn't, then regardless of him living there or not, boot him out rather than getting more and more involved with someone behaving badly. Over the next couple or three years, good behavior = he stays and Bad behavior = you unload him quickly before going in deeper.

 

Don't treat your emotions like they are some horse you must ride whether you want to or not... you can and will be in control of your life if you start working on getting good judgment and basing your decisions on solid ground rather than rushing into things, then being surprised when it blows up in your face. Age does teach you that, to look before you leap, and if you do, you have a good chance of things turning out right, and if you don't it does end badly. For example, you saw your marriage as being a 'sure thing', but honestly most people who are not that young and inexperienced would have known that marriage just for the sake of a pregnancy probably won't work out, and most marriages at age 20 don't work out either. So you think something horrible/atypical happened to you with that marriage, but it was actually following a predictable arc if you factor out the wishful thinking and shaky romantic ideals/hopes that it was founded on (i.e., just having a baby together does not make you a stable family, nor does a marriage if the connection between the people isn't right and the marriage wasn't founded on real love and commitment and shared goals and interests).

 

So your husband decamping isn't a sign that most men are untrustworthy or that things won't work out with other men, it was a sign that you probably should have used better birth control and not married so young and just because you were pregnant. That won't happen again if you take your time with men and use better/consistent birth control to prevent unexpected pregnancies.

[csr14]

I appreciate the advice. I in no way think now that it was a good idea to marry my ex husband. I was barely out of highschool with very little knowledge under my belt. When I dated Jack and Brock - especially Jack- I wasn't ready to be dating. I was just scrambling to find companionship which your right - on my part that was bad judgement. When I found Robbie/Bob I wasn't looking. He wasn't looking either. I'm not in pain from any of my exes anymore and haven't been for quite sometime. In fact I haven't hurt for my ex for almost a year because there was never love there. Not the kind that should be in a marriages anyways. As I look back to December I feel like I was ready. If I had to guess I became ready sometime between August and November. When I met Brock I wasn't quite ready to date and when he cut off contact, I was, so it happened somewhere in there. Maybe I'll find later that I wasn't ready but the last 7 months have shown me I was. The trust thing has just been coming up lately. I started thinking about it more in depth when we hit 6 months bc I thought I would trust him at that point and still do not. You are right though, its probably not that astounding that my marriage ended and I probably shouldn't think in my head that that's how most marriages end but still when your used to an idea for 4 years and that idea gets shattered - it's hard to believe that every other idea your used to won't get shattered as well.

[nutbrownhare]

You can let go of a person, sometimes quite easily. It took me approximately 20 minutes to cut free of my feelings for my ex after he ended the relationship, to stop feeling a sense of loss and feel angry with him.

 

However, the damage done takes a lot longer to heal. I'm allowing myself at least a year before I even contemplate having another relationship. The fact that your trust thing has been coming up recently is not related to your previous exes, but to the damage done to you in the relationships with them. Ironically, this is likely to come up when you're actually feeling safe to experience the emotions and, as you have seen, they're coming up when your exes aren't even around. But until you process the unexpressed feelings, you will continue to take them into every relationship you ever have.

 

In that respect, dealing with these issues in a safe environment - e.g. with a therapist - will help you move through this more effectively, learn from your experience at a very deep level and leave it where it belongs - in the past.