Do you think relationships can survive after trust has been broken, specifically after cheating?
This is a complicated question to answer because there are a lot of variables.
The answer to this question is whether I can have a relationship survive is going to be completely different than whether you can.
Each person has a different amount of breach of trust that they are willing to rebuild and come back to.
I think that that’s partly why this is a tough question to answer.
When we think about how trust is built, people often think of trust as like a light switch or like one single continuum where you have like no trust or a ton of trust.
But really trust tends to be several interacting axes of trust.
Like there are people who we trust with a secret but we wouldn’t necessarily trust with money or people who we trust with some aspects of our life or personality but wouldn’t trust with others.
Trust is not a singular thing.
It’s not a binary thing and when we’re developing trust with people or evaluating how much we trust someone, we don’t start at zero and then go to whatever a hundred would be.
We tend to start at a point of no information and then build more and the building process tends to be fairly slow, right?
Most of us are not going to just jump right into huge amounts of trust with people but building is slow.
Any breach in trust takes you down below where you started.
So, if you started no information, anything that tells you you cannot trust this person pulls you way below that starting point and coming back from a deficit is harder to do than building from zero.
So, building from no information is challenging and it takes time but coming back from having gone into the negative is way, way, way harder because what you need to do is not just show someone that you are trustworthy.
You need to show them why the evidence they have of you being untrustworthy is no longer accurate and how you are now different than the person who breached that trust of theirs.
So, if somebody cheats in a relationship, if they break a relationship agreement, what happens then is it’s often – my dog is going to be going crazy today in the background apparently.
She is full of all of the energy.
So, forgive Jojo for being a little bit distracting.
So if someone cheats, right, what they are doing is not just breaking trust.
They are also showing that they are not trustworthy, that they are not someone who can hold that trust.
After cheating, a lot of times people approach the person who was cheated on to be like, “How are you going to learn to trust them again?” and I think that that framing is a little bit of a problem because the problem is not that the person who was cheated on is necessarily inaccurately accessing how trustworthy this person is.
The problem is that the person who broke trust has to show that they are trustworthy again and that is a tough road to climb.
So I think that if there has been a cheating situation, the person who did the cheating, who broke the agreements, needs to be very dedicated to owning up to what they did, being accountable, being responsible, asking about what repair looks like, performing that repair and being on top of those things and they need to be honest in the future about what kinds of agreements they can or cannot actually stick with because a lot of times cheating happens when people agreed to something that they weren’t actually really a yes to and so their behavior ended up disagreeing with what they had said they would do.
So, the person who cheated has a long road ahead of them, of trying to prove their trustworthiness and trying to prove that they are someone who understands what they did and why it was wrong and that they won’t do it again.
The person who was cheated on has to evaluate for themselves whether there is anything that that person can do to prove that they are trustworthy again.
Is there any way for you to not forget what happened but to move to a space of forgiveness and accepting this person again?
If you can’t, don’t let them try. I think a lot of people, when they were cheated on, there can be a certain satisfaction in like watching someone try extra super hard to like earn your trust back because it feels empowering after you’ve had your power taken from you by this breach in trust.
But that’s not really fair to you or to them.
I think that a lot of people think that they can forgive someone cheating but really, really can’t and so it’s super essential that you are honest with yourself about what you can or cannot forgive.
Is there anything this person can do or say that will make you feel comfortable trusting them again?
And not comfortable trusting them in a like “You’re not allowed to go anywhere without me because that’s how I’m going to trust you,” kind of way but in a like, “Can you genuinely find, like envision any possible future in which you are totally okay trusting this person again?”
If you cannot envision that at all, if there’s no way forward, and you don’t think that that’s going to change, then you can’t keep that relationship.
That relationship has broken, right?
When things break, sometimes we can put them together.
Sometimes we can’t.
Sometimes, once something has broken, there is no meaningful way of mending it that is going to be successful.
So, I think that the person who was cheated on needs to really evaluate.
Is this something they can forgive?
I also think that the person who did the cheating needs to evaluate whether this is a relationship that they can actually be committed to and in which they can honor their agreements.
If you were agreeing to a thing because it was what got you this relationship but that’s not actually something that you think you want to do long term, you need to stop agreeing to it and see if that’s a relationship that still survives.
People make a lot of mistakes I think in agreeing to things to keep someone close that they can’t actually follow through on or that they don’t actually want to follow through on and that makes way more heartache in the end because if you can’t fulfill that agreement, you’re only going to lead to these breaches of trust later.
Either you’re going to be building resentment or you’re going to be breaking trust.
So, it is really important for everybody as they’re building their relationships to be honest about what they are or are not okay with and if you start noticing that you made an agreement that you don’t want to follow anymore, you need to sit your partner down and let them know that that’s not actually going to work for you right now.
So, can a relationship survive after cheating?
It can.
I think that it will never be the same relationship.
It will be a different relationship.
There are people who do stay with someone who cheated on them and they come back and their relationships heal and they’re even better than they were before.
There are some people who a partner cheats on them and they stay with that partner and the partner cheats on them again and they maybe eventually leave or maybe they don’t.
I think that a relationship can only survive after cheating if both people value their own worth enough to be super honest about who they are in relationship and to set strong boundaries and advocate for their needs and be honest about what action will work for them, right?
If what you need after someone cheats is for them to show you their commitment and their honesty and their trustworthiness in very particular ways, you need to ask for that and if the other person can’t give it, they need to be honest about that and you all need to just let it go.
I think that a lot of relationships that try to stay together after cheating don’t fully heal the break that happened.
When someone cheats, it puts fractures throughout the entirety of their relationship, all the way down to the core or the foundation that that relationship was built upon.
If you only kind of halfway fix it, like if you only do a little bit of acknowledging and apologizing and making amends, if you only kind of deal with the surface stuff that was going on, it’s probably going to happen again and your relationship is still going to have those faults at its core.
So, can you actually forgive and move on?
Can you actually show that you are trustworthy?
Can you find a set of agreements that works for both of you?
Can you both be way more upfront and honest about what you want and need?
And when you do that, is this still a relationship that works for you?
I’m going to put on my like final little – I feel like a breakup doula a lot of the time because it is okay to break up.
It is so okay to break up with people.
Sometimes, someone is not the right person for you.
Maybe it’s at that time in your life.
Maybe it’s you’re never going to be right for each other but it is so much better to break up early before you hate each other than it is to stick it out and try everything and end up hating each other so much you can barely talk or be in the same room.
If something isn’t working, acknowledge it’s not working.
See if there’s a way for it to work and if not, you can part from each other in love rather than parting from each other in fury.
So, if you look at this after someone cheats and you can’t rebuild the trust, acknowledge that and move forward and move on with your lives because staying in this pattern of like not actually being able to trust someone and not actually being willing to heal that wound, it’s not helping either of you.
It’s just keeping both of you in pain.
