I have realised this last couple of days that trust has to be freely given, it is not simply earned.
No matter how hard you might try to earn someone’s trust, if they are not willing, or able, to give their trust, you may never get it.
Until now I’ve blindly gone through my life thinking that you earn someone’s trust by your behaviour. You behave well, give someone no reason not to trust you, and ta dah! you have their trust. But that is not so.
If someone has had something happen to them in the past, that has rocked their world enough, they may never trust again. Or they may find it hard to believe that their trust is safe or justified, and therefore keep withdrawing it.
I think this is what is happening in my life.
My partner has often said things that make me think, in general, he doesn’t trust women. He appears to have this belief that women are always looking for a better man. And by better, I think he means more financially secure, or seen as someone “high up” in society. When I question his distrust of women, he denies it, but his behaviour, to me, says otherwise.
When we emigrated a few years ago, I went through a period of feeling a bit lost. My children and my partner were at school and work, and I was at home, wondering what to do with my new days in my new life. My old life consisted of seeing friends and my mum quite often. But they weren’t here. There was no-one here that I knew, I had no roots… I struggled for a bit. My partner didn’t get this, he took my feelings and decided they must mean I had been having an affair in our old country and that I was missing this person. I honestly don’t think he could have said anything that surprised me more. He doesn’t miss his old friends or his family – he openly says that he doesn’t care if he never sees any of them again.
Since then, in the last few years he has again, a couple of times, asked if I’m seeing someone else. I feel stunned, I think. I’m not really sure, but I’m at a bit of a loss as to what to do about this.
I don’t go out much, we have a small circle of friends that live close to us, but I don’t tend to “go out”. I turn down most invitations, and don’t do the “girls night out” thing. Not because of my partner, but because it’s just not really my “thing”. I am involved in a couple of small charities, they take a bit of my time each week, other than that I walk my dogs and look after the one young teen who still lives at home.
Every so often I make an attempt to do something for me, for my health – walks, exercise classes… but these often get interrupted by dogs/children and then, my partner starts to make comments about how I am “always out all day”.
I’m fairly confident some of this stems from an event in his family when he was around 14 years old. His mother had an affair. They are a loud family, and I get the impression that this time in their family involved a lot of shouting between his parents. His parents are still together now, a long relationship that started in their late teens. However, my partner’s view is that his father should have kicked her out. Not only did she have an affair, it was with someone who was no better than his father. This has almost certainly had an impact on my partner’s views on marriage too. He says, in conversation with me, that you give everything to someone, you get a house together, have children, and if you also get married, there is nothing left after that other than divorce. His behaviour says “if you don’t get married, you can’t get divorced” which is of course true! But I don’t think the thinking is that logical, I think it is a way of protecting himself, of not giving too much, trying to not be vulnerable. To his friends he says that marriage is outdated and just a piece of paper that means nothing, and is based on religious rubbish that he doesn’t believe in.
What do I do with this? I know I cannot “earn” his trust. After nearly 23 years he still doubts me. I have realised this is not about me, or my behaviour. But I don’t know what to do.
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