S1 EP17 – Relationships: Mending Broken Trust

Transcript

Hi everyone. Dr. Margaret Paul here with the Inner bonding podcast. So today I want to talk about amending broken trust in relationships. I want you to know that when trust is broken, it doesn’t have to be the end of a relationship. You can learn so much by staying in a relationship and learning about what are the underlying issues that lead to the broken trust.

So for the past 52 years, I’ve held couples heal their relationships, even when trust has been broken. So I’d like to take an example. And of course the names and the situations have been changed. So I want to talk about Dylan and Hannah. They were to be married in a month when Hannah found out that Dylan had been cheating on her with another woman. Well, of course Hannah was completely devastated and she ended the relationship.

Now, Dylan was also devastated. He really did love Hannah and he had no idea why he had been having an affair with a woman who actually meant nothing to him. But fortunately Dylan reached out to me for help. And we started to have Skype sessions in the course of his inner bonding work. He discovered deep feelings of unworthiness from a very, very abusive childhood because of his abusive childhood.

He learned to define his worth through women and through sex. And also because his father was sexually addicted and he was addicted to the validation he received from women. And he had no idea how to fill and validate himself. He just had an emptiness and he was driven to appease his, his emptiness and his fear and his, his anxiety through sex with multiple women. So he was sexual actually addicted as a way to fill up from the outside.

He also discovered that he was really terrified of being controlled due to his very angry and controlling mother. And having an affair was a way to protect himself from this fear. Hannah often used anger as a way to control Dylan to have her way. And Dylan had never learned how to stand up for himself. He had learned to be a caretaker for both of his parents and, and to completely give himself up to the anger.

And so withdrawing into his addiction was the only way he knew of not feeling completely controlled. Obviously Dylan needed to learn how to fill himself up from the inside, not just from the outside. So when Dylan actually did believe in God, but he had no connection with any kind of personal source of spiritual guidance. That’s true of a lot of people they believe in God, but they don’t have two way communication with their higher power.

So as he learned in Pratt and, and practice the six steps of inner bonding, he developed his spiritual connection and he began to fill up from the inside due to that access to the love. That’s always there. He, he was able to, to learn, to bring that love and so that he didn’t always have to fill up from the outside. And, and Dylan was very Digilant diligence, excuse me, very diligent regarding his inner Bonnie practice.

And within just a few months, he knew that his sexual addiction was mostly behind him, that it was something he no longer needed to act out on. He actually had no desire to act out on it anymore. He, he really loved Hannah and he just wanted to repair what had happened and to be with her. And he was also a healing, the old guilt from his parents, blame and abuse. It was learning to stand up for himself rather than let himself be controlled.

He was learning to speak his truth rather than comply out of his fear and out of his guilt and, and, and not let himself be run over and give himself up to Hannah’s or, or other people’s demands of him. So at some point he contacted Hannah and she was obviously still really hurt and very, very angry and had no trust in him at all, but she still loved him. And she was completely confused about what to do her family and her friends told her to just stay away, but she had heard something new in Dylan’s voice that compelled her to just open up a little bit.

So she also started Skype sessions with me. Hannah asked me over and over. I love him, But how can I ever trust him again? I don’t know if I ever can’t, but instead of working on trusting Dylan, we worked on Hannah learning to trust herself. As we went back through the relationship, it became really apparent to Hannah.

And to me that she’d been ignoring the inner promptings or her intuition that told her that something was wrong. She just had not trusted her inner knowing she had her own fear of conflict. And so she, she, she let many events go by that just didn’t confront. If she would have confronted,

Did them would have shed light on the problems a lot earlier, instead of speaking her truth, she had learned to get angry as a way to protect her against her fears of rejection. So Hannah and I worked on developing her spiritual connection, her connection with a source of guidance that helped her begin to trust her inner knowing as Hannah learned to stop abandoning herself and learned how to take loving care of herself so that she no longer needed to control Dylan to feel safe.

Then her, her anger began to get less and less. After a few months of individual work, Hannah and Dylan began to work together in their Skype sessions with me, they learned to open and to explore their conflicts and to learn from them. Instead of Hannah, just getting angry and Dylan complying or withdrawing. So in shifting their intention from protecting against pain, to learning about love, Hannah and Dylan developed a loving relationship based on trust for themselves and for each other. Now they’re married with children and their relationship continues to evolve in love and interest.

So true trust is built in a relationship with both. People are open to learning rather than controlling through anger, withdrawal, compliance, resistance, or acting out with addictions. When our intention is to control or avoid our pain, rather than learn to be open about what’s loving to ourselves and to our partner, we can never trust or feel secure with our partner, because if we can control and manipulate him or her, then we know that others can also, and that’s very scary.

It’s only when we believe that our partner is with us because he or she really wants to be out of desire and out of caring, not out of fear or obligation or guilt, then we’ll feel secure and trusting. This only occurs when our intention is to learn about loving ourselves and others, rather than trying to control or to avoid our feelings or to avoid responsibility for them.

The more we learn to trust ourselves, to trust our own inner knowing and trust the wisdom from our higher guidance, the more open and trusting we can be with our partner

People. Okay. Hold back from being open with their partners, with the implication, I can’t be open until you prove that I can trust you by trust. They actually mean being able to predict their partner’s response, guaranteeing that their partner will be loving rather than rejecting. So for all of us, one of life’s hardest realities is that this kind of guarantee is just not possible, but the more we trust ourselves and develop our ability to speak our truth, the more we’re willing to be open and risk another’s free response to us.

This is what creates a loving and trusting relationship. I received the following question about how to trust again, my husband and I remarried after we both got divorced and went through a number of relationships. I’ve been hurt a lot, but tried to end all of the relationships in peace. So when I met my husband, I felt alive and saw him as my right, great man. And he is actually great in many ways, but when I found some of his communications with his ex wife and ex-girlfriends, I found that he lied to them a lot and sometimes he lied to me.

Also, I know our relationship is sort of controlling resistance. I’m trying to con to control and he’s trying to resist. As I told them, I do not trust or respect him anymore for all he’s done to other women into me because he lied. I felt like I have the right to judge him and to make him feel guilty for what he’s done to me and to other women. Then he told me that he felt so bad about himself and that he is as bad as what I told him. She is. I feel that it is his problem.

And I can’t respect a man. Who’s not responsible for what he’s doing. I’ve gotten very angry many times and scolded him and called him names. I know I should not have done that, but I’ve lost trust in him through the inner bonding process. I’m trying to get myself back and to get my love and respect and trust back for him. My question is, how can I restore all these? How can I trust that I will not be his victim in the future?

And another question about trust came from a different woman. Being forthright, honest, and loyal are important attributes for myself and others. Once the bridge of trust has been burned significantly, that is infidelity in marriage or an intimate relationship. Can trust be truly reestablished? When it seems to be more important to one partner, how does the one betrayed respond when the other is apologetic, but thinks an apology is enough. How do you prevent this feeling of distrust from effecting future relationships?

So learning to trust again, requires work on two Levels. Yeah.

As I’ve said, the first thing that needs to be done is your own inner work. You need to do enough inner bonding to become a trustworthy, loving adult for your own inner child. And this means accepting that you have no control over whether or not somebody betrays you again and letting go of trying to control the other person. It means fully grieving the loss of trust.

It means learning to trust your own inner knowing as you develop your trust and your feelings and your guidance, you are so much more equipped to sense a lack of integrity in others. It also means becoming willing to lose the other person rather than lose yourself. And it means becoming willing to take whatever loving actions you need to take on your own behalf.

Yeah.

Second level of work and learning how to trust again, is relationship work, both you and your partner need to attend. Couple’s counseling to fully understand your relationship system. Lying is often the result of one person trying to control and the other resisting. And they fear being honest. So lying is, is the, is a passive way of trying to control.

Getting angry as an active way, lying as a passive way. Both partners need to do the work of healing, their old fears and beliefs in developing a trustworthy, loving adult inside who can be honest rather than deceitful. And rather than angry, you can never trust that the other person won’t lie or be unfaithful if your own inner healing work, isn’t a priority. Now also in relationship work, apologies are never enough.

Apologies don’t mean anything without the inner work to heal the underlying fears and false beliefs that lead to lying or to being unfaithful. It’s not realistic to trust again, without this inner and relationship work, the ego wound itself in all of us, isn’t trustworthy can act out in very hurtful ways. When there isn’t a strong, loving adult in charge of our actions For trust to flourish in your relationship, both of you need to become trustworthy, loving adults with yourself and with each other.

Okay. I hope you really understand from what I say, from what I’m saying here, that broken trust can be healed, but that it takes both partners being willing to do the deep level of inner and relationship work. That’s necessary to develop trustworthy, loving adults who are capable of loving themselves and sharing their love rather than controlling, resisting, lying, and acting out addictive.

So that’s why I encourage all of you to learn and consistently practice inner bonding. The consistent practice of this powerful six step process is what creates your loving adult is what heals your fears and false beliefs. It’s what heals your anxiety or depression, your guilt, your shame, your anger, your emptiness, your aloneness, your addictions, and it’s what heals relationships, including a lack of trust.

And one way to start learning to love yourself is with my 30 day, love yourself course. And also my 30 day relationship course called wildly deeply joyously in love. I hope you take my 30 day, love yourself course, as well as my relationship course. And you can find all of these and much, much more@innerbonding.com. There are so many ways on our website of learning inner bonding of learning to love yourself.

It’s absolutely vital. If you want to have a loving relationship that you learn to love yourself, there’s just no way that you can share love with a partner. And there’s no way that you can heal broken trust unless you actually learn to love and trust yourself, and develop a strong and powerful, loving adult self sending you all love and blessings.