Replacement Fear in Love Relationships

Synopsis: We start with the case of the off-target surgeon; and then go on to what replacement fear really is; three places it comes from; and we end with what can be done about it.

The Case of the Off-Target Surgeon

With confused anger and dismay the surgeon told me how his wife had insisted he rid himself of his best nurse because she was just too personal with him.

She also insisted that he get a male massage therapist to replace the female one he had been getting massages from for years.  Not only that, but his wife had begun to complain about his female accountant who had been doing a great job with his rather complicated financial situation.

All this had led to several big fights and one really hysterical episode where his screaming and crying wife threatened to leave him.  He emphatically stated nothing had been going on that was inappropriate with other women, and he had tried with much logic and reason to explain that his relationships with these women were entirely professional, and though friendly were not at all intimate or personal.  The evidence, logic and reason he presented, along with copious explanations he attempted, only seemed to make things worse.

Exploring the surgeon’s view of his marriage, led to his conclusion that for quite some time he had not paid much attention to his wife’s emotions or shared much of his own feelings with her.  He admitted romance had faded from their relationship, and their sex life was declining and perfunctory.  Sheepishly he confessed he had forgotten her last birthday and their previous wedding anniversary.   He said he did try to make up for those ‘misses’ by belatedly getting her several very expensive presents.  That did not seem to help either.  I asked and was not surprised to hear that the birthday he missed was her 50th.

It was then that I shared with the surgeon my guess that his wife was suffering from replacement fear, and a lack of empathetic love-based emotional intercourse (see “Emotional Intercourse”).

What Is Replacement Fear?

Replacement fear in love relationships is the fear of being replaced in a loved one’s heart and life by someone else, often someone new and possibly in some important ways better.  Some older siblings experience this when a new baby or adopted child comes into the family.  It can occur in the life of a youth when a single parent seriously dates or marries someone new.  It sometimes occurs more with men, but also some women, experiencing physical disability, vocational identity setbacks, sexual dysfunction and severe financial loss.  It sometimes occurs in women, but also some men, as they get older, especially if their self-valuing depends on looks and being young.  Replacement fear is thought to be most severe among those who have poor self love and those who have highly dependent false love relationships.

Replacement fear can trigger big problems with anxiety, depression, jealousy, possessiveness becoming critical, negative, easily agitated and irrational, and also with addiction relapses.  Replacement fear also can be very bad for love relationships.  Strong replacement fear can cause a person to push a loved one away and into the arms of someone else.  Therefore, it can be a very tragic, self-fulfilling prophecy fear.

Where Does Replacement Fear Come From?

Replacement fear has at least three, big, main sources or origins.  First of all, it can come as a reaction when love is not actively and frequently enough sent to a loved one. (see Definitions of Love, “A Behavioral (Operational) Definition of Love”).  If you do not feed love to a loved one often enough, they may become love malnourished or even love starved.  They then may began to suspect you don’t really love them and that you might want to replace them with someone else.  The surgeon I mentioned before readily came to admit this was true in his case, before he began to do something about it. He saw that he had for too long taken his wife for granted, neglected actively loving her, and operated on the concept that love somehow would take care of it without his participation. (see Love in the Fridge).  He immediately set out to learn and show his love more actively and more often, with good results.

A second common cause of replacement fear comes from a lack of healthy self-love.  If you do not sufficiently love yourself, and have confidence in yourself, and at least have the suspicion that you are rather lovable, you perhaps subconsciously will suspect you are not good enough to hold your beloved in a relationship.  Therefore, you may begin to suspect that your beloved will be looking to replace you with someone better.  This too can cause you to act in ways that psychologically push your beloved away and maybe toward someone else.

Many an otherwise okay love relationship has been ruined just this way.  Some people feeling this way, test and punish their beloved irrationally and severely by acting as difficult as possible.  Becoming unresponsive, judgmental, controlling, passive/aggressive, dictatorial, etc. only serves to usually make things worse.  Until a person has sufficient healthy self-love, it is very hard for them to believe someone can see them as wonderful, desirable and of great worth.

A third way that replacement fear happens is when a love relationship or marriage is grounded in a false love.  She professed her love for him but secretly married him for his money.  He professed great love for her but actually married her for her high ‘trophy wife’ attributes.  He feared being replaced by someone richer and she feared being replaced by a younger ‘trophy wife’ type than her.  Both were right.  Both went on to repeat these patterns with new spouses, followed by new divorces.  Someday they may discover what healthy, real love is all about, but then again maybe not.

What Can Be Done about Replacement Fear

To do something about replacement fear in yourself ask yourself these three questions.

1.    Do I, or are we, actually and frequently showing our love for one another in varied and quality ways?

2.    Do I, and we both, healthfully love ourselves, and see ourselves as being of high quality, and our essence being worthy of being loved and receiving real and abundant love?

3.    Is our love real and healthy for us both, or are there parts of it that may be false, sick and destructive?

Naturally, those questions are not to be easily and deeply answered without good self honesty and strong work.  You also can study what you find at this site concerning healthy real love, and read some of the really good things available concerning real love.  Let me egotistical recommend Part Two of my book, Recovering Love, our e-book Real Love, False Love, what Paul says about love in first Corinthians, the Buddha’s teachings on compassionate love, Rumi’s love poetry, The Five Love Languages, and The Anatomy of Love, for starters.

Talking with loved ones in depth about all these things, journaling your own love learning, and meeting with love-oriented others all can be of great help.  If you are suffering from fear of being replaced in the heart and life of a loved one, ask, talk and request reassurance in exactly the way you would want them to demonstrate and talk that reassurance to you; be specific.Then work at accepting the reassurance.  If problems persist see a love-oriented, experienced counselor or therapist.

If someone you love or care about seems to be suffering from replacement fear, remember empathy well expressed is more reassuring than explanation, logic, reason, arguing the past, or defensiveness.  Patient listening and showing care for the person struggling with replacement fear also is very much in order.

As always – Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question
When feeling insecure, are you good at directly and clearly asking for reassurance that you are loved, wanted, highly valued, etc. or do you beat around the bush, hint and just hope that the reassurance you desire will come your way?

Related posts:

1. Destroyers of Love – The 7 Big “Ds” Most Likely to Ruin Your Love Relationships 

Murder and False Love

Synopsis: This mini-love-lesson begins with “an event all too common”; it then presents ‘is it really love or false love’; ‘is passionate love a murder motivator’; ‘love against harm’; how you can help; and ends with the question “Can passionate, false lovers be helped?”

An Event All Too Common

You Can Help!
I’m angry and I’m sad.  Once again, I have been referred the children of a parent who has been murdered by the children’s other parent; in this case a teenage step-daughter and her two younger, half siblings whose father murdered their mother.

He has been arrested, and the police say he has confessed, and the case is airtight.  The parents were separated and the father said he did it because she would not reconcile with him, and if he couldn’t have her no one else could, because he loved her so much.

The agony of the children is heartbreaking to see.  The hate and desire for vengeance on the part of the adolescent may ruin that child’s chance at all future love relationships.  If the courts for some reason let the murderer off, the victim’s brother vows to capture and torture him to death, even if it ruins his own life.  The victim’s mother has been psychiatrically hospitalized and the murderer’s father has had a heart attack.  These kinds of secondary outcomes also are all too common in this type of all too common murder.

This kind of referral has happened too many times in my practice, and in the practices of many of my colleagues.  Time and again we hear statements like, “I did it because I love” him or her.  In this case the husband robbed from his own children, his and her parents, siblings and friends, someone they dearly and truly loved – but this abhorrent act was not motivated by love by the perpetrator.  I maintain that healthy, real love never motivates the violent harming of someone truly loved.  Only false love and a great lack of real love does that.

Such murders are all too common in many parts of both the developed and lesser developed parts of the world.  Justification that the murder had something to do with love is also all too common.  Sometimes it is children who are murdered, sometimes the father/husband or some other friend or family member.  Almost always in these kind of situations the murderer voices that it was love that drove them to kill.  “I loved her so much I could not stand to lose her”, “I could not bear to see him with someone else because I loved him so much”, “ I loved him too much to let him live after what he did to me”.  These also are the all too common kind of statements made by love relationship murderers justifying what they did.

Is It Really Love or Is It False Love?

I maintain that healthy, real love causes people to always protect the ones they love, to consistently be constructive not destructive, and to want for and work for the health and well-being of the loved.  It primarily is false love that motivates the murderer to kill those they supposedly love. (A ‘possible’ exception is mercy killing)  Murdering someone you think you love is an act of profound, loveless, perverse self-serving.  It is in truth an anti-love action.  It actually gives proof that no real love existed, and only a huge, needy, sick, demanding desire to be loved was in the place of love.

It also gives evidence that the murderer was sorely lacking in healthy self-love, and probably subconsciously had regressed to an infantile, demanding, controlling, possessive, immense sense of insecurity and inadequacy coupled with hurt and rage.  Such people in that state usually are considered incapable of having or giving healthy, real love.

I further suggest that it actually is those who are intensely love-starved who commit murder when they hurt badly because their major love relationship does not go as they would wish.  They long to find some person willing to give them some love, or positive attention, and feed their secretly infantile, insecure, needy, love-starved selves.  They don’t really love.  They only have their hungry neediness disguised as love.  When they do get what they think will be their saving source of love, things in the relationship improve for a while and then deteriorate.

In their lack of self-love, deep insecurity and lack of belief that anyone could truly love them, they become possessive, controlling, authoritarian, demanding, often more needy, frustrated, angry and they destroy the very relationship they so depend on.  Sometimes they do this in very sneaky, manipulative ways and sometimes blatantly.  If alcohol or other addictive substances are involved, their neediness escalates and exacerbates the danger potential.  A number of several syndromes of false love frequently involve these dynamics (See “Fatal Attraction Syndrome”).

Is Passionate Love a Murder Motivator?

What about the many people who say passionate love, gone awry, is a major motivator for murder?  Homicide detectives, criminologists and detective story writers seem to commonly hold this view.  By doing so, they promote this idea and give a large number of people a false excuse and, in a sense, permission for doing violence to those they supposedly love.

It is true, many murders are committed in the name of love but think about it, could that be real love?  I’m of the opinion that it definitely is not.  I suggest those who murder their lovers, spouses and others are the outcome of three things. The first is the presence of one form or another of a false love syndrome. (see False Forms of Love Series).  The second is a severe absence of healthy, real love in the murderer’s development.  The third is the cultural teaching that presents passionate love as jealous, possessive, obsessive, desperately needy, controlling, and an insane phenomenon.

That cultural teaching promotes the idea that one is justified in harming and even killing those they love if the person they love severely emotionally hurts and betrays them, or wants to leave them for any reason.  This cultural teaching basically helps people think that ‘if I love you, you are mine’ and, therefore, I own you.  It is not much of a cognitive jump from there to thinking ‘if I own you’ I can do what I want with you, even destroy you’.

I once consulted on a sentencing hearing of a mother who attempted murdering one of her children.  She argued the child belonged to her and, therefore, she had every right to kill the child after it became too disobedient and rebellious.  The fact is that that viewpoint was once upon a time a standard belief, and in some places was well supported by law.  It was similar to the law that said if a husband found his wife having sex with another, it was grounds for justifiable homicide and case dismissal.  Remnants of those very anti-love positions still exist in the minds of many, and still are in effect in some parts of the world.

I maintain that none of that has anything to do with healthy, real love.  No, it’s the kind of thinking that once grew out of various forms of false love and the under-valuing and lack of understanding of how healthy, real love works.

Love Against Harm

I counseled a daughter who shot and killed her father.  The father had on four separate occasions beaten the daughter’s mother to the point she had to be hospitalized with broken bones and other serious injuries.  Though they had moved to escape him, the father had found them and was once again breaking through the front door vowing to beat the mother and the daughter unless they came back to him because ‘they belonged’ to him.  That was when the daughter emptied a revolver into his chest.

This and mercy killing are the only types of protective, real love that I know of which can lead to violent killing.  It is the kind of love that can go to extremes to protect a loved one from harm.  Healthy, real love can cause people to go to great lengths to protect a truly loved one from harm.  And hopefully an effective intervention can be applied before it comes to these extremes.  One also has to be careful here because over-protection can be a detriment to the well-being of the loved.  Basically, healthy, real love is the enemy of harm.

How You Can Help

Do you agree that healthy, real love is a constructive and not a destructive force in the world, and that it is not real love, passionate love or other mis-guided substitutes that ever motivate the violent harming or murdering of the truly loved?  Do you also agree that a society which accepts the idea that love can sometimes cause people to do violence, even to the extent of killing those they love, is in effect unknowingly excusing, supporting and promoting love relationship violence and murder?  Do you further agree that society will be healthier and safer if we rid ourselves of the teaching that promotes the idea that love sometimes causes people to justifiably harm and destroy those they purport to love?

If you agree or tend to agree with these propositions here is what you can do.  You can search for and find opportunities to bring up these concepts.  Wherever you can, you can work to promote the constructive view of love with anyone and everyone you have contact with.  By doing this you will be promoting healthy, real love in our world, as you also act to work against love ignorance, sick false love and all the harm it does.  So, I urge you, do your bit and help change the ethos that presents love as a motivator for harm and death.

You also can help if you know a family member or friend who continues to accept escalating physical violence, by lovingly sharing some of these concepts and relating to them the very real danger they may be in, and starkly telling them many people are killed in those situations.  You might help them explore options to keep themselves and their loved ones safe.  And if you find some of the examples ‘a little too familiar’ please don’t think “It can’t happen to me” – that is what many of those murdered by a supposed loved one said to themselves.  Get help!  Get safe!

Can Passionate False Lovers Be Helped?

Those who suffer (and they do suffer greatly) from the fixations of false love, can indeed be helped.  They can go on to healthy, real love although it usually takes a fair amount of therapeutic work.  Those trapped in false love syndromes can learn healthy self-love and then healthy, other love.  They usually have to unlearn a great deal in the process, reprogram their anti-love and non-love approaches to love relationships, and practice what they learn for quite a while before they become fully love successful.  Often in their fear of seeing their own immense love starvation, and feeling it’s pain more acutely, they dodge the very help that would save them and those they addictively endanger.  But if they do seek help from a love knowledgeable therapist things can go wonderfully well.

As always – Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question
Have you believed that real love could turn to hate, and what do you think of that idea now?

Related posts:

1. False Forms of Love: Thrill and Threat Bonding
2. False Love Awareness
3. False Forms of Love: Unresolved Conflict Attraction Syndrome
4. Healthy Real Love -or- Toxic False Love
5. False Form of Love – Nympholepsia 

Rewarding Gifts of Love

Mini-Love-Lesson # 280

Synopsis: This mini-love-lesson helps make sure that a love gift is indeed a gift of love  and not something else.

Free Love Gifts:  No Strings Attached or Hidden Agendas

Free love-gifts are unencumbered by expectations.  When the gift is free of strings, both the giver and receiver are liberated to more fully enjoy the experience.  It is a string when the giver expects a return.  It is a string when the receiver feels obliged to produce a return.  To try to buy someone with a gift is neither free nor loving.  To attempt to manipulate anyone’s actions, mood or feelings by gift-giving may be more of a bribe than a real gift.  Gifts that are given to impress or for egotistical gain or to influence are more in the realm of calculated maneuvers rather than in the sphere of love.  Gifts that are given to comply with a social norm usually are not gifts of the heart.  We all may find it wise to examine our gift giving habits from time to time to be sure they are free of strings (see “Yourself As a Great Source of Love Gifts”).

If a person gives a gift to reduce their guilt, that is not a love gift; it represents a hidden agenda.  For instance, they might be trying to atone for forgetting an anniversary, for having been unkind or for an act of exclusion.  The hidden agenda is that they hope to assuage their guilt by giving a gift.  If the gift is accompanied by a sincere apology then it might be a true love gift.  Other hidden agenda gift-giving may involve quid pro quo goals, or attempts to garner favors, status, approval or merit.  If there is an ulterior motivation, it negates the spirit of love-gift giving (see “Behaviors That Give Love: The Basic Core Four”).

All too often material evidence is seen as an attempt to buy love, impress someone, or be dutiful. “You gave me things but you didn’t give of yourself” is often heard in the counseling of couples.  Toward the end of counseling, we tend to hear things like “Your gift touched my heart and proved you really know my secret self”.  To communicate love with a gift, get in touch with your love feelings for another and your intimate awareness of them, then find a gift that combines both.

What Works

What works in the giving of gifts is often surprising.  It is not the cost, it is not the size, it is not the utility.  It is the intimate and personal which distinguishes an ordinary present from a gift of love.  Love requires a personal-process-based orientation.  Many other orientations are more impersonal-product-based (the cut wood and carry water functions).  Process and product, like oil and water, do not mix well.  Why is a card or a flower often a better love gift than a shovel or can opener?  The flower or signed card is only for personal appreciation; the shovel and can opener are for work.  The more personal, the more love-filled is the gift (see “How Receiving Love Well Gives Love Better”).

As always – Grow and Go with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

Quotable Question: What might be a very intimate, personal gift you would like to receive and then cherish; and who might you give that same gift to?

Self Talk for Improving Love

Synopsis: This mini love lessons starts with the surprising importance of self talk; then goes to what is self talk; what is positive and negative self talk; some things to do about better self talk and love relationship improvement; more.

The Surprising Importance of Self Talk

Self talk is very important in all sorts of ways.  It can be especially useful in improving love relationships.

Recently researchers were surprised to learn just how important self talk could be to our physical, mental, emotional and relational health.  Negative self talk can lower one’s immunity, cause destructive stress hormones to flow in the body, and increase a whole lot of other physically, unhealthy things.  Mental efficiency is decreased, anxiety mounts, and self confidence can take a dive, all because of negative self talk.  It is thought that couples who practice negative self talk tend to fight more, and breakup more and are far less happy in their relationships.  The allover happiness in families seems to decrease if there is an abundance of negative self talk.  Certain kinds of positive self talk have produced the exact opposite results in individuals, and couples, and families and friendship networks.

What Is Self Talk?

Self talk has to do with how we talk out loud, or silently to ourselves about ourselves.  It includes what we think about our own thinking, our feelings and our behavior past, present and future.  It expresses our attitude toward who we are, how we are, and what is best and worst about ourselves.  Self talk is seen as ‘setting us up’ for future success or failure.  Self talking can encourage or discourage us when facing difficulties, help us feel weak or strong, and many other similar things depending on whether self talk is negative or positive.

What Is Positive and Negative Self Talk?

If the way you talk to yourself, about yourself and your life is mostly critical, judgmental, full of putdowns, punishing remarks, demeaning, derogatory, fearful, guilt ridden, hopeless, deficiency-oriented, etc. then it is negative and very likely quite unhealthy.  If, on the other hand, the way you talk to yourself is realistically balanced toward the positive, affirmative, laudatory, self rewarding, encouraging, challenging; if it is toward improvement, includes recognition of limitations without bad feeling, is more proud of attributes than unhappy about shortcomings and is in awe of the many miracles that make up a self, then it is likely to be very positive and quite helpful and healthful.  The inclusion of mild self depreciatory humor coupled with pride of qualities and achievements, and the ability to enjoy one’s own idiosyncratic ways also can be seen as part of the positive picture.

Where Does Our Self Talk Come From?

Originally most of our self talk comes from the way we were talked to is a child and the way we heard others around us talking when we were young.  If we had a highly critical parent we are likely to talk to ourselves about ourselves in highly critical ways.  If, on the other hand, our parents were more realistically prone to appreciative affirmation, praise and compliments and thankful statements, we are much more likely to talk to ourselves about ourselves in the same way.  Some therapists like to explain this as ‘your incorporated copy of your parents’ or your ‘inner parent self’ talking to you from your subconscious.

Self talk can come from how you choose and teach yourself to talk to yourself about yourself.  That can replace old messages with new and better messages.  And, of course, this re-training takes a fair amount of work but usually it is quite worth it.

How Does Self Talk Effect Love Relationships?

Self talk has a number of important positive or negative effects on our love relationships. One of them works this way.  If we are talking continuously critically and ‘down’ to ourselves, it may help us to tend to try only for love relationships with those who are less than we see ourselves to be.  This can lead us to repeatedly get involved with ‘losers’.  If we do achieve a love relationship with someone better than we see ourselves to be, that negative self talk can assist us in feeling insecure, suspect our love mate will find someone better than we are, and abandon us for that person.  Thus, jealousy, possessiveness and fear-based relating can come to dominate our relationship instead of healthy, real love.

If you continually put yourself down in self talk, you are likely to go down emotionally, making you less fit for good, love relating.  You also can make yourself very suspicious, mistrusting and unbelieving when affirmational  love comes your way.  That can help you end up love-starved.  Those who have adequate, healthy self-love are better at being nourished by the love that does come their way.  When you do realistic, positive, self-affirmation self talk, you have more to give and you are more likely to go around in your world more friendly and more loving.  That generally attracts other people who want to be friendly and loving to you.

By the way, coming across egotistical, stuck up, superior, etc. does not represent a person who actually loves themselves healthfully, but rather someone who is trying too hard but in self-defeating ways.  So, it is okay to brag briefly, which many people find rather charming because it shows you believe in yourself and are confident about yourself, but remember – briefly.

Self Talk for Healthy Self-Love

It turns out that realistic, positive self talk can be super important for the development of healthy self-love.  Being able to encourage yourself through a challenge with “You can do it” and similar affirmations, can make a huge difference as to whether you will succeed or not.  Healthy, loving self talk can help you to be proud of yourself for accomplishments, attributes, qualities, etc..  And loving, positive self talk generally can help you be more effective and happier with yourself and with your life.

Talking to yourself hatefully or in any other way negatively, or just indifferently, tends to have a weakening effect which can lead to increased anxiety and depression.

The Importance of Positive, Future-Oriented Self Talk

One of the best ways for self talk to help a love relationship improve, works like this.  Imagine saying to yourself, “Hello John (or whatever your name is).  I’m your inner self and I want to tell you to give a lot more physical affection and praise to your wife today.  You really can make her feel especially good, like no one else can, so get busy and start right now.  You want to become a more loving person and this will help you do just that, and it will keep you getting better at it.”  You can talk, challenge and orient yourself to love improvements by encouraging yourself to learn and practice getting good at the major love skills taught in the mini-love-lessons found at this site.  Encouraging self talk is often a big help in going forward with just about everything.  Obviously, discouraging self talk has the opposite effect.

Be and Do Self Affirmation

Do you ever tell yourself you are worth loving?  Do you own-up to the fact that you are a wondrous bunch of miracles and that is the nature of your being?  You don’t have to do anything but recognize that, and feel good about it because it is a ‘being’ thing rather than a “doing” thing.  You are a unique work of art that also can get something done.  Both your being and your doing make you worthwhile, not just your doings.  You can see yourself by one or both of two ways.  Either your being is a wondrous work of God or of millions of years of evolution.  Either way, you are a bundle of miracles – own that!

Self Love’s Relationship to Other Love and Self Talk

Have you heard it said “you have to love yourself in order for other people to love you”?  That is not exactly true but it hints at an important idea.  It does seem to work out that the more you healthfully love yourself the better others will love you too.  A lot of love-filled self talk often seems to result in more love coming your way from others.  That is probably because you become more lovable and probably more loving by that kind of self talk.

Some Things to Do for Better Self Talk and Love Relationship Improvement

Try writing down some statements you would like to hear you tell yourself.  Then do it.  Tell yourself statements you want someone else to tell you, and then ask them to do so as you also tell those statements to yourself.  Make a list of ‘100 Good Things’ about yourself – small, medium and large things; then talk positively to yourself about how each of those things is true and be happy about it.  Then get someone you love to do the same thing.

Then say things from each other’s list to each other.  Give yourself praise and be glad about how you are unique and different from others, instead of being a dull, normal copy of other people’s standards.  Work to be more ‘up’ on yourself than down on yourself every day, and do that with the words you say to yourself.  Also you might want to get a copy of the June, 2015 issue of Psychology Today, which has as its main feature article, a rather good presentation about Your Inner Voice.  It touches on recent discoveries and what is known, useful and important about self talk.

As always – Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question
What do you think of the idea that says your self love determines how much and how well others will love you?

Related posts:

1. Can You Talk about Sex – with Love?
2. Listening With Love – Are You Good At It?
3. Additive Talking – A Love Skill
4. Critiquing without Criticizing 

Trust Recovery and Love

Synopsis: This mini-love-lesson begins by introducing the surprising side of recovering trust in love relationships; continues with the re-trust gamble of love; re-trust and anti-love; and ends with the good news about re-trusting.

The Surprising Side of Recovering Trust in Love Relationships

In an individual counseling session I asked Daniel, which was he the most upset about, his wife’s affair itself or her dishonesty and deception in keeping it hidden from him?

He thought for a few moments and then said, “It’s hard for me to divide the two but I can forgive the affair itself.  After all I drove her to it with my loveless neglect and by being a mean alcoholic.  What I cannot yet get past is all her many outright lies, and complete and apparently easy total phoniness.

Once she was calling me to come to bed with her and at the very same time she was texting him a love message.  I don’t know if I ever can get over that one.  I feel stupid, weak, and very vulnerable to it all happening again.  That makes me fear I won’t be able to handle the pain if it does happen again.  It might make me relapse which could kill me because it nearly did before I got into AA and recovery.”

I then said to Daniel, “So, maybe it’s yourself you don’t trust also?  You don’t trust that you will be able to handle what your wife might again present you with – deception and betrayal?  Daniel thought about that for a bit and then replied, “I guess that’s true because she is doing everything that can be done to show me she loves me, and she is sounding really dedicated to living a life of truth and never cheating again.  Consciously I mostly believe her.

What I see now is that I don’t trust or believe in myself.  If she had another affair and I found out about it, the pain could drive me into a relapse.  If I survived that, it still could turn me back into that mean alcoholic again, driving her away from me and maybe into another man’s arms.  I fear I also could hound her with angry accusations and suspicions, spy on her, and withhold my love so much it might do the same thing.  To trust her again I have to be able to trust myself, and I don’t.  Now I see another thing.  Way down deep inside I think I don’t trust that I have what it takes to keep her loving me and be enough for her.  So, naturally I think I could easily lose her to somebody better than me.  Way down deep that’s what really scares me!

In the next couples, conjoint sessions, Daniel shared all this with his wife.  She responded with love and reassurance, and together they went forward working on not only healing their relationship but also worked on each of them growing their own healthy self-love and the sense of strong worthwhileness which that brings.  Now years later, they are together still working on growing their love even more.

The Re-Trust Gamble of Love

Trust recovery and rebuilding after an affair, or any other kind of being seriously wounding occurrence in a love relationship, takes making some big gambles.  None of us knows the future for sure, and the past often does tend to repeat itself.  We can say we do, or do not believe our beloved will do something that acutely hurts us again but that is not truly knowable.  I suggest trust is not so much about belief and certainty, as it is about gambling.  We have to gamble on our loved one treating us with truth and abiding by their pledges.

We have to gamble on our own ability not to sabotage their ‘recovering trust efforts’, or our own efforts to recover trust.  We have to gamble on our own love-worthiness and love ability.  We have to gamble that as a couple (as a loving team) we can win together better than we may have done in the past.  We have to gamble on each other and on our own strength to survive the hard spots.  Let me also suggest that trust is something ‘we live’ much more than it is something we believe or feel certain about.

If we decide we don’t have what it takes to make the gamble of re-trusting, or it just is too dangerous and unlikely to work, then we probably have to part ways as best we can.  If I don’t believe in my own ability to be of high value and worth enough to merit faithfulness, then perhaps I am likely to set myself up for betrayal.  It is not just a matter of re-trusting someone else.  It also is a matter of trusting yourself to handle what may come your way.

Re-Trust and Anti-Love

If you want to be sure to destroy your chances of growing, repairing or rebuilding trust in a love relationship, obviously start by suspecting and saying something negative about every little thing that can be interpreted as ‘maybe he or she is doing something you would not want them to do’.  Then add a lot of accusations, blame, insults, guilt trips, judgmentalism, angry rejection and general rudeness, and to top it off play the role of the ever suffering martyr.  Or you can switch to the role of the righteous wronged victim, followed by being emotionally cold and distant.  You also can do a lot of invading privacy, spying and do a lot of actions trying to catch your beloved doing something wrong so you can attack them for it.

For love’s sake, I hope you do not choose any of these anti-love behaviors.

It is not that you should avoid talking about what anyone did or what happened.  However, talking about it in the ways just mentioned can be regarded as anti-love actions, more likely to destroy than rebuild trust or love.  Honest, straightforward work to understand and learn from what happened so that in the future you both can do better is a healthier way to go.  Then mix that with honest, emotional expression but also with some restraint so as not to cause more harm.  Remember, all things can be and are best said with love (see entry “Say it with Love”).  Ask for and freely give lots of love-filled reassurance and forgiveness to each other and to yourselves.  That is usually what it takes to go forward together, rebuilding trust and stronger love.

The Good News about Re-Trust

The majority of committed couples sooner or later face an affair, cheating or an unfaithfulness issue.  Concerning infidelity, research results I have seen vary from about 52% of marriages up to 80% of marriages, and it is just as high for unmarried committed couples.  The majority of those couples stay together, work it through, often making their love relationship better than it was before and, thus, make their life of re-trusting work successfully.  It often takes a great deal of joint teamwork and of course lots of love well shown.  In my opinion this work is best done through couples conjoint counseling, mixed with some individual counseling.

I once did some research that showed individual counseling leads to individual results, not joint results, thus, individual counseling alone may not produce the couple results you hope for.  Nevertheless, in the developed nations, the preponderance of recent research results suggests that in the majority of cases infidelity does not lead to permanent breakups among committed couples – unmarried or married.

As always, Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question
Do you regard yourself as strong enough to forgive?

Related posts:

1. Trust and Mistrust in Love