How do you know when your spouse is not lying?
It had reached to stage where Jane was struggling to believe a single word that her husband said. Thinking back to before she found out about the affair, she is still appalled as to how easy it was for him to lie about where he had been. Having seen how smooth a liar he is, she doubts whether she could ever trust him again.
How do you know that they are not lying?
Jane had reached the stage where she was unable to trust her own judgement as to what was fact, and what was fiction. This really gave a significant blow to her self-esteem in that she was unable to tell when her husband was being unfaithful. Unless you can monitor a suspect spouse 24 hours a day then how can you tell if they are being unfaithful?
Marriage is built upon trust, you have to trust your spouse, just as they have to trust you. Because she trusted his reasons for coming home late, Jane felt foolish that she could not tell his stories for the lies that they were. With the magic of hindsight she cannot believe how she fell for his lies. But if you have no reason to doubt your spouse, then what reason would you have not to believe them.
The memory of it plays heavily on her mind, the betrayed, trusting wife who now feels inadequate for having placed her trust in a cheating husband. Infidelity in marriage can be a soul-destroying experience, but you cannot let it destroy you. Jane did not do anything wrong. It does not matter who you are, anyone can be fooled by a good liar, especially if you do not have any reason to doubt them. Let us face it, even the combined might of the legal and intelligence communities can get it wrong.
Many people who have been hurt come to believe that there is some magic formula for spotting a lie. Once you have been faced by the awful realization that a part of your marriage was a lie, then how can you believe in your judgement ever again. When you have been hurt this bad, you will look back to the golden days of your marriage when there was still trust. Once you have got over the shock of the affair, you might want to start trusting your spouse again. It can happen, but it will take time, and your partner has to be prepared to go through the process, so that they earn the right for you to trust them again.
There will be times when the victim in this cannot just say I believe you, sometimes they need proof that their wayward spouse is not straying again. Jane for example needed to know that the affair had ended. She needed to know that when her husband was going to get back late, that he had a genuine reason. When a spouse has gone astray once, anything out of the ordinary could make the victim believe that they are doing it again.
Some victims have such a powerful need for proof that their partners can be trusted, that they require them to take a polygraph test. If it calms your mind then it could be worth the expense. A polygraph test is not a 100% accurate. Depending on the operator it can have a 60 to 70% success rate. Now with those kind of statistics it is possible that your spouse could be wrongly accused. I have heard of some cases where when faced with having to prove their infidelity in marriage to a stranger, the cheater ended up confessing so that they did not have to go through with it. On a cautionary note, rather than reassuring you, you could end up even more doubt ridden than before the test.
An important question for you is just how much do you need to have incontrovertible evidence that the truth is the truth. That is something that only you can answer. But beware of becoming fixated on a never-ending quest for the truth, it could ruin your life. There has to come a point where you are prepared to trust again, if you cannot then you will not find happiness. If you really need to be able to recognize fact from fiction then there are people who offer specialized training in lie-detecting. It goes without saying that this will be very expensive. If results are what you need for peace of mind, then the companies who offer this training claim 97% accuracy in being able to detect a lie.
Dr. Maureen O’Sullivan who until her death was Professor of Psychology at the University of San Francisco conducted a study into lying. She looked at 13,000 people to find those that she called Wizards, or natural human lie detectors. From her studies she had found that the Wizards could almost always recognize a deception. Out of those 13,000 people, she was only able to identify 31 Wizards. That should tell you that detecting lies is to say the least challenging for the vast majority of people.
You need to be able to kick your mistrust triggers out of your life. Your marriage has been shattered by a network of lies and deceit. In order to rebuild your marriage you must first rebuild your foundation of trust, and you can only do that by building one step at a time. Unless you follow them 24 hours a day, 7 days a week then you will never know whether or not your spouse is being faithful to you. Infidelity in marriage is a terrible thing, but more terrible is letting it eat you up so that you can never enjoy a relationship again.
If your spouse conducts themselves as a normal spouse would, committing themselves to the success of your marriage, then there has to come a point where you start to trust them.
It is understandable that the victim in this wants more from their spouse than just words. No matter how genuine the sentiment behind them, words are cheap, and the injured spouse has already fallen victim to the cheaters words. Actions speak louder than words, and the victim needs to know that the cheater is working hard to reform themselves, from their innermost thoughts to their daily behaviour. There are certain actions that you can take. As each relationship differs you might have to customize them to suit your circumstances.
First of you need to define what your mistrust triggers are. Take a look at what has happened over the last week, month or however long. Look at what your spouse did, or did not, that started ringing alarm bells in you. Are they coming home late and not calling you to let you know? Are they supposed to be at their desk all day but you are unable to get them to answer their desk phone or their cell phone. On the other hand, are you the one who is habitually late, or are reluctant to answer your phone? Can you understand how these actions can start pulling those mistrust triggers?
In a marriage you are supposed to be able to share your lives. Infidelity in marriage raises barriers between you. To lower those barriers start to be more open with each other, especially if you were the cheater. Keep in touch more, if you say that you will be somewhere at a certain time, then be there! If you cannot make it then let your spouse know what the difficulty is.
Why not start keeping in touch with each other throughout the day. Pick a couple of times in the day when you can call and just have a quick conversation on how the day is going. You might even find that you enjoy doing it.
Whether you were the victim or the cheater, choose one of those personal triggers and then work at stripping the power from that trigger. It makes good sense if you talk about it with your spouse, because then you start working together on how to rebuild and strengthen your marriage. Let us say for example that prior to the affair being discovered, that if asked about how your day went, you would reply with some kind of prehensile grunt. Instead, take the time to tell your spouse about how your day went, it has the benefit of involving them more in your life. Once you have started do not stop, keep working at it until all of your triggers have been stripped of their power.
There will be some who resent having to check in with you, it will probably feel like when they had to tell their parents what they were doing, and when they would be back. If that is you then I quite understand that you will feel resentful. However, get over it. So long as you are burdened with this attitude it will severely hamper your ability to rebuild trust with your spouse.
Look at your new behaviour as a fresh start that heralds a new dawn of transparency for your marriage. Being able to open yourself to your spouse is a real gift of love then will help to enrich your marriage. It will not be easy. Becoming used to opening yourself up can be embarrassing, and you can find yourselves in areas that you feel vulnerable. Look at this as process where you can grow, where you can reach new levels of communication and intimacy with each other. Infidelity in marriage is a terrible thing. But if you do not let it destroy you, if you hold firm to your marriage, if you work through the darkness and make it into the light, then you will have something truly precious.
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Are Your Mistrust Triggers Destroying Your Marriage?
