Our Marriage Lacks Trust

Is your marriage and/or committed relationship facing a similar crisis?
Hope Asks Nancy for Relationship Advice: My husband and I have been married for 4 years. It was an arranged marriage. We both agreed to this marriage anyway. We do not have children. Our family planning is on hold as we are still working on our relationship.

I should also mention that I have been in counseling for 3 out of the 4 years of our relationship.

Back in 2007, one day, my husband told me that he is going for an away day with his teammates and he will stay in a hotel. He took his camera with him to take photos of the meeting. I packed his bag and he left. He came back the next evening and I could tell from his face that something is wrong. I asked him about his away day and he said that it went really good. He told me that he couldn’t take any photos as the camera batteries ran out. I could tell from his eyes and the body language that he is not telling me the truth. He was very loving with me for the next couple days. Few days pass and then I caught him looking at some photographs on the computer and he quickly minimized the window. I was working part time, so on my day off I managed to log into his account. I found many photographs of women I didn’t know, pornographic images and videos. I finally found the photos he was looking at on that night. It was a woman holding a bouquet while sitting on the sofa in a hotel room, one with my husband standing next to her and both smiling, one in the bathroom brushing her teeth and smiling at the same time, one where she was lying in bed (fully clothed but deep neckline), holding her shirt from the back with both hands.

I googled all the hotels in the city I live and finally found that one. It was one expensive hotel near the Airport. Exact the same room, curtains, table, bed, table lamp, bathroom and even the sofa cover.

I waited for one day to get my head together. The next day I confronted him. He admitted straight away that he went to see his ex-girlfriend and he hid it because he knew that I wouldn’t understand and he needed a closure on their relationship to be able to move on. He had never discussed it with me and assumed that I wouldn’t understand. I cried, I felt embarrassed, angry, sad, alone, brokenhearted and worthless. I asked him if he slept with her or kissed her. He said that they stayed in separate rooms and nothing happened but he gave her a massage on her back (clothes on) and took photographs to remember this meeting.

History of Ex: This woman and my husband were engaged a long time ago and she broke up with him after a year but they stayed friends. She got married in between but after couple years her marriage failed and she broke up with her husband.

History of my husband: My husband was deeply in love with this woman. After they broke up he couldn’t stop seeing her and she never stopped him until one day her new boyfriend banned him to see her again. In between my husband met another woman and stayed with her for 3 years but they broke up and then he got married to me. It was just a year after our marriage when he decided to meet his ex for a closure.

Based on this history, the level of bonding and their long relationship, I am unable to believe what he told me. Her marriage failed, she was single and vulnerable. He was feeling vulnerable. They were alone; he took her photographs and gave her flowers. He gave her a massage. Massages can be very intimate. In my case, whenever he gives ME massage I feel relaxed and it is ‘always’ followed by sex!

Six months pass, I was still recovering from the shock and yet, he met his ‘other’ ex-girlfriend (second girlfriend) for a ‘closure’. She contacted him and asked him if they could meet up. She told him that she loved him when they were together and now she wanted a closure. He went to see her and hid it from me, ‘again’! I found it on his social network profile when I noticed a new friend in his list and on top of that, his unusual behavior. I confronted him and he admitted straight away. I did not cry or argued with him. I forced him so hard to unlock his computer! He did it for me but he never deleted the photos. I don’t know if he actually wanted me to see this stuff or he was so clueless about not deleting it or may be he was so annoyed with me that he didn’t care anymore.

I found naked photos of his ex’ girlfriend (some third ex-girlfriend), naked photos of many other women, few emails that he sent to his colleague asking her about her photographs with ‘less clothes’ to see her body posture and set up a meeting with her to give her a yoga lesson!

We are still together. We are not having a baby for another year to see how it goes. I do not remind him but he knows that I do not trust him and still haven’t forgiven him. I don’t have access to his email but he doesn’t lock his computer anymore and he has deleted almost everything.

I am tired. He doesn’t want to leave me but I am always thinking about leaving him. We do not argue or fight anymore. We live a normal life.

I cook, iron his clothes, he helps me with house chores and shopping. We go out for meals, we both have good jobs and we share the expenses between us but we sleep in separate bedrooms. We do have an intimate physical relationship but the emotional bonding disappears as soon as I go to my room at night.

I have accepted him as a friend but my heart is closed to accept him as a life partner or as a father of my children.

Without ‘TRUST’ is this relationship going anywhere?”

Nancy’s answer to Hope’s struggle in her marriage:

Dear Hope,

The situation you have described is obviously not a marriage based on mutual love, respect and trust.  These components are vital for a strong foundation to build a life together. Right now, you are in limbo and seem to be in a stage where you have accepted the state of your marriage - which is not anywhere near the kind of marriage you need in order to bring children into the world.  If you cannot work through these issues, and have exhausted every possible means of reconciliation, then the best thing to do is to part ways.  I am very pro-marriage and believe that most relationships can be saved if the couple sincerely wants to get to a better place.

However, since you entered into your marriage based on an arrangement instead of love, it seems as if you two did not really act from the heart from the beginning.  Clearly, your husband has issues with letting go of the past and there obviously is a need that is not being fulfilled in your marriage from his perspective.  If it was, he would not be actively seeking out women from his past.  There is something he is trying to recapture that is missing from his life today.  There also is the issue of your lack of trust in the relationship.  Trust issues develop from your formative years, and even though your husband has proved your belief that men are not to be trusted, there is another level of this situation you need to explore.

  Primarily, you need to establish when you first believed that the men in your life would eventually betray you.  What happens when we hold on to negative beliefs, we end up recreating the very scenario we are trying very hard to avoid.

  You may ask, “Why would I do something like that?  The last thing I want is to feel betrayed.”  And yes, that is the last thing you want to feel, but until you work through why that belief is there in the first place, it will be a source of distress and uneasiness.  Each one of us brings those types of feelings to the surface to experience in present day relationships in an effort to work through them.  So in essence, your husband will continue to lie and cheat on you until you do the work necessary to find out the origins of that particular belief.  Your life always follows your thoughts and beliefs ... and your marriage is a manifestation of what you believe in your heart ... what you expect in love and the way you believe you should be treated.

  The best thing you can do at this point is to continue to work on yourself through counseling and ultimately combining that knowledge with faith and allowing God to do His part in the healing process.

I know this advice may be counter to what seems logical, but I assure you that the more work you do to unravel any negative beliefs you possess, the more you will be able to gain the confidence necessary to expect a positive and loving marriage for yourself.

Right now you are in a stage where you know what you have in your marriage is wrong, and the lack of intimacy and trust is wrong, but on some level do not believe that you can do any better - or should expect better.  That is where you need to not only have the intellectual knowledge of these facts, but have that belief - that knowing in your heart that you deserve better - and that God will provide that kind of love for you.

For more resources on how you can heal from any area of brokenness in your life, please start with the following:

Personal Evaluation