Trust

Hello my name is Andrea and I have a severe problem trusting men. Whew I feel so much better now that I said that outloud.  May seem insignificant to most people but to me it's a HUGE problem. I am the type of person who doesn't trust anyone from the get go. You have to earn your trust with me and once it's broken it's extremely hard to fix.  I spent years in counseling when I was in my late teens and early twenties trying to figure out why I am the way I am and how to deal with my issues. Did it help?  Maybe a little but my issues like to rear their ugly heads especially when i'm under stress.  I first talked about the abuse I suffered at the hands of my mom when I was a child here and I still do plan to talk more about it in hopes of helping others.  Like I said before if what I disclose helps even just one person then I will be so happy!  There are alot of things that happen in my life and my marriage that I don't write about because some things are just meant to be private.  However I talked to my hubby last night and asked if it was ok with him if I told a little of his "story" and he liked the idea.  You see it's this amazing phenonmenon that people who were abused as children unknowingly seek out others that have had the same or similiar experiences.  I don't really understand why this happens but a counselor once told me that nine times out of ten that almost all of your friends will have had a similiar experience as you did growing up. She also said that you may not even realize it and may never realize it because it's not something most people like to talk about or disclose.  It's almost like a secret "club" so to speak.  So about a year ago when my husband broke down and started having repressed memories surface I wasn't the least bit surprised.  Well let me rephrase that...I was shocked at what had happened to him but not shocked that I had married someone who had been abused.  My husband has a long journey to getting better but as he put it "at least i'm with someone who gets me."  What I have tried to explain to him is that you have to deal with what happened to you head on and not sweep it under the carpet.  Everyone is different in how they deal with things but by not dealing your just delaying the healing process.  Are we ever really healed? I'm really not sure. I want to think I am healed but I know i'm not but I am better.  So back to the trust thing...I kind of got sidetracked here didn't I?  I will always have trust issues  and it can be crippling at times. For example when my husband tells me "yes dear I watered the plants" my first thought is no you didn't your lying.  (This is just an example by the way....I don't think I have ever doubted him on simple everyday things.) It doesn't help matters that my first husband was a piece of shit.lying cheater who destroyed my self esteem and trust completely.  Lets just say he makes Tiger Woods look good.  I allowed myself to be emotionally abused by him for six years.  I allowed him to manipulate me and knock me to the very bottom of the Earth.  So now Steven gets the aftershocks which isn't fair.  From the very start of our relationship I have not trusted him at all when it came to other women.  What was so crazy is he had done absolutely nothing to make me doubt his faithfulness.  I had just convinced myself that he was talking to and seeing other women.  So I would snoop.  I would find myself grabbing his phone while he was in the shower and looking at all of his incoming/outgoing calls and text messages.  At the time he worked as a contractor for Dish Network so he made alot of calls to customers but in my mind they weren't customers but other women.  Crazy huh?  I think I even called a few of the numbers just to see who it actually was he was talking to!!  What did I find out? Customers or his male friends NOT other women.  This obsession got worse over time.  I not only was snooping thru his phone I would snoop thru his email as well.  One evening after we had been dating for about 8-10 months I broke down and admitted to him what I had been doing.  He wasn't mad at all and told me that if it made me feel better then I could snoop all I wanted because he had nothing to hide.  That was just it though I didn't want to be that kind of person.  Everyone deserves their own personal space and privacy.  So over the years I have really had to make the effort to not do those kind of things.  It's very hard but I have made huge progress!! I think I am going to do a post soon on what exactly happened to me that made me have such trust issues. It's not just one thing inparticular but a multitude of things.  Right now my husband and I are trying very hard to work through everything but I am not going to sit here and type that things are great.  They aren't great at all but one thing I do know is that we love each other and we "get" one another.  That in itself is great!!
Happy Thursday everyone!