I want to be completely honest by stating that I still have some trust issues with my partner. All of it surrounds a single act of infidelity that took place over seven months ago now. And even though I’ve watched him become so much healthier since then, I find myself still struggling at various times to fully trust him. I realized tonight that the source of these trust issues are solely coming from my fear of abandonment.
Throughout most of my life, abandonment has been a common theme. My mother, my father, peers, friends, and partners have all made deep promises to me and later broken them. As each of them happened, my lack of trust in others solidified even deeper. Eventually, I stopped trusting anyone that got close to me because I was so used to people lying to me and breaking their promises.
When my partner and I became monogamous back in February of 2012, I had reached a place in my healing process where I was ready to begin trusting someone else again on a much deeper level. The day I discovered his infidelity over a year and a half later was one that severely triggered my abandonment issues. I put serious thought to walking away from our relationship at that time but I didn’t because I believe everyone deserves a second chance. I’m thankful I gave him one because the two of us have grown much closer ever since. The problem for me now though is those doubts I’m having of his monogamous commitment to our relationship.
While I haven’t actually seen any evidence that supports that fear, I know it’s stemming still from my fear of abandonment. Unfortunately, each of these doubts continue to lead me to behaviors that I know aren’t healthy. Sometimes I check up on him to make sure he’s at where he says he is going to be. Sometimes I interrogate him a little too much about various things. And sometimes I’ve even done some minor snooping on him too. I know that none of these behaviors are healthy, not for him, not for me, and not for us. I’m also starting to see how each is doing nothing more than slowly sabotaging our relationship.
The fact is that I wouldn’t want any of those behaviors being done to me on a regular basis. I’m also sure that I would eventually get sick and tired of someone not trusting me, especially if I was living in complete honesty and integrity. The irony in all of this is that my partner shares the same fear of abandonment as he too has gone through a considerable amount of it himself. In fact, through therapy he discovered his major motivating factor of cheating in the first place was that he was afraid I might abandon him down the road. So he attempted to sabotage it before that could ever happen. As I sit here and type this, I know now that my own acts of not trusting him are no different.
I am afraid that he might cheat on me again as I know our relationship wouldn’t be able to survive that. But I also know that all of my questioning and acts of not trusting him aren’t helping the matter either. I clearly see now that if I keep this up, it could create a self-fulfilling prophecy and I definitely don’t want that to happen. What I do want to happen is to fully trust my partner again, and I know to get there it’s going to mean walking through my fear of abandonment without acting out those fears. That means not checking up on my partner, not giving him the third degree, and believing that within him is the desire to keep the monogamy between us and only us. It’s going to take a lot more work on my part, but I have the willingness to do it.
I truly love my partner deeply and I’m thankful to my Higher Power for the healing taking place in our relationship with our abandonment issues. I fully believe that our Higher Power is giving us the gift each day to work through these issues by being in this connection with each other. The challenge for the two of us now is to trust each other and to not let our fears overwhelm us, as that will only lead us to sabotaging our connection. I make a promise to myself today that I am going to do whatever it takes to work through this, and I pray that my partner will do the same…
Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson