Lack of Trust

In college, before my wife and I started dating, I told her that I had been picked on most of my life with kids calling me dirty and that I smelled bad. She was one of those “I only smoke when I’m drunk” so she said it wouldn’t be a big deal. I voiced my concern that every “I only smoke when I drink” person I knew was now a full blown smoker. Every now and then she’d sneak a Clove cigarette while she was drinking but that was it. Then she started working at a pizza shop and started smoking with a few of her coworkers. She’d often come home wreaking of smoke but every time I said something she would deny it and say it must be from hanging out with her friends while they smoked. Eventually at a party one of her friends made a harmless comment about how many cigarettes she’s bummed off him. Realizing she’d been lying to me we got in a MASSIVE fight.

Fast forward a decade or so and her new job is super stressful. Well of course the same pattern emerges. She’d occasionally come home from work or her sister in laws house smelling like smoke. I’d get upset and she’d deny it, we’d argue and eventually move forward.
Then one day she calls me and asks if she left her work phone at home. Just as I find her phone and pick it up, the phone dings and a text preview pops up on her lock screen saying “ready to go burn one? “. I’ve been around enough smokers to know what that means. When she gets home I confront her and guess what? Despite the evidence, she denies it endlessly. Not only does she deny it, she accuses me of snooping through her phone. A year or two later she finally admits shes been smoking again. Another massive fight.

After some reflection I decided that she was more important to me than my despisal of cigarettes so I decided I’d have to get over it. And I did for the most part. I’m actually to the point where I can sit around with her while she has a cigarette. Even though it still off putting to see her smoking I’ve accepted it and there have been no further issues. Well, at least that’s what I thought. That’s when it hit me that she’s basically been lying to me for the vast majority of our relationship. 18 years of constant lying. I was pretty broken. I was still able to accept her smoking but I found myself questioning more and more of what she said. The longer this went on, the more and more I questioned her stories when something seemed off. Now we’re on the verge of divorce due to a different situation. We’re trying to work on ourselves so we can then start working on the marriage and I’m REALLY struggling to trust ANYTHING she tells me. Our relationship has always been love hard, fight hard with the love hard parts being so good, we wanted to try and save the marriage. We agreed I’d move out for a few months to give us some space so we could take a deep breath. We’re both so burned out from work, not sleeping and stress, all we do is fight. I really want to take this tike to ebuild myself, to process and let go of as much of my old pain as possible. To her credit, the lying has stopped but I find myself assuming she’s lying to me a the time. There’s a microscopic piece of my brain that says she’s still lying to me and making a fool of me behind my back. How do I start trusting her so I can save sanity and hopefully our marriage?