My husband (27M) and I (26F) have been together over 10 years and although he has never actually cheated on me he has lied so many times I find it hard to trust him now.
Some context of the lies and issues we've had that feed into this: liking girls half naked insta photos, lying about going round a female friends house and instead saying he bumped into her at the shop, withholding truth about a female colleague (who has caused issues in the past) is going to be moving to his team at work. These were the biggest lies/issues, all other ones have been a lot more trivial.
Some of these things were years ago (when we were teenagers, right at the start of our relationship) and the issue itself we have moved past but the damage to the trust still lingers and it's gotten to the point where every few months I end up feeling incredibly anxious about our relationship. There has been something at least every 6 months that he has lied to me about/withheld the truth and he says he does it because he knows its an issue and this is his way of preventing it from being an issue.
We talked just under a year ago and I made it very clear that withholding any information on these trust trigger points makes things 100 times worse and he agreed that there will be no more lies and we will work on this. He has been so much more thoughtful and caring since and I have tried doing a bit of journaling to help move past the trust issues but the anxious feeling has come back.
Its to the point now where because there isnt anything he has lied about that it's like my brain is looking for anything and everything and it's driving me mad. I started an argument the other day over him not asking follow up questions when he asked how my day was. Because my brain expects him to have lied about something its like its picking holes in anything and everything until I find something that he has lied about. It's not healthy or good for either of us!
Any tips on how to rebuild my trust in him? E.g. journal prompts, date nights we could do? (Ideally things I can physically do or ways to challenge anxiety etc but open to any ideas!)
FYI – we have tried couples counselling but it didn't really work for us just because we are both quite logical people but if there is a type of counselling that is less talk therapy and more solution orientated then I am all ears!
TIA x