Due to trauma from my first relationship where I got lied to and eventually cheated on, I have trust issues that I want to fix for my future relationship.
I recently broke up with a good trustworthy girl, because I have strict boundaries, have trust issues and am insecure. I do not like them having male friends and I feel like I am losing a lot of good potential partners due to this strict boundary.
I want my future partner to have male friends and not have it trigger me to the point where I have nightmares, sleepless nights or worse, where I act on every little suspicion and sabotage the relationship. I want to be able to trust my partner if they chat with a friend occasionally or grab lunch with a coworker. Even as I’m typing this out I have this weird feeling in my stomach. It tanks my confidence and I feel very insecure and like I am about to get cheated on again. I don’t like looking for lies and other clues that lead me to believe my partner is cheating. I hate myself for it and it’s very unhealthy.
It is even worse seeing my partner sad and disappointed in my lack of trust, when they are telling the truth and being very reassuring. I know no one wants an insecure partner and constant reassurance can be emotionally draining for some, though I have no trouble reassuring my partner whenever needed. It never seems like work to me as I am very affectionate and want them to feel secure in the relationship. Some friends told me I just haven’t met the right person, who is actually trustworthy and when I meet them I will know they are the one and I will feel secure in the relationship. So I am wondering if that is the case or if I just have to learn to change myself and my boundaries.
I have been on this sub for a while now, hoping something similar will get posted that I could learn from. And I have noticed how just reading about other people getting lied to or cheated triggers me heavily where I put myself in their shoes and have trouble breathing and become very anxious.
Therapy is not an option anytime soon because I can’t afford it. So I was hoping to get advice or help from someone who might have gone through something similar. I am also not looking to date again before I fix this. As I want to be a good partner and have a healthy relationship in the future. I want to change.
How do I go on about healing from this and how do I become a better partner?
5 comments
Take some time for you. Learn who you are and why you are worthy of a good partner. Knowing more about yourself will help you know who will be right for you. Not every woman has male friends. But more importantly, the right woman will not make you worry about her friendships. You need confidence and security in yourself. Keeping boundaries is important. And trust your gut. Some friendships are inappropriate, but many are not. You should never feel like you’re being betrayed or disrespected.
Step 1 would be to get off this website and stop reading about bad relationships. Someone that’s trying to fix their trust issues, should not spend their day reading posts about cheating.
With professional help and therapy.
If you can’t afford therapy, invest in self help books and listen to podcasts about building trust, etc. Stay away from content that has how to be an “alpha male” or any other related term as its main focus, as that will make you worse and more toxic. Stop reading on Reddit about bad relationships. Spend time enjoying hobbies, making friends, and building yourself up. Make female friends with hard boundaries so you can see how healthy and non threatening platonic relationships with people of the opposite gender can be. Find a coping mechanism to help turn off those thoughts when they do occur (exercise, a show, a book, etc.) and build up your strength to stop yourself when you’re tempted to put those thoughts on other people. Being anxious/upset about these kinds of things is okay if you can remember it’s no one else’s job to change their behavior to an unreasonable degree to make you feel better. Where you’re in the wrong is when you put those feelings on her and control her behavior.
I can very much relate to your experiences.
I think it is important to separate out what you are scared of. I would suggest that (1) you are scared of being cheated on again and having to deal with the horrible emotions of feeling betrayed/cheated on/disrespected, and (2) you are scared because a part of you doesn’t believe you are worthy of someone fully committing to you (I don’t blame you as this is what the world has shown you thus far).
Let’s take the first fear – someone cheating on you again. What emotions would you feel? Granted, it would be horrible, but due to having gone through this already, you have already accrued a lot of wisdom. In fact, you have first hand experience of knowing what it is like, and you are at least partly recovering from it. If it actually happened again, I would guess that you WOULD be able to deal with it. You are stronger than you think.
Let’s take the second fear – the fear of unworthiness. I know you said you cannot afford therapy, so that’s off the table. There are a lot of free resources out there targeted at increasing your sense of self-worth.
EFT tapping might help – [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ti2BtLVZu4U](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ti2BtLVZu4U) – I haven’t used this particular resource but it is an example I quickly found online of something I did in therapy.
What are your core values? Are you living in line with these? I think the more authentic we are living, the more we can naturally love and respect ourselves and feel emotionally safe. It then matters less how others ‘value’ us. In my opinion, jealousy can also arise when we are not living truly and authentically.
Finally, I will share a brief metaphor with you that actually helped me massively, not sure if it will resonate with you. So, I imagine myself as a particular flavour of ice cream, some will like me, some wont. Some will think I am ‘ok’, but I’ll be some people’s *favourite* flavour. There are plenty of other flavours out there, but no one is *my particular flavour*. I am not competing against others so I don’t need to feel jealous. I am comfortable in knowing that my flavour is right for certain people, and if they’re right for me, they will stay and wont want to look elsewhere.
If a partner is right for you, I don’t think they will mind reassuring you at times. There are some women who would willingly not want to have friendships with the opposite sex, as they would expect their partner not to have friendships with the opposite sex either. So, perhaps it is partly about finding someone who is on the same page as you. This could be a valid boundary for you.