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Do you want to trust your spouse with your soul once again?
Do you often feel jealous and suspicious when your spouse is not with you? Do
you want to trust your spouse after adultery, but can’t? Then this article is
for you.
Trusting your spouse with your soul is a deep felt intimacy
that grows and grows with the marriage. But what happens when a spouse
unexpectedly snaps that trust in half by committing adultery? We become devastated and broken, and all we
want is for things to go back to the way they were, but that takes work.
Assuming that your spouse has repented and turned their life
around it is now time to rebuild broken trust once and for all. Many marriages
cannot weather the storms of adultery because they do not have a firm
foundation to begin with, but if your house was already built upon The Rock or
if you are now willing to rebuild it on The Rock then your marriage can be
salvaged.
If a spouse is truly sorry for their actions then they
shouldn’t have any problem being accountable for their actions. That means they
will allow their spouse to call them at work, or they will call their spouse
before they leave work to drive home, and they will stop going out alone with
their buddies. Whatever it is they need to do, they should be willing to do it
for their spouse, if they have turned their life around.
Accountability is what brings trust back in some marriages
because it shows the deceived spouse the adulterer can be trusted once again,
but it does take time and consistent actions on a daily basis. We do want to be
careful with accountability though, because you don’t want to come off as a
mother hen or bossy dictator.
Couples should discuss the aspects of accountability and
understand why it is put into place in the first place. If a spouse has not
done anything to merit mistrust than there should not be any reason for a
spouse to have to answer to their whereabouts twenty-four hours a day; that
would be ridiculous. Accountability is brought into the marriage NOT because
you don’t trust your spouse, but so you can go on trusting your spouse. Do you
understand the difference?
In marriage, couples absolutely need to trust one another,
otherwise there is going to be too many personal issues such as jealousy and
resentment that will keep them from truly loving in the ways they should.
Couples have to get passed these kinds of negative emotions once and for all or
else the marriage will be doomed for unhappiness and eventual collapse.
Jealousy is often a learned emotion brought over from
childhood. It is interlinked with fear of abandonment and fear of not being in
control and not trusting in oneself. So then knowing this, a person can be
jealous even when a spouse has done nothing to warrant that jealousy. It is a
personal issue that needs dealt with separately from the issue of adultery.
Once an adulterous spouse “shows” accountability and takes
responsibility for their actions, after a time, there should not be any issues
of mistrust, resentment, suspicion, or jealousy going on in the marriage. And
if there is, then that is something that you need to be answerable to, because
no marriage can withstand the destruction of such emotions encroaching upon the
marriage. Random thoughts of jealousy and suspicion in marriage are a result of
ones own insecurities and can actually harm the marriage in more ways than one.
Bottom line is if you want to trust your spouse again, it
takes more than just accountability by the wayward spouse, but it takes you to
be willing to WANT to trust your spouse again.
Be willing to get rid of all negative feelings you have towards them.
Pray about it and ask God to help you with trusting your spouse again. In time,
trust will come back into the relationship.
For jealousy is the rage of a man: therefore he will not
spare in the day of vengeance. (Proverbs 6:34 KJV)
Angie Lewis has written three books on how to have a happy marriage. She has just finished her fourth book THE ALCOHOLISM TRAP: Understanding Why You Drink and What You Can Do To Achieve Total Sobriety.
For more information about this book and marriage books, please visit: http://www.heavenministries.com
To see book previews, please visit: http://stores.lulu.com/angielewis
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