Rebuilding Trust In a Relationship

Something that can single-handedly destroy any relationship is when trust is broken. This can be through lying, cheating or anything else that constitutes betrayal.

There are many ways that trust can be broken:

• Cheating, of course, is number one on the list. When one partner goes outside of the relationship and has sex with someone else, it brings about a situation in the relationship that many don’t survive.
• Lying to your partner about something important will also break trust. Your partner won’t know when you’re lying or not after that.
• Talking badly about your partner to others is disrespectful as well as trust breaking.

Once trust is broken, it can be next to impossible to rebuild. The first step is deciding how badly you want the relationship to survive. If you really want to make it work in spite of what you’ve done, you need to understand that it’s not going to be easy. You’re going to be on probation for a long time. Expect to have to explain your every move for a while. Also, don’t be late in coming home or calling when you’ve said you would be. Once you lie about something, it’s going to be difficult to convince your partner that you won’t do it anymore.

When you say you’ll be home at a certain time, it’s vital that you be there within at least 5 minutes of the set time. If you get caught in traffic or were delayed at work, you had better take a couple of minutes to call ahead of time to explain what’s going on. It may be necessary to make more than one call depending on what has caused your delay and how long you’re going to be. This may be a bit annoying but when you cheat or lie to your partner, you can expect to be making it up for a long time to come. If you want to repair your relationship, it’s not going to be easy on you and it shouldn’t be.

If your screw up was talking badly about your partner to others, assuming your partner still wants to try to work on things, the hoops that you’ll probably have to jump through may be even more irritating.

First of all, though, think about why you said the things you did about your partner. Is it possible that you really want to end the relationship and this is how you were getting that out in the open? Why would you say negative things about your partner behind their back if you really are in love with them? Yes, those are some things to think about because being talked badly about by someone that’s supposed to love you can be very hurtful.

The bottom line is that if you want to make the relationship work in spite of what you did to ruin it, there are things that you’ll need to do to rebuild that broken trust. You must be willing to toe the line for as long as it takes or walk away now.

Really Bad Relationship Advice

I came across an article today that I felt offered some really, really terrible relationship advice:

Options For Your Mediocre Marriage:  http://www.cnn.com/2013/LIVING/06/02/marriage.with.issues/index.html?hpt=hp_bn8

For people that are stuck in a loveless marriage, it can be hell to figure out what to do about it.  The article covered some alternative arrangements people who are in such a situation could consider.

“Open” marriage was one of the alternatives.  I have never met or heard of any marriage or long-term relationship that was able to survive such a concept.  You’re either married or your not. Personally, I have always felt that this concept is a just a way for people to ease their guilt about wanting to fool around with other people.  Same thing for the marriage “sabatical” idea.

One option I can sort of understand is divorced cohabitation.  In this economy, many people’s finances are strained and they may not be able to afford a separation or divorce.  If they feel they just can’t stay married anymore but can’t separate due to financial reasons, this could be a reasonable short-term solution.  But their long-term plan should be to move out and divorce completely – there will be too much baggage to maintain a relationship of this sort long-term.

Overall, I feel that if you are not mostly content with your life in your marriage then you should make plans to get out of it and move on with your life.  Living in limbo is not good for anyone and will only hold you back from finding happiness.

How to Tell If He Likes You or Thinks of You as Just Friends

Many times, women develop crushes or totally fall in love with their male best friends. Since it’s very possible that your friend adores you on some level, at the same time, he would probably be shocked to find out that you had feelings for him that went beyond those of friendship.

Therefore, it’s better to have an idea of how he really feels for you before professing your undying love for him. There are some simple ways to tell if you should keep quiet and find a real boyfriend or not.  Here are some examples:

• It’s funny to him every time his parents ask when the two of you are going to start dating for real.
• He asks you to be his “plus 1” date for a wedding because he can’t find a “real” date to go with him.
• He tends to come to you for relationship advice.
• If you go to see a movie together, he likes to keep an empty seat between you so that you’ll both have more space.
• He asks for your help in editing his profile for an online dating site.
• He calls you by your last name a lot, just like the buddy you are.
• When you wear a low cut top, he never even notices your cleavage.
• He introduces you as his best friend or his sister.
• He finds one of your girlfriends hot and asks you to set him up with her.
• His bathroom habits are an open book to you and he doesn’t try to hide anything from you.
• He’s constantly checking out other girls right in front of you.
• He makes sure that pictures of the two of you on social networking sites don’t lead to the impression that you’re together.
• He gets a brand new puppy and honors you by naming it after you.

As you can see, these are pretty obvious ways to tell that he’s not sharing your feelings of a romantic love and a chance of a real relationship. If you’re experiencing any or all of these signs with your guy friend, chances are you won’t be choosing a wedding dress anytime soon. In fact, it’s probably better if you just keep your feelings to yourself and maybe keep your distance from him for a while until you can get control of your feelings.

Now, if you’re looking at this list and thinking that those signs don’t mean anything, that he could still fall in love with you, certainly it can happen. But usually it doesn’t happen off of the big silver screen or one of those chick flick Lifetime movies.

However, if you’re so determined that you won’t know the true answer until you tell him how you feel, go for it. Just be prepared for him to be really uncomfortable and to feel kind of awful yourself. It’s truly better to kind of hint around at things in this situation rather than come fully clean and speaking from the heart. In that way, no one gets embarrassed and your friendship is still intact.