What Is Trust?

Transcription

Welcome back. In this section we'll talk about what actually is trust. One of the most common questions I'm asked is I've been sober for X period of time. Why doesn't my wife trust me? Trust doesn't actually come naturally. Just because you're pursuing freedom from addiction. We'll get into all of that and more, but before we get into what is trust and all of that, I want to share a couple of things that held me back from rebuilding trust in hopes that if you identify any of these in your own life, that you can nip them in the bud and hopefully help start building trust back.

So one of the first things that held me back was ignorance. I was ignorant to why I did what I did, why I was struggling, as well as how it impacted my wife. This led me to not be effective at communicating what I was struggling with and why, and it also kept me from being able to really empathize and hear her out and show her the love and compassion that she deserved.

I also wrestled with false beliefs. I believed that my sin rendered me unlovable and unrespectable, and what that meant is because I'm un, I'm only lovable and respectable. If people are in the dark about what I struggle with, then I'll need to share some to help her feel like I'm being honest. But I really shouldn't share everything.

Otherwise, all trust and or all love and respect are going to be shattered. Next is pride. Oh, there was a lot of that. I'm a grown man. I don't need boundaries. I don't need restrictions on my phone. I don't need the phone tracking app. I don't need all, I don't need counseling. I don't need fill in the blank.

I feel like most guys I talk to wrestle with pride instead of humility. In this area, and this is one of the biggest things that hold guys back in rebuilding trust from their wife. Because, put it this way, if a wife feels like something else, including a guy's autonomy, is keeping them from helping her to feel loved and safe, then all of a sudden it comes across like he doesn't actually care much for his spouse.

Next. I, uh, really wrestled with comparison. Wow, I've made tremendous progress in my recovery, therefore, she should trust me more. Meanwhile, I had, but let's say I went from struggling with porn and masturbation on a daily basis to now I was just lingering over inappropriate ads on news websites or social media.

Or letting my eyes linger when we go to the pool, like the reality is, according to God's standard, laid out in the Sermon on the Mount, if we lust at all, we commit adultery. And so instead of holding to God's standard of confessing any form of lust, whether that's fantasy, whether that's double takes, lingering glances, et cetera.

If instead of having that as a standard you have your past and how bad you were, that is going to greatly hamper your ability to rebuild trust because she's not going to build trust based on where, or she shouldn't rebuild trust based on where you should be, but rather where you are, um, minimizing. This was another big one for me.

I would minimize my sin as well as the effort required to break free. Along with how much I would need to change and grow, I thought, you know what? I'm mostly a good guy. I'm mostly, uh, I do what the Lord wants. I pursue the Lord, et cetera. So it's probably just a minor change that's needed in order to make what amounted to a radical transformation, because I was very addicted to porn and masturbation.

The reality is for anyone who is addicted to porn and masturbation. Especially if you have been addicted since around the time of puberty or before, I would argue you have no idea who God has created you to be. That's my story. That's the majority of guys that I talk to, story. The reality is when sin sets in early, we

are limited in our understanding of the giftings that God has given us. As well as many other areas of potential because we have learned from a very young age to be dependent on this sin. And so the reality is in order to break free, you will need to become, frankly, a radically different person, which is going to require a radical amount of effort.

But it is all absolutely worth it. I'm a very, very different person than when I was trapped in addiction. And in every way, it's for the better. I'm more confident because my confidence is in the Lord. I'm a better leader. I'm a better at loving people and showing compassion. I'm better in pretty much every area of life because the spirit has sanctified me through this journey.

I was also significantly helped held back by hopelessness in the belief that it will always be this way. My encouragement to you would be to allow your story to be rewritten. Go back, watch the breaking free course. Listen to my story about how God took me from the depth of addiction, despair, depression, all the way to having a thriving marriage, loving the Lord, loving my wife, and there being a tremendous amount of trust.

There are plenty of stories out there, and I desperately wish more guys would be open in sharing their story because the more guys that share their story of freedom as well as restoration in their marriage, the more you'll be able to continue to see that your story, whatever it is, does not mean that you are hopeless.

There is always hope with the Lord. Similar to minimizing, I would also struggle with coddling. Sin, I would think yeah, sure, I need to get my act and worry as it pertains to porn and masturbation. But those lingering glances, if she doesn't notice 'em, not a big deal. Any form of sin that you coddle, whether it's that sort of thing, whether it's fantasy, it inevitably will screw you over.

Just straight up sin is never content to just stay where it is. It will always grow. I noticed, for example, that even if I would only allow myself to do double takes or lingering glances, it would inev inevitably escalate and to worse and worse things. And so Sarah and I were asking like, why am I plateauing in my recovery?

And that was the reason why. I was coddling sin at the expense of actual sobriety by God's standards, and at the expense of rebuilding complete trust. Finally, underdeveloped communication skills. This led to not listening well, not communicating effectively, and it led to a tremendous amount of arguments.

So the reason I'm sharing this with you in part is so you realize. There's actually a lot that could be holding you back from rebuilding trust. Each of these are things that need to be worked through process, through but also to help you realize that as we are walking through this course on rebuilding trust, so, you know, it's not just a straight path.

There's some things that you'll need to work on along the way through sanctification. So

moving forward. We're kind of at a fork in the road. You need to decide to what extent does rebuilding trust. To what extent am I going to fight for it? Is the goal, is my goal to coddle sin or is my goal to be a man of integrity fully, and to rebuild trust with my wife because it's tremendously painful to.

Encourage the rebuilding of trust beyond how trustworthy you actually are, and that can do a tremendous amount of damage. So betrayal. One of the things that you also need to recognize about betrayal, I came to realize this later, for the betrayed spouse, betrayal doesn't just break the relationship. It actually breaks their perception of reality.

For example, with my wife. We had been in relationship for several years, uh, through dating and engagement, and then one year into marriage everything kind of broke out in the open, or at least the majority of things broke out in the open. She didn't know to what extent I was addicted beyond what I was communicating.

She didn't know to, to what extent I actually loved her, to what extent how I acted was based on what's the real me versus what's a facade. When trust is broken, it requires rebuilding in a number of areas, and that could well be why? It can feel like, I feel like I'm one step forward, two steps back. It is a process.

It is difficult. For sure. And my goal in this course is to provide a level of guidance to help you make progress even when you feel like you're plateauing.

Ultimately as Esther Perel says, every betrayal will redefine the relationship. In other words, there's no going back to how things work. Some couples will grow.

And some will separate, but no one goes back to what was there before. So often we can think, oh my goodness. It was so much easier when I was living in sin. She was living in ignorance. We at least liked each other. Then my friends, my encouragement to you is if you lean into healing. If you lean into rebuilding, trust.

The depth of intimacy union friendship that can come go far beyond anything that you have experienced so far. It is absolutely worth the tremendously difficult journey. I would very much encourage you to lean into this process.

 So what actually is trust? Trust is aligning perception with behavior. That doesn't mean you have to be perfect, but that means that you're not trying to put on a facade. Of being better or more sober than you actually are. And that means when she's asking you questions, you answer them with the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

You're not deflecting, you're not denying, you are accepting reality and sharing reality with her, and thereby allowing her to live in reality instead of deception. She wants to know, can I count on you to act in line with who I believe that you are? So the encouragement thing, encouraging thing is you do not have to be perfect per se.

You have to be real with where you're at. And then from that realness, the goal would be to work toward pursuing as perfect a freedom as you can via sanctification. And to bring her along that journey as much as possible. So as I shared before, betrayal fractures the shared reality, the both partners in effect will question what is true.

Trust isn't restored, it must be rebuilt from the ground up. I think there's a very common misperception that over time trust will be rebuilt as long as I'm being sober. Trust will be rebuilt. And that kind of thought process means, well, if I wasn't sober or edged a little bit by doing a double take, well I should keep that quiet because that harms trust and it's just the opposite.

I assume some of you who are watching this, don't believe me. Again, rebuilding trust is about alignment with reality more so than being perfect. I am convinced that the majority of divorces that happen after betrayal is more often because of the lack of trust and the lack of. Confidence that the husband can rebuild that trust or will do a state necessary to rebuild trust, then it is actually the behavior that the lack of trust is masking.

So I plead with you. Please, for your own sake, for the sake of your marriage, for the sake of your relationship with the Lord. Pursue honesty, pursue rebuilding, trust time, as I mentioned in the breaking free course time doesn't heal these kind of wounds. Time simply grows the seeds that you plant. If you plant seeds of being trustworthy, then trust will over time build.

If you plant seeds of deception, she will eventually come to find out, and at that point you'll be starting from the ground up. As Dan Allender Christian counselor said, restoration can only begin. When reality is faced, and that's for both parties. I couldn't actually begin restoration until I fully admitted what the reality of the situation was, the depth of my sin, the frequency of my sin, et cetera.

By the same token, Sarah couldn't effectively begin her healing journey until she knew what the baseline was. She knew how deep the rabbit hole went. And so for the sake of both of you, I would encourage you, just like I talked about in the breaking free course, go through a full disco disclosure process with a Christian certified sex addiction counselor, also referred to as a CSAT, to help gain a mutual sense of reality.

And from there, you can begin rebuilding.

Also from the breaking free course. I shared. An overview. This is not always the case, but an overview of her journey, kind of upon betrayal. What does she need? Typically, the three main things are to know what is real. She needs a sense of security, and she needs to understand why this happened.

It is we go back to our conversation before about the things that were holding me back. You'll notice a lot of those overlap with these core needs. And that's part of why rebuilding trust can take so stinking long. So if you haven't gone through the the breaking free course. , I encourage you to pause here and go back to that course.

So similarly as before, the work of restoration cannot begin until the problem is fully faced.

 So the next thing we're going to go into is from a baseline level, if you've just gone through some form of disclosure, your wife caught you, or you've gone through disclosure with a, uh, csat, your kind of right in crisis mode, what do you do? The first step is going to be to cre, to stop the bleeding, in effect, to stabilize the relationship as much as possible.

So that's what we'll go into next.