I actually found out about my ex-husband’s decade-long affair, including other children, a year after we got divorced.
Things had been tense between us already, but this new information completely broke the foundation of trust I thought we had established over the course of our marriage.
To learn that nothing was as I had previously believed pierced me to the core.
I questioned everything, most of all myself. I labeled him as “untrustworthy” and I could only look at him through that lens. Nothing he told me, even about the children, could be believed.
As I struggled to understand how I could ever trust again, I thought a lot about trust and how necessary it is to live in this world. I thought of how often we trust other people- even complete strangers to be responsible and good intentioned.
We trust other drivers to not drive intoxicated or too tired.
We trust them to know the rules and laws.
We trust strangers at the park not to kidnap our kids when we aren’t looking for a short moment.
We trust the banks to have our money ready when we need to make a withdrawal.
I felt like I had lost all trust in everyone and everything, but I hadn’t really. I still trusted my sisters to listen and empathize. I still trusted my parents to have my back.
In all this reflection, I realized that trust actually comes in packages- packages we open and use every day.
And trust, when it’s broken, is also broken package by package.
But rarely if one package is stolen or broken or left at the wrong door, does that mean all of them meet the same fate.
I could start to find my footing again and see where it was safe to step when I realized that one package being shattered didn’t mean I couldn’t receive and use all the rest of them.
One betrayal did not have to mean all the world had betrayed me.
And though it took some time, I eventually realized that even an individual person is made up of several different packages.
And trust is highly contextual.
Think of your best friend: Are there things you can trust her to do (keep a secret) and also things you would never trust her to do (show up on time)?
Think of yourself: In what ways can people trust you or depend on you and in what ways might they say they can’t?
My ex-husband’s betrayal was romantic and sexual, but even if it defined him as an untrustworthy partner in my eyes, it didn’t have to define him as an untrustworthy father.
As a father, my kids had always been safe with him.
He paid child support. He came on time for exchanges and kept the schedule. He fed them healthy food.
I would never trust him as a partner again. That package for me had to be tossed out for good.
But the father package wasn’t broken. I could trust him as a dad- at least enough to support his presence in my kids’ lives and their relationship.
His behavior and his relationship with me would always be separate from his behavior and his relationship with them.
Only by making this distinction was I able to consider the possibility of having a real co-parenting relationship with him that would be highly contextual and limited to the parenting package, but that could be very healthy and rewarding for us and our children.
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