First let me say that I feel flattered that you feel that my comments are worth while. It makes me feel that something I am saying is making sense to some people, which is the sole purpose for my doing this. I know, first hand, how lonely one can feel when going through an intimate relationship issue. You don't know where to turn or who to talk to, you don't want others to think poorly of you or of your bf, but you are hurting so badly from it you could scream and probably do at times and that is ok. Let me just say this, there are support groups for just about everything under the sun and some of them are very helpful, put you in touch with people who are going through similar experiences and usually cost nothing or next to nothing. If you are interested, check with your local churches.
Your letter doesn't give me much to go on, but a few ideas spring to mind and stand out for me. Forgive the idioms I am going to throw at you now such as "Where there is smoke there is usually fire". You have nothing but a bunch of emails confirming that he has, at least, tried to hook up with other women, lying to them about his relationship status, which is deceitful, arrogant, disrespectful, manipulative and very selfish. He, in fact, is setting the stage to sexually use women and they may, unknowingly, fall in to his trap. You really don't know how long all of this has been going on and how many times he has been successful in his attempts, though I would assume that he has had some modicum of success if he is playing the numbers game. I am sure that this whole thing is a game to him, nothing serious, but not something he would be willing to give up so fast and easy. A lot of men will do what they can get away with while there significant other isn't around or is unaware or in a trusting mode. I can't tell if your bf has deeper issues such as a sex addiction, but lying and secrecy accompanies all addictions. They almost can't help themselves.
I am all for giving someone a second chance if he is truly regretful, feels remorse and vows to never do the hurtful act again, but this is the time to set your boundaries. Boundaries are VERY important to preserve your own integrity. It is also very important to stick by the boundaries you make and not back down, or else you will be seen as a paper tiger and you will be stepped on and used because you will have tought him that he can do anything and you will do nothing. If you tell your BF that you are willing to give him a second chance, tell him that it will be the only chance he will get and that you will not stand for a third, a fourth or a fifth chance. There has got to be a consequence if he violates again, one that puts you out of harms way(I don't know if you have given any thought to him giving you STDs, but that is a possibility if he is having sex with others). In any case, ou are now aware, your senses are hightened, your ears are perked and your antennae are up. We women have been blessed with keen instincts. It has been my experience in life that when i listen to my instincts I virtually NEVER go wrong. I think it is the voice of GOD, guiding me. Use it to your advantage and good luck with what ever your choice is. Rachel

I have been with my BF for Just over a year…His a flight attendent and does not have many dependable friends.We have been very close and we also keep in contact when his out of the country and when his home we are always together. We have spoken about marriage and I was there when he recently got into trouble with the law. He has a flirty personality and I have tried to come to accept it. I am a person who is insecure and have a negative outlook on life. He is also 11 yrs my senior. I had a gut feeling my BF had a side I didn't know.i have always been curious about his past and his exs. He always says to leave the past in the past and he doesn't care about my past (not that is anything to hide) and that he wants to know the current me. His always caring towards me and we had our usual fights. We treat each other with alot of consideration and it appears there shouldn't be any reason for me to not trust him. But he gets along with girls very well. Recently, I went through his emails and didn't expect to find anything but I did. There was alot of random emails from different girls that he had met on the flights he was working on and he would be the instigator to email romantic comments such as " i miss you".. "can you send me a photo".. "your very pretty".."I think I am falling for you".. and " i love you".. he would also tell them that he was single and had no GF.he would ask to meet them and invited them back to his room. There was no indication from the emails that I have read to confirm that they have met up or did anything more. I fell apart. I tried to break up with him but I love him and so I wanted to give him a chance because he was sorry and remorseful. He seems sincerely sorry and promised not to give out his email address to anyone anymore. He had deleted all his emails and said that the emails means nothing and he does not know why he even did it. He hasn't done it to any other ex GFs… He said they were like penpals and he never physically cheated and never intended to go further than emails. He also said that he never met any of them. i do not know how to move past it and trust him again. he said he has not done it since the situation with law. He said this situation changed his life and he stopped from then on. But I do not believe that if I had not found those emails that he would have stopped. When i brought up that it was deceitful and i felt betrayed and he would be just as upset if the roles were reversed, he realised it was wrong. He has admited he was wrong and apologised many times. His been cheated on before a couple of times and I do not know whether he believes I will do it to him as well and that is why he did what he did. I get the urge to want to check his emails and in my mind I am always questioning him..I get sad when i think about it and it affects him and he just wants to move on..I need help to rebuild this trust and how to stop living life with this insecurity..

It appears to me that "texting" should be the least of your concerns. "YOUR MAN IS A HEROIN ADDICT". THIS IS A DANGEROUS SITUATION YOU ARE IN!
"He" needs to see this as a real problem, admit to being an addict and be committed to becoming clean. From your letter it sounds as though he has been an addict for a long time. It is now a way of life for him, a life style he may no want to change, although he may say he does just to appease you. Lying accompanies all addictions. You should never trust an active addict. If you are talking to a drug addict, you are talking to the drugs and not to the person. Drugs change who you are and if you stay with someone like that and they are not serious about getting help and getting off of the drugs, then your life may be ruined by association. I understand you love this man, but contrary to popular belief, love does not conquer all. Love yourself too and think of your own wellfare. He isn't thinking of you first because right now heroin is his main squeeze and that is all he thinks about. Everything and everyone else takes a far back seat. You have to think clearly about the rest of your life and how you want to lead it. If you stay with this man you are choosing a very difficult and dangerous path, but of course, it is your life and the beauty of that is that you get to make your own choices. Remember, you always have choices. Get some serious face to face counseling for yourself and don't delay. Rachel

I am not all knowing, but one thing is for sure, you do not develop trust by "hooking up" with others, even if it is as you say, "meaningless". That is actually what starts the whole ball rolling.
My suggestion to you would be to have a heart to heart talk with your boyfriend. You don't have to reveal anything about your past, which is the past and unimportant since you can't change it. The important thing is what you two decide to do for your futures. Make a clean line as to your feelings, your boundaries and your visions about what an ideal realtionship looks like to you and see if you see eye to eye on that.
There is no need to feel regretful about your past. Afterall, it is what made you who you are today. We all make mistakes from which we learn, hopefully. Just try not to repeat them since they can be clouded in different looking threads but be the same mistakes.
Try good ole fashioned communication and see if that works. Good luck, Rachel

I came across this website after I googled "Repairing Broken Trust". As I read through most of the comments I realized that I was not alone in the way I feel. This is my story.

I have been with my now husband for over six years. When we were first dating I found out about his previous drug problems (heroin addiction). I thought it didn't matter since it was just part of his past. We moved in two years after and noticed a complete change in his personality and appearence. He became distant, never had enough money. I noticed that he would text his cousin alot (she is bad news, drug addict)when he wouldn't even respond to my texts (because he was busy.I began to think that he was cheating on me with one of her friends. Until one day I found empty balloons in the toilet and after researching online found out it was heroin. He had been using for months now. I felt so betrayed. It turned out that his cousin was helping him score the stuff.
Moving on to my current situation. Earlier this year I noticed he had been texting with a female coworker. At the beginning I did not feel a need to feel insecure since from what I knew she was the bosse's daughter, his friend's sister, and not that good looking (not ugly.. but not good looking). Plus it's a small iron business and he's the crew's supervisor and is always out on the field. I figured he did not mention it to me because it was all business. Everything changed when he sent me a silly text message of someone farting. He told me she had sent it to him. I immediately realized it was not just business that they were texting about. This was in Feb. I started to notice that he was showing signs of heroin use again. He denied it! But all the signs were there. His texting continued.. it was not an everyday thing.. it was a few text messages every other day.. sometimes weeks. It began to cross my mind that maybe she was helping him score. But then I thought.. It does not make sence. She would not allow someone that her family to continue to trust a heroin addict would she?? After a few weeks of noticing him worsen because of the heroin use.. I decided to make it clear that I was bothered by the texting. He replied "I'm not going to talk to who you allow me to talk to. She's my bosses's daughter, my fried's sister for god's sake!" …. "If you don't like then you know what to do!" …. I cried ofcourse. I noticed he seemed to be going through widrawl as we were talking. I left it at that and walked away. In April I found out through his family that he had asked to borrow $10,000 and that this was nothing new. I had no idea about this or that he had asked to borrow money in the past. I felt like I had no idea who it was that I was living with. In early June we had a long talk about his texting with his coworker. He told me she was just a friend and that he had no feeling for her at all. He promised he would no longer answer her texts. He would not ask her to stop texting him because he felt that it would be mean since she was a really nice person. Two weeks after that I went out to dinner with some friends and was gone for about two hours. I checked his text usage that Friday and realized that they had been texting for a couple of hours. They began texting before I had gone out to dinner and maybe for 45 minutes after I had left. I decided that I was done with him. I could no longer trust him. His promises meant nothing. I decided to break up with him via text because he had no service up where he was working. When I went to look for him at work that afternoon he told me that he could not believe I had broken up with him over something so stupid. He said that he had never cheated on me and that they were texting about a concert that shed had gone to with her brother (his friend). She also sent pix of the concert by the way. I never got to see any of the texts they exchanged by the way. The next day while he was at work I packed up all of my stuff and decided to give the girl a call. She said that she had no idea what was going on in our relationship..but all they text about was business. She also asked if I was insecure about our relationship (enough to call her). I was polite to her and just asked her "what's going on between you two?" She said that it was all business and she felt that our problems should be solved by him and I and she had no need to be accussed by me of anything. So I apologized and hung up. Soon after he got home and noticed that all my belongings were in my car. He began to cry and told me that he has never been unfaithful and that she was just a friend. That he loved me. He came clean about his drug use. He admitted that he had lied about his drug use because he knows how much I hate drugs. I belived him. The texting soon stopped. He stopped answering and I think she got the hint.

The only problem is that I can't move on. The texting incident keeps on coming back into mind every single day. I told him how I felt and how I could not get this incident out of my mind. He offered to seek counseling for us. He said that maybe it would help me believe him with if we both told our stories to a professional. Even though I thought it would be a great idea then..two hours later it seems like I'm over it. I'm like this every day. What should I do? Please help.

We have been together for 9 months. We have broken up over his insecurity of me talking to friends. He has been going through my emails phone etc. and its repeating itself because he did that with his previous gf.

Recently we went on a break and we had both did something wrong that had no meaning to the both of us. We hooked up with other people. He would later on tell me and I would hide it from him due to the fact that I was afraid what he would think of me because of my past. Also that I care about him and love him so much I didn't want him seeing any flaws in me.

What can I do to make the trust better in the relationship? Him and I are torn, and want to make things better, jsut don't know how to go about it. I know he loves me as do I and I want to get through this.

You admitted that your boyfriend left his long time girlfriend for you. The past has a way of repeating itself. If he did this with her, what makes you think he will not do the same thing with you? I am sorry to say that you cheated with a cheater. Now he has cheated on you….If you stay with him, I would fear that you are only letting yourself in for heartache and pain because he will do it again if he thinks he can get away with it. Sorry to be this blunt, I just say it the way I see it. Get away from him, fast! Contrary to popular belief, Love does NOT conquer all… Rachel

One more important thing I feel compelled to mention: "Hurting yourself in any way is NEVER the answer". There is always hope and light at the end of the tunnel. You have other people who love you and depend on you. You must consider them and what they would go through if you would try the suicide approach. I can understand the pain this whole thing has caused you. I do understand because I went through the same pain for years and because of that i can tell you that it does subside eventually. It may lead you in directions you would have otherwise never taken. I, for instance, would never have thought that i would ever be blogging, but here I am, spilling my guts. Hopefully it does some people some good to know that there are others who have gone through what they are going through and have come out of it a better person.

You may keep asking yourself the question "Why" as I did. The truth is we may never know the answer to that question because we are not made of that stuff, we are not cheaters or lyers. There are plenty of excuses why, but the bottom line is that it was wrong regardless. Excuses are made only to save face.

While you are going through a situation like this, it appears that there is nothing you can do. You may feel dispair and hopelessness, but remember that God doesn't give you anything you cannot handle. Problems arise in our lives to teach us lessons. We may not know what the lessons are at the time we are going through whatever it is we are experiencing, but as we learn, we grow as human beings. Also remember that things can always be worse, whatever your situation is. Look around you and you will see that your problem, as big and as devastating as it may seem to you now, is small compared to others who experience dehabilitating diseases or experience the death of their child. You WILL get through this and you will become a stronger person for it. Think of yourself for a change and not your husband. Think of doing things that bring you joy and happiness and persue them. Most women who have gotten lost in their husband's lives, lose themselves in the process. I didn't realize that this happened to me and how difficult it would be to not think of him first. It takes some doing, but then it starts to feel pretty good. Try it, you will like it and it will help you heal. Rachel