Cheating is, of course, one of the biggest reasons that relationships break up.  When cheating has occurred, the other person believes “I can’t ever trust him or her again.”

That is a common refrain when cheating occurs.  Trust is essential to close, intimate, real love.  When it is broken, we feel like there is no hope for getting it back.  Even if we loved much about our mate, if they cheated on us, we don’t see how we could ever be happy again with them, how could we trust them after such a sense of betrayal.  You can learn more about getting your ex back after infidelity here.

For this reason trust is one of the largest problems in break ups.  Your ex is wondering if they can ever truly trust you not to cheat on them again.  Why get back together if there is just going to be more cheating?  So when break ups happen due to cheating, on of the big issue on your ex’s mind is

Can I ever feel that I can trust you after this?

I mean, if they rejected you because of some problem behavior, like cheating, or fighting, or not communicating with them, then they need to know BEFORE they let you come back that you wont keep doing the thing they left you about.

The emotion of broken trust/betrayal is one of the toughest feelings for an ex lover to get over.  We all believe that trust takes a long time to build.  So when it’s broken, we usually believe it is unfixable, correct?

You must understand the trust issue to see how you can get back together with your ex.  If you can’t deal with the feelings of betrayal and broken trust and the complete emotional distance that it causes, you won’t be able to get back together.  And, if you do somehow luck out and they give you another chance, it won’t last, because without trust there can’t be the feeling of closeness and intimacy we all really want.

So how can you deal with and repair trust issues?  This is a large subject, but one thing that is easy to see is that in most break ups, we all try to avoid blame.  So we tend to try to lay the blame elsewhere.  We say things like “I cheated because I drank too much!”  Or, “I cheated because you were cold and distant!”  The natural way we react when big issues like cheating come up is to try to avoid the blame. 

Give those excuses to your ex and shell think you’re a weak idiot.  She may take you back, but it wont last, there will be real distance, because those excuses don’t allow her to trust you.  What if you get drunk again?  What if she is cold to you a month from now?  What if a pretty skirt tempts you tomorrow when you’re walking down the street? So one of the first powerful things you can do is accept blame.  Take full responsibility.  Don’t offer weak or lame excuses.  You can learn a full system for resolving relationship conflict here.

Instead of weak excuses, you can say something like “I know I broke your trust in me, and I’m so sorry that I did this and made you feel so hurt…”

That is a powerful start to repairing the trust.  If you got cheated on hearing that can help you to begin to deal with the infidelity.  Its like when you have kids and they screw up and you catch them and they try to lie or blame someone else it makes you much angrier.  But if they own up to it you can forgive them much more easily.

There are many other steps that need to be followed before you can truly begin to repair the trust, but this is a very big initial step!  Go here for a free course on Get Relationship Advice.