Well, my husband is the first person who ever said, "What happened to you?" I think that a lot of the healing I have been able to do in the past almost ten years has been because he opened the flood gates for me. He was willing to look at me and see me. That was really huge.
I want to stay married. It is a conscious thing I *want*. I have treated everything I *want* in life like it is something I need to pursue as a course of study. I'm an auto-didact. That means I read a lot of books on a given topic before I decide how I want to go about pursuing _____. Whether that is dance, writing, being a mom, being a theatre technician, being a wife. All of these roles/activities are things I don't understand and I can't predict what the demands will be. So I read a lot of books. If I don't find out the pitfalls in advance I will not be able to react in the moment.
My husband is trained in hypnotherapy and has done extensive reading in NLP (Neuro-linguistic programming). He's also an Aspie. He and I both work very well by coming up with scripts for one another. "I'm having a hard time handling it when you _____. Is it possible for you to instead say, ____________?" We are both highly specific. "I know this is going to seem random and harsh. I'm struggling with ______. Is it unreasonable for you to change that?"
Sometimes he will change, sometimes I change, sometimes someone says, "No this isn't something I can change." We negotiate like crazy. I got my start as an adult in the bdsm community. I learned a lot about negotiation.
I was raped by my father starting when I was a baby. I've been raped by a variety of other men and boys. I understand not feeling like you can trust.
My husband "cheated" a few years ago, sorta. We had an open relationship but our rule was you had to talk to the other partner before having sex with someone. He planned out a first date and when I said, "Are you going to f*ck her?" He said, "It's not going to happen." What he really meant was, "I am pretty sure she won't be up for that but if she will say yes OF COURSE." But uhm, that's not what he said. And he chose to do this THE NIGHT BEFORE HIS OFFICE CHRISTMAS PARTY. He had told me he would be home at 10. I sobbed till 2am. That was rough.
We have since decided that we aren't good enough communicators to be non-monogamous. That's some bumpy stuff and we will have enough fights over things we HAVE to do. Let's leave the random sex out of things. It's messy.
A friend told me a great trust analogy. When you are building a relationship with someone it is like slowly dripping water into a bucket. When the bucket isn't very full you can rock it around and you don't lose any water. Once you get that bucket full, once you trust as much as you can, it's easy to rock it just a tiny bit and splash a lot out. It's hard to maintain trust once you have earned a lot of it. Everyone is human. Everyone screws up.
My husband "cheated" almost two years ago. He hasn't given me anything remotely to complain about since. Well... ok.. I could complain. :) But he's a good guy.
I absolutely understand feeling like "All men ________" but you have to convince yourself that it isn't true. Men are no more consistent than women. The only thing you can really say about all of them is they breathe oxygen and pump blood.
I am so very sorry that you have been hurt. But the bad people aren't in the majority. That's how I heal. I was tossed out into the storm to depend on the kindness of strangers. I have been hurt a lot... but the good people outnumber the bad. They really do. Sometimes all the good bastards are hiding at home and THAT DOES ME NO GOOD!!! *ahem*
I also limit the repercussions of anyone being able to hurt me. I limit what I tell people. I limit how I make myself vulnerable. I don't take risks with many people. My husband thinks I am a serious flight risk and he desperately wants to keep me. Really he thinks I am on the verge of committing suicide any day (for fairly good reasons) so he's really f*cking nice to me.
We have a saying in our family. Never leave the house without kisses and hugs and I love you's cause you might get hit by a bus.
My husband genuinely wants to be good to me. His behavior proves it over and over. I trust him because he has earned it. Even though he has f*cked up big. We all do that sometimes. (The cheating isn't the only thing. We had some serious rough patches early on.)
