Trusting One Day At A Time

I just returned from a 12-step conference. It was so powerful, and I learned so many new things. In order to reflect on what I've learned, I'm going to write it here in a few posts.

Trust: The firm belief in the reliability, truth, ability, or strength of someone or something.

How in the world could I ever trust Husband again?

I've thought about this over and over the last two-and-a-half years. He destroyed that trust so many times and continued to lie to my face even when he knew our marriage was hanging by a thread. It is one of the many confusing reasons I stay in a period of stuckness. My stuckness is a feeling that I might want to move forward in the marriage, coupled with an intense fear of being duped again. Sure he's doing all of the recovery things right now, but how do I know he'll continue doing them and not sink back into insanity?

The actions and words of Husband are consistent with someone who is working a strong recovery program. In fact, he is getting his 9-month chip today. But trusting him? That's a big scary thing that I just don't want to do. It's really hard to think about rebuilding a marriage if there is no trust. I thought that this was one of the pillars of a marriage commitment. And I still wholeheartedly believe trust must exist at some level for a marriage to rebuild after betrayal.

This weekend, I may have found an understanding of trust that I can handle. And here it is.

Someone said to me that you only have to trust one day at a time. Or even one moment at a time. Did you notice that the above definition of trust doesn't say anything about trusting for any certain time period? I can trust that my husband is not acting out when he is with me. OK, that works. I can trust him on a day when I know his whereabouts and his actions are consistent with his words. But I have the freedom to continually make that choice. And it doesn't always have to be that I trust him. I may be uncertain about something and decide to not trust him that day. On that day, I can do self-care and be extra conscious of my surroundings. But the next day could be different. And maybe the number of trust days will start to outweigh the non-trust days, but maybe they won't, and that will be important information for me to have either way.

Isn't that such a freeing idea? Maybe others already think about trust this way. But I did not. I thought that if I made a decision to trust him, I had to fully trust him all the days forever and ever. What a daunting and unreasonable expectation if I am trying to live one day at a time and in the present! If I choose to stay in my marriage one day at a time, why can trust not be the same way? It frees me from the overwhelming thoughts about what will happen tomorrow. And the next day. And in 20 years. Much like the addict can work a program one day at a time, I can choose trust one day at a time. And the freedom in knowing that I have choices to make each day is just one of the precious gifts I received this weekend.