 Okay. So it wasn't my proudest moment this summer, so I'm out. But I know there was something I said this summer to you. You probably don't remember. Actually, you probably do remember. Do you remember everything that I say? I remember what you don't remember. Yeah. But I remember the words coming out of my mouth at some point this summer. I don't trust you, which was really rare for me because I do trust you. You're my everything. You're my person, you know. But we had so much chaos this summer. So many things happened. I don't think we've ever had a summer with as much transition with all of our kids. Each of them had just major stuff going on that just fell on us and our car was totaled and we just had a million different things going on. And I remember saying, I don't trust you. And I've thought about that moment since then. And I'm like, why did I even say that? It doesn't make sense. If there's any one person I trust in this world, it's you. So today I wanted to talk with the couples about the concept of trust because we have so many people reach out to us. I don't trust my spouse. And it's a really hard thing. And I feel like it's a loaded topic. It's a loaded conversation because it's so important. And without trust, what do you have? It just feels like you have nothing. That's how I felt. And I thought we should share a little bit with our viewers about talking about trust. And a little bit more about it. I remember when I shared it, and then I finally had time to calm down later. I was thinking to myself, wait a minute. When I said that, I feel that it was coming out of my own childhood wounds because as a child, I didn't feel like I had anybody I could trust. I don't feel like people looked out for me and really took care of my basic needs. I had a very chaotic childhood and sometimes I didn't know where I was sleeping that night. So I realized saying that I don't trust you kind of wasn't fair for so many reasons. But one of them being that that came from my world. It came from my pain. So that really had nothing to do with you. Maybe a little bit was like you didn't, I don't know, take out the garbage on Wednesday when the trash guys come. And that's fair to say that I don't trust you for that. So I don't know. Let's just unpack this a little bit for other couples that might feel like they can't trust their partner. Yeah. So trust, there are various degrees of trust and I would say, what would you say, infractions of trust that are, that are, it depends on what they are. When you think of trust, you think about infidelity, things like that, which we'll address. But let's start kind of with like the basic level of mistrust. So the one thing is kind of like, as you're mentioning before that a lot of it's projecting our own issues on our partner. So if we have a story like your story, like nobody, I can't rely on anyone. I have to do everything myself. And that's my kind of theme song in life. And then I'm going to either attract someone into my life, a partner, a spouse who is not why I can't rely on either, or I'm going to project that I can't rely on them. Or maybe I'm going to provoke them to not be reliable. But I'm going to recreate that reality. Now, it doesn't mean that it's okay. Because you had a childhood experience of not being able to trust someone and rely on someone doesn't mean it's okay for me not to be reliable. But at the same time, the severity of it and the disproportionate response, as you said, I don't remember what it was, but it wasn't like anything like major breach of trust. It was it could have been something like I didn't give the kids their, you know, vitamins when one of them had a cold or something like something like that. I mean, it was probably a little more than that. But you know, it was something like that. So obviously, yes, maybe I you didn't count on me to do what you wanted me to do at that moment. But did it merit the reaction? So that's what we call the 90 10 rule. It's anything that really bothers us is 10% about what the other did to trigger us and 90% our reaction. Right. So in this case, 10% of it was you didn't give the kids their vitamins, and I was worried about them getting sick or whatever. But 90% of it was my huge response, which was I don't trust you. And at that moment, I felt like I needed to run because that's that would have been my gut reaction. It's like, for example, if somebody was in combat in Afghanistan, and they and all of a sudden now they're back to civilian life, they're walking down majors, Metropolitan City in America, and they hear, I don't know, like the really big, what do they call those things around a jackhammer? Not a jackhammer. But anyway, some type of really loud noise that you could hear in Manhattan or a city like that. So their instinctual reaction is to feel like they're back in combat, even though the reality is they're not. So this is something that's really important to us. I've been thinking about this a lot more lately, because over the over time, and we've been doing this work for a while, and it's all about getting into feelings and what are you feeling in your childhood? And I would say it's about your reality. It's about both of you have different realities. But what is your reality based on your reality is based on whatever you kind of your thoughts and what you're thinking about things. It's not necessarily an objective reality. So when there's a loud noise, it's not objectively, it's not objective reality that you're in danger. It's that subjective reality based on your trauma based on your past experience. And that's how we're living our lives. And that's how we were getting triggered in relationship. And that's how we're overreacting and causing ourselves a lot of pain. Now overreacting might trigger some of you out there thinking like, what does that mean? Is Rabbi Slotkin saying like I'm overreacting when my spouse is being completely unreliable? Right. So we're dealing with some real, we're, we haven't gotten to the more like severe breaches of trust and everyone's entitled to their feelings and everyone's feelings are valid and everyone's feelings make sense, especially based on the reality. But, and it's never for us to challenge someone else and say what your feelings are just like, that's just your thoughts, your feelings, your problem. No, you have to take responsibility for what you're doing in the relationship to trigger your partner and to be sensitive to that. But for those of us that are listening who want to think about what can I do to work on myself? I know I want my spouse to do X, Y and Z or to be more sensitive. But what can I do to lessen the damage and to be more responsible and take ownership from my feelings and emotions? I need to start thinking about this. Wait a minute, is this really, you know, is this really real? You know, when, when someone doesn't give the vitamins. Right, that's kind of what I was thinking. Is it really like that I can't trust you and I think that you're just like not going to take care of me? Is that, is that really what I'm thinking? Or is this, I have this story that to become conscious and then when you become conscious, you can make a conscious choice of how to respond in that situation. And sometimes it will take time. Like it definitely took me a couple weeks after the fact when it was a quiet moment, nobody was home and I kind of thought to myself, why did I say that? Why did I feel that? And I remembered through the work we've done with Amago Therapy about the childhood story and I knew that's where it had come from. And I, and I, and we never really talked about this until right now. And of course it was hurtful to hear and I felt it was unfair. And at the same time, I didn't bring it up probably because, you know, I say, we've been here before. I know that, you know, one of us tends to, you know, we'll talk about the turtle on the health storm that you have more stronger emotional reactions than I do. And you might say things that you might even forget about that I remember. But I realized that, okay, obviously you're having a bad day. There's something bother, you know, it's something triggered you. I don't need to get all wrapped up in it and fuel the cycle there. So we were able to get through it better than we would have 23 years ago when we first got married without having these tools. Yeah, for sure. If you said that to me when we were married, like in the beginning of our relationship, I would have been like, what do you, how dare you, you know, I'm the most reliable person that you know. I mean, it actually was our first our first session was about when back to the story because I didn't fix the closet rod and I'm not much of a repairman, but I didn't fix the closet rod in our daughter's bedroom in her, in her closet. And that was our first in my therapy session. And it went back to, I can't rely on anyone and now I can't rely on you either. Yeah. And if you're curious about that argument, we have in our course, we have 14 of our fights. And that was definitely one of the best ones in there. But we work through it in the video so couples can watch that you can watch and see how we work through it. But I guess what you're saying, Slamo, is so I guess step number one in talking about trust, understanding if you can, when you're calm later, where is this coming from? What is my childhood pain around this? Right. And how am I projecting it onto? What is, what is the role that I play in this, in this? Right. So that I don't have to react as strongly. It doesn't mean you have to give up the pain that you have or that you should just let your spouse do whatever they want to do and not be responsible. It's not giving your spouse an offender, so to speak, an excuse. But it's helping you calm down so that you don't react. And when you react, you're going to provoke a reaction from your spouse. So the more that you can do to be aware of it, it's going to stop the escalation that's so common in relationships. So, you know, there's certain things that, there's a lot of things that could be happening. For example, let's say, let me give this example, if your spouse has their own business and they're having a slow month, so you could feel like, I don't trust you to support me and take care of me. And you can say such a comment, well, that's really hurtful to someone who works really hard. At the same time, it makes sense that you might be anxious because, you know, there's not much money coming in this month. So, you know, how do you balance that out? And it could be that you feel like maybe your spouse needs to work a little bit harder, they're being lazy or they're not motivated. You can have those feelings, you can talk about that in a safe way, not in blaming the other person, but a safe, productive conversation you can have about those things. But at the same time, when you start making grandiose statements that kind of tear away at the fabric of the relationship, that's not always fair for the right. It's important to have some center responsibility in how you deliver your comments because nobody should ever have to bear the brunt of, you know, verbal abuse. So that's, that was kind of like the lower on the totem pole, breaches of trust issues. And we have other videos on how to heal after a very large breach of trust, like an affair or financial infidelity. If we would go to the other end of the spectrum, slomo, you know, a quick word on larger breaches of trust and the process for uncovering more about that. Those are harder because when you get into a relationship and you commit to someone, what essentially by committing your life to someone, you know, whether you have val, whatever you say in your wedding vows or this idea of being married to someone is usually represents some type of exclusivity that I'm in relationship with you. And when you're, when there's infidelity, which means like not being faithful, you're not being faithful to that partnership, to that commitment that you made. So you're starting off with almost like an assumption that if I'm marrying you, that means it's the two of us, nobody else. And then when there's a breach of trust, when somebody has infidelity, when there is, even if they're lying, they're not being truthful in other areas or financial infidelity. But all the more so when you're dealing with another person, the emotional infidelity or a real full blown physical affair. It's very devastating to a relationship. In fact, you know, they say that around, I don't always believe in statistics, but because you can manipulate them however you want. But they say, you know, 70% of couples that had had whether there's infidelity, don't make it. But that's if they don't get help. We find them with the model therapy that if couples get help that they can be able to heal. It doesn't mean that it's easy, but they can be able to heal. So it's hard because you're already going in assuming that there is a commitment, and then that's broken. So you can never fully get back to that place from before the breach of trust. Because there's always, no matter what work you do, there's always that little voice that could potentially rear its ugly head and say, well, I wonder why he or she's not home right now. Or if they're mad at me today, like, oh, are they going to go, you know, call somebody or cheat on me? Or there's that fear. And that's a valid fear. So what we said before about childhood, this also can come up. Besides, before we get to dealing with the, you know, here and now, people have childhood issues. A lot of times we see that people who have trust issues or people who came, grew up in a home where they saw one of their parents cheat, oftentimes they wind up marrying somebody who cheats on them. It doesn't mean that it's a, you know, a curse that's going to happen. But we do, we do notice that it's not uncommon. And therefore it makes it even worse. No one likes to be cheated on. But when people have that pain from childhood and living in a home like that, it makes, it really pushes their buttons even more so. So there's even a just more stronger reaction to. Right. Because I feel like probably I would imagine I finally got out of my childhood home. I finally attracted somebody who I love and, and I got out of that situation and then you enter marriage and it almost like it repeats itself. It repeats itself. And it's so devastating when that happens. And, and that's what we believe in Amago is you attract somebody who's going to repeat a lot of the things that you saw. Yeah, they'll push your buttons. And even if it's not, even sometimes they don't, they might not have an affair, but there could be other breaches of trust. But if you're already coming in with trust issues from childhood, you see it in the relationship, it makes it much harder. So you have that, that aspect. But even if you don't have that childhood aspect, it's still a devastating thing because it's the person that you devoted your life to that you committed to. And now you see that they have, it's not even what they did that is as bad as the deceit. Because now, well, if I can't trust you about that, can I trust you about anything? Now, if you're not home right now, can I assume that you're, you know, doing what you say you're doing or maybe you're up to no good. So there is that questioning. So there is a very specific process we do with couples to help sort out what happened, which means even opening up and sharing and answering any questions about the affair. Because again, it's, it's a lack of trust that that's the problem. Because people who have emotional infidelity, people who have physical infidelity, it's, I would say, it can be just as devastating, even if you never met the person. There's some online affair. It's just as devastating for the spouse who was cheated on because there is that breach of trust. So repairing that requires admitting what you did, answering any questions, transparency, right? Because if the idea is lack of trust, the only way to create trust is to have a relationship where there is trust. And even though you can't change what happened in the past, you can show transparency. And the more you can show, you know, what sometimes it means people here, take my phone, you can get my pet, I have all my passwords, I have nothing to hide. Of course, the more that the person who, who reached the trust goes out of their way to show that they want to repair, then that definitely expedites the process. But you can't force that. You can force that. But like, for example, if someone's like, but you know the person feels bad about what they did, and you know that they want to change and make it better. So it gives a person who has cheated on a little bit more faith in their partner and commitment. But if you see the person's like, Madam, they're not really showing much interest. They don't even want to complain. I mean, I would say they don't even want to apologize. Or like, I already apologized, what I have to keep doing it, you know, it's enough already, like get over it. Or, you know, maybe they're going to the bathroom with their phone, they're still doing behaviors that don't necessarily promote trust. Well, it's a little bit hard to really believe that they're want to be in the relationship. And how do I know that they're not still talking to this other person? Unfortunately, I've seen that happen, too, that people come even to a two day intensive to deal with the affair. And we find out later that they didn't stop speaking to the other person. And the other person's still feeding them the messages that they have to say together. So it doesn't really promote trust. It doesn't promote healing when one person is not really fully invested in showing that they want to change. So the more person can engage in the process of change, of admitting what they did wrong, of asking for forgiveness, and doing new behaviors to rebuild the relationship, the better it is, the more the process will be expedited, the more the couple can move on and build an even better relationship. And unfortunate as a breach of trust is sometimes it's the silver lining is that it actually can force the couple to really deal with their issues and to deal with the disconnect that kind of created that fertile ground where this where the where the infidelity happened so that they can actually make a better relationship moving forward. Yeah, we see that all the time. We've kind of become known as our intensives have become really known for couples that experienced affairs. Some of them we were just featured in an article and it was about how much will couples pay to save the relationship after an affair. And we have a workshop coming up in Costa Rica, a five day, four night couples retreat. And we we have seen many couples improve their relationship even better than it was before the affair, right, because so much is laid up on the table. And it's almost like they're reevaluating their priorities and their values and their vows and almost getting like a do over in a way. Yeah. Which you didn't ask for, you know, because it was certainly painful to begin with. But they're saying that the relationship also wasn't it's rough, but the relationship wasn't so great in the first place. Because nobody wakes up one morning saying, you know, I think it's a good day to go cheat. You know, it's usually there's some and it's it's not no, this is not to be meant to take that this is the spouse's fault, meaning the spouse who is cheated on his fault. It's whatever the situation is, whatever the baggage both people bring. But for whatever reason, the needs weren't being met in their relationship. And not just physical needs talking about emotional needs. There's a disconnect. They're not communicating effectively, whatever it was, there is the relationship was not in the optimal state. And then someone paid attention to the one spouse. And, you know, one thing led to the other. Yeah, so don't lose hope. If you your relationship did suffer from an affair, know that on the one hand, it's really hard to fix on your own. Like, it can be catastrophic if it's not dealt with, with a professional to help walk you through the immense process and the full transparency and everything Shlomo described. But on the other hand, know that your relationship can be much stronger and much more solid with after the aftermath. So if you're curious about that, we can definitely share resources with you. If not in person, we also have some worksheets for people to actually go through what happened and how to repair. So we can share that link in the description of the video. And if you have questions about trust and just anything related to this topic, definitely get in touch with us. There's still more to talk about trust and how to deal with feeling like you can't trust your spouse, right? What else would you say Shlomo for people who didn't have an affair in their relationship happened, thankfully, but maybe they just don't feel like they can fully rely on their spouse. Yeah, I think that it's a lot of people have issues with trust and it becomes difficult. I mean, I would say in society in general, like with all the upheaval in the last number of years, people have people have trouble trusting authority, trusting that, you know, that the authorities have their best interest in mind. There's a lot of, there are a lot of different permutations of this and how it erupts. And I think that, you know, as we get older also, I think that as we start hearing more about, actually, I would say not just because we're older, but also because of the information that we're being fed on a constant basis, we're learning more a lot about things that we wouldn't have known about in the past. So it's not just we're older, but how do you mean? I mean, it's just, I know like, whatever it scandals or, you know, things that have come up, we know about what's going on all over the world every moment, every second in the news, but even just like in our communities and the news about things, people that we thought were we respected and then turns out that they, you know, did some type of impropriety, so many different things. And it just, it makes it very difficult and it makes it difficult to really, to really trust. So on the one hand it, the, I would say the downside is it can lead us to feel really jaded and really like distrusting of everyone. And that doesn't really make for a nice life. Yeah. Because it's just like, you're just constantly like, I don't trust you. And so, you know, you would hope at least you can trust your spouse. It's like, even though the world is crazy out there, it's like, at least we have each other. So that is, yeah. I thought of after this whole summer, I think by the end of the summer and all the upheaval we had, I kind of feel like it's served to just strip away what was not important for me. And it just almost caught me to the core. And I realized, okay, what is important? Like the bare minimum. And I also realized that I needed to let go a bit. Like, I needed to let go a bit of my expectations for, let's say, the family. One of our kids decided he was done with school. I was like, I'm done with school. Well, wait a minute, you're how old? Like, you're not just done with school. Like, we don't do that, you know, but it was like that was not like 10 or 12. That was one of the examples that we had to quickly adjust our expectations of this child. And, you know, it was such an upheaval. But at the end of the summer, I kind of like just had a moment and thought about all the kids and I thought, okay, I had to reevaluate a lot of expectations and priorities. But at the end of the day, you know, everybody was safe, everybody was healthy, everybody was alive and in our home. And everyone's in the place where they need to be and are successful. Right. But we have to write, it's like, it's our idea, our thoughts about exactly the way things are supposed to be that gets us into trouble. I say that, you know, expectations are premeditated resentment. So having these expectations and I think this this replies in all relationships, especially in a marriage, you don't know what tomorrow brings. Nobody knows. And I think we learned a lot about, I mean, the world has changed so much, even the last few years, who would have ever thought we would have this, you know, global lockdown for I don't know how long it even went for. It's just, and I were kind of forgetting about it because it's, you know, it's over, we hope. But who would have ever thought of that? I mean, today's actually 9 11, who would have ever thought of that? I remember when we were just newly married. So we don't know. And it's a really about trust. And for those of you who are, you know, people of faith, you know, trusting in God, realizing that I can't predict tomorrow, I don't have, I don't have the answers. And the more that you can do that, the happier you're going to be because you can just live in the moment. And I think this applies, especially in relationships, you know, when people get married and they sit, you know, under the, when they're at their wedding, they're not thinking that their spouse is going to cheat on them, or their spouse is going to betray them in another way, or they're not going to be able to rely on them. No one's thinking about that. So, and hopefully it never happens. But just to realize we have no control. And the more we can give up that control, it doesn't mean that I'm just going to let you walk over all over me and do whatever you want. And now you both have to show up and be the best partner, the best spouse you can be for each other, to be reliable, to be faithful, to follow through, to be loving, to be safe, all those things we encourage you both, both people to do, and to do the best that you can. But in terms of being in control of the outcome, being in control of every incident that happens, you can't. And the more that you try to do that, the more miserable you're going to be. And if something bothers you, you need to learn the tools to be able to communicate that and work through it together. Yeah, and we would say it's not about letting go and then realizing, like, forget my partner, I want to be on my own, just going to lose him. In our approach, we would say that's a sign that you need to learn how to create emotional safety between the two of you in your space, right? It's not just about I don't trust you and I deserve better. So I'm going to go, it's, this is an opportunity that something could be worked on here. Something could feel safer emotionally for you. So you don't feel like I need to run or hide because the relationship doesn't feel trustworthy or safe. Right. So learning to ask for, learning to ask for your needs, not just say, well, okay, well, I'm just going to give up and whatever happens happens. No, learning or I'm going to leave learning to ask for your needs. And at the same time, not worrying about every little, you know, every little thing that we can, every can nitpick on about our spouse that creates this negativity in this environment of toxicity and the relationship. No, we need to give each other a break sometimes. Yeah. And now that we're talking about it, you know, this was the first time I ever brought it up after I said it. So I think when we go home and we don't have you all watching, we should, or maybe we should have you all watching. We should have a dialogue to, so I can properly apologize for making that seem and that I don't trust you. And we can work through what went on that really unnerved me and we can come even closer with going through that, if we feel like we need to and, and coming even closer after the, after that upset. So I'd be happy to do that. Yeah. I look forward to doing that, perhaps with you. And if there's anything you guys need, we're absolutely always available. This is another episode of Can This Marriage Be Saved. We have many opportunities to reach us through our website, TheMarriageRestorationProject.com. And like I said, if you've had an affair in your marriage or a breach of trust, please reach out. It's so much better to do it with professional help than by yourself because it's just too big. And you can come see us in Baltimore in November or in Costa Rica in October for a group couples therapy retreat. And then also always on demand for two days working with Rabbi Shlomo or any of our amazing Amago therapists that work on our team using our methodology. So it was a pleasure. Thank you for watching. Thank you. Stay tuned for the next episode. Take care.