ASK MICAH "Trust Issues"

Dear Micah,

               Some time ago I started to suspect my husband of cheating. I have a great group of girlfriends and they all pitched in and took shifts following him. As it turns out all those times I thought he was messing around he really was working late, and going to the gym, and hanging out with a friend of his. Everything would have been fine once I figured out he wasn't unfaithful, except one of my girlfriends told her husband how they'd all been playing amateur detective and as you can guess he told my husband. He hasn't spoken more than two words at a time to me since. Now he really does stay out most of the night and our relationship is in shambles. I feel just awful and ashamed that I didn't trust him but I think it's too late to do anything about it. How can I fix this?

Sorry Now

Dear Sorry Now,

               You have to find a way to get him to sit down and have a discussion about things with you. If he refuses, then post this article up EVERYWHERE in your house, on his steering wheel, and anywhere else he'll see it until he reads it and can get some perspective into your side of the story. You made a wrong assumption and you embarrassed him among all of your shared friends. But if he would only stop and seriously examine the circumstances for a moment, he may understand. It sounds to me like he had always been reliable and trustworthy. He went to work and came home and if he ever did anything else it was usually pretty scheduled and his patterns of work and play rarely deviated from that schedule. Then suddenly he was coming home late and staying away more often and after a while your mind started to wander and you began to worry that you might be about to become one of "those women" who never saw it coming. Perhaps he has never given you any reasons to mistrust him, and perhaps you overreacted, but he might have done the same thing in your place. Sadly, in this day and age when adultery is all too common, I don't think you should be penalized for suspicion having crossed your mind if he had begun to act erratically. Whether or not you should have made your suspicions as public as you did is hard to say. Women tend to tell their girlfriends everything whereas men usually keep their private issues private. I think you have learned a valuable lesson about the kind of trustworthy man that you have and how you should have more facts before you blab your personal matters to others. However, I also think you have been punished enough and he should forgive you and stop giving you the silent treatment. The last thing that needs to happen is for your marriage to become irrevocably damaged because of this stupid misunderstanding. Your husband needs to decide whether or not your blunder was worth dissolving your marriage over. 

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