Being human means that we have to make choices, one way or another, that will impact us for the rest of our lives. We are often unaware of these choices as being choices, the fact that we are making them, and the consequences they have on us and others. Whether motivated by conscious desire, subconscious conditioning, or biology’s propensity to maintain itself; psychological preoccupation, emotional gratification, or social pressure; attention seeking, self esteem building, or attempts to prove ourselves; etc.; we make decisions, knowingly or unknowingly, that affect us to the core of our perception. Some of us possess mental or physical challenges that make it harder to pay attention, control ourselves, or focus on the things that really matter. Others of us don’t really seem to care. But if we have broken someone’s trust in us and want to get it back, then; after paying more attention to our choices, developing more awareness, and gaining more self control; there are some things that we can do to help rebuild the trust in our relationships.
1. Focus On The LOVE:
Whatever happens, focus on the love. Think love, feel love, speak love, and make love! And don’t forget, real love, or heart-centered love, is not an emotion. It is a shared spiritual connection deriving from the Fourth Chakra. Second Chakra connections are based on emotions and sex, but do not involve love. They may feel like it temporarily, or create the illusion of love; but this is not real love. It is simply human emotion combined with biology’s instinctual drive to procreate. Fourth Chakra love is spiritual. Second Chakra connections are emotional and physical. Fourth Chakra love includes the physical and emotional aspects of Second Chakra connections, but Second Chakra connections do not include the spiritual elements of Fourth Chakra love. If you are not in a heart-centered love relationship and if your partner has broken your trust in a big way, then you may want to consider whether you want to go through the painful process of rebuilding trust with this partner, or healing first and then finding real love.
2. Fearlessly Reveal The Truth:
No matter what we may have done, we need to tell our partner the whole truth about it. If we haven’t mastered its practice yet, then we may want to learn the art of living in truth. Truth is the highest vibration, and its light makes true love, joy, and peace visible, and therefore possible. Truth is our power center. If we are getting a little uncomfortable about now, then we may want to take a look at some reflections of our own veracity; or the insecurities and fears we may have about our partner’s integrity. Truth is not to be avoided. It is to be plunged into, like an oasis of hope in a desert of despair. It is not to be denied, but broadcast, like a sky-written banner, across the sparkling co-creation of our dreams. So whatever happened, be honest about it with your beloved! Take the risk of losing them to gain the potential for a higher, more sustainable kind of love! Truthful living leads to greater happiness, higher love and sweeter sex. It also reduces the stress, depression, and anxiety caused by the guilt, shame, and regret that breaking trust can generate.
3. Identify Real Feelings Deriving from this Truth:
So if we shatter the trust of the one we love we will probably feel pretty bad about it. We will often experience feelings like guilt, shame, and regret. We need to be honest about the feelings we are feeling about what we have done. Face these feelings, and the truth of what is causing them. If we don’t, then the energy of these feelings may be transmuted into layers of illusion which further complicate our understanding of what happened. When we avoid or deny the truth of what we have done, we usually end up in our ego, where fictional stories are created to replace the truth and make us feel a little better for a while. When we do this, in spite of the initial relief from discomfort, we are making the problem much worse, and often at someone else’s expense.
For example, if we had an affair and feel guilty, ashamed, and regretful about it; and if we avoid the truth about what we have done and how we really feel about it; then we may find ourselves blaming our partner for something, and feeling things like self righteous indignation, anger, hatred, and hyper-irritability. When we do this, we are creating stories in our head in order to make our partner wrong about something, to get the focus off of us and on to them. And after creating these stories, we generate the feelings that support them. Neither the stories nor the feelings are based on truth. Both are created by the ego. The stories are defensive re-characterizations that help us blame someone else for what we have done. The feelings are delusional transformations of our real feelings into feelings that support the stories. So if we don’t deal with the truth about having had an affair and feeling guilty, ashamed, and regretful about it, and instead defensively blame our partner for something, anything, like trying to control us; then we may also transmute the feelings of guilt, shame, and regret into fictional feelings of self righteous indignation, anger, hatred, and hyper-irritability in support of the defensive re-characterizations we have made. The energy of these fictional feelings came from our real feelings of guilt, shame, and regret. When we dove into our ego to avoid the discomfort of what we did, creating the stories to blame someone else, our real feelings were transformed into these fictional feelings in order to support our story. So when we have been unfaithful to our partner and feel terrible about it, we may, rather than dealing with the truth, become angry with them and blame them for something they didn’t do. When they are already feeling devastated by the affair, how do you think they will feel now?
When we avoid in this way, and use our ego to help us feel better when we should feel worse, we are adding layer upon layer to the original problem, and making things exponentially worse. This also keeps us from being able to learn from our mistakes, since we are not acknowledging them. So there is no reminder in the future, like a red flag or hot stove effect, to keep us from doing it again. We often fight to defend our fictional stories, and usually believe them to be true. We can do this because we are blocking out the truth and replacing it with the lies our ego creates (the stories). The more we do this, and the longer it occurs, the more complicated and painful the original problem becomes. And as these layers, like a snowball, are added; our perceptual context (the beliefs and memories related to the situation) become increasingly based on lies rather than truth. It is also much harder to resolve, because each of those layers must be understood, processed, and released; in addition to the original occurrence; in order to gain true resolution to the original problem, and all the additional ones that were created to help us avoid the first one. And there is another type of challenge that occurs when we convert our true negative emotions (guilt, shame, regret) into fictional ones (self righteous indignation, anger, hatred, hyper-irritability) that involves our actual brain.
Negative emotions shift our brain into Survival Mode, creating the belief that we are under threat, and limiting our thoughts, feelings, and perceivable options to those associated with fighting against or running away from a threat. So, while in this state, we are limited to variations on a fight (anger, defensiveness, yelling, aggressiveness, etc.) or flight (shutting down, withdrawing, going to another room, thinking about or leaving our relationship, etc.) theme. In order to leave Survival Mode and return to Safe Mode, where we can once again access the full range of thoughts, feelings, and courses of action; we must process and release our real negative emotions (in this example guilt, shame, regret). If we try to resolve the situation based on the fictional feelings it will not work, because they are not the real feelings and what they are based on is not the truth. So the negative emotional energy of these feelings will be trapped inside us, and will keep our brain locked in Survival Mode. Being limited to a fight or flight mentality will make it easier for us to continue believing in the ego lies (fictional stories) since our brain will be blocking our access to everything except those things related to a struggle for survival. So our mind (the ego) and our body (the brain) are now working together to strengthen the problem. When the ego re-characterizes our partner to make them seem selfish, controlling, etc.; then the negative emotions we think we are feeling toward our partner (self righteous indignation, anger, hatred, hyper-irritability) lock us into Survival Mode, which had been initially triggered when we felt the real feelings (guilt, shame, regret). So the brain keeps making the fictional ego-based thoughts and feelings seem real, while the ego keeps the brain in Survival Mode. Get the picture?
4. Share Truth and Feelings About It with Partner:
After identifying the truth of what happened, and your true feelings about it, humbly share these things with your partner. If you are unable to access these truths because of your ego, conditioned beliefs, or the limitations of Survival Mode, then you may need an accountability partner to help you find the truth. If your beloved companion is clear, committed, and trustworthy; then, if they are willing, they may be the best person to help you with this. It would probably be pretty painful and challenging for them, but they could be the only person who is always there, knows what really happened, and cares enough to see it through. If you need this reality testing assistance, and if your partner is unable or unwilling to help in this way; then you may benefit from the services of a coach or spiritual teacher. If both you and your partner are affected by the ego, conditioned beliefs, or the limitations of Survival Mode; then you will likely need assistance from someone else. This is usually pretty challenging too, since the person helping you is not there, and only has what you tell them to go on. So share the truth to the best of your ability. Forget about how you look, being right or wrong, winning an argument, proving yourself, etc. Just focus on the love and overcoming the challenge! Whatever happens, it is important to get to the truth about it, the real feelings generated by it, and then to share these truths with your partner.
5. Create A Context of Truth:
Surrounding our thoughts and feelings about a person or situation is an inner context of beliefs, values, memories, and attitudes that colors, and largely determines our perception of what happens. If this context is based on truth, then any fiction we create will stand out, like a rusty old truck in a field of beautiful flowers, and help us see it for what it is — fiction. But if we allow this context to be altered by our ego, conditioned beliefs, or the limitations of Survival Mode; and if the beliefs, values, memories, and attitudes are negatively distorted and also fiction; then any fiction we create about a person or situation may fit right in and seem real or normal to us. It might look like a rusty old truck in a field full of rusty old trucks. It would not stand out at all as being fiction, because everything else in our context would be fiction too! So creating a context of truth is even more important than being truthful in each individual situation, because it largely determines how we perceive these individual occurrences (situations, and people in them). Without it, we might have a very hard time recognizing what is real.
6. Openly Accept Truth, and Take Responsibility For This Truth:
After we have identified the truth about what happened, we need to accept this fully within ourselves, and take responsibility for it with our partner. Doing this will help our partner see that we care more about them and being truthful than selfishly trying to avoid taking responsibility. It will also help inspire them to forgive us.
7. Re-establish Priorities Together:
As we are going through the process of rebuilding trust with our partner, it could prove useful to re-establish our priorities together as a couple. It can be beneficial to review them periodically anyway. Since our goals flow from our priorities, and our priorities are usually linked to our values; doing this offers a wonderful opportunity to update all three. We need to insure that we make our relationship important enough in our lives. I recommend making our relationship, and the love it flows from, our highest priority. And then, with this as the center, everything else will naturally flow from its core. This can make things simpler and clearer as we move forward together in this delicious adventure called life! So, an example of general priorities could be something like: 1. Relationship, 2. Immediate Family, 3. Spirituality, 4. Health, 5. Career, 6. Contributing To The Greater Good, 7. Creative Interests and Hobbies, 8. Friends And Extended Family, 9. Financial Growth Or Stability, and 10. Continuing Education. This is the order I would place these 10 things in, and you could put them in the order that best fits your values (or, of course, come up with different ones altogether). Show your partner how serious you are about repairing the damage and strengthening your relationship.
8. Make Your Life An Open Book:
Be completely open and honest. If you haven’t already, give your partner full access to your smart phone, tablet, laptop, FB and Messenger accounts, text threads, email accounts, bank and credit card accounts, schedule, etc. Show them you have nothing to hide. Do this proactively. Do not wait for them to ask you. Doing this will help erase the question marks in their head, and make it easier for them to trust you again.
Invite them to ask you any questions they may have as often as they need to. When they ask, respond with understanding, enthusiasm, and alacrity — regardless of how uncomfortable you may feel. Comfort is irrelevant.
9. Make Amends With Your Partner:
In whatever ways would most benefit your partner, or in whatever ways you are able; make amends for what you have done. Proactively tell your partner that you want to do this, so it comes from you, and not from them asking. Some people write letters of apology, create special gifts, provide supernormal services, plan romantic dates or events, purchase things you know they would like, and show them how sorry you really are. When you do things to make amends, make sure they are not normal things you already do anyway. Such things do not usually seem like amends-making to most people. And I would recommend keeping your love making out of this process. Since you already do this anyway, and since we don’t want the naturalness, beauty, and/or frequency of our sensuality to be associated with damage repair; it is best to keep this separate.
10. Write Love Letters:
Each day you are apart, write love letters to each other, including two things: 1. a brief summary of how your day is going, and 2. something positive you appreciated about your partner when you last spent time with them. This could be as simple as two sentences. You could say something like “I’m having a pretty awesome day, and everything here is going smoothly! In the light of last night’s candles, you looked so beautiful with that gardenia in your hair!” You could send it by text, email, or write it on some personalized stationery. Doing this helps us feel closer, gives us a general sense of what our partner’s day has been like, and helps us feel loved and appreciated. It is best to do it toward the end of the time apart, not too long before you get together again. Then, when you get together, you can exchange letters, or read the texts/emails, and let this sweet little boost of happiness brighten your reconnection!
11. Have Regular Dates:
Plan a date, without kids or anyone else, at least once a month. If your schedule allows, try to make it once a week. These dates can be at home, at the beach, at the movies, at your favorite restaurant, or just a romantic walk along a musky country road. If they are at home, try to insure that they are special — something more than the usual evening routine. Set aside all conflicts during your dates, and focus on the sweetness of your love.
12. Focus On The LOVE:
Whatever happens, focus on the love. This will raise the vibration, and create a better outcome. Love is transformative! Strive on, untiringly!
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