Broken trust...

Do you remember the moment when you fully realized that someone who claimed to love you could betray you? It hits like a gut-punch right in the solarplexus. It smashes you beneath its reality and doesn't let you up again for a long time... or, if you let it, forever. It makes you question everything you believe. And it changes you. You're never the same again.

He and I had been together for five years. His was the dream of the commitment ceremony, the white picket fence, the joint checking account and the inevitable babies bouncing on knees. His was the dream of monogamy, of two people being made for one another, of growing old and taking care of each other. He had, after all, been the victim of enormous violations of trust in his last long-term relationship, according to him. This one was to be pure and right.

The only problem was his double life. Strike that... The only problem was I believed him.

His secret trysts with strangers in steam rooms or drunken interludes with good friends of ours when I was out of town. His hidden e-mails to men, asking them to join him in another city when he travelled for business. His addiction to online sex encounters, sometimes made real. The scattered phone numbers on cocktail napkins, the late night phone calls. The sneaking off for long periods of time when we'd go to bars together. The many violations of trust I discovered and the imagining of many, many more. I'm still not sure which have basis in fact, but I'm not terribly interested in finding out the reality.

And still, none of this did me in. It certainly eroded my trust, but nothing broke it, surprisingly. With each episode, I believed that they were mistakes, falters and that he had, once again, gotten back on the horse and would stay on this time. That he truly cared about me and my feelings and wouldn't do anything to hurt me intentionally.

Until...

We had just bought a house together and it was moving day. We had spent weeks packing up our apartment, excited at the prospect of home ownership and a new life together. His friend had come from LA to help us on the last few days of packing.

On the day of the move, I turned in the remote for the apartment gate and went to work while the movers arrived. I knew I would come home to our new house with boxes packed to the ceiling, but I was elated.

About mid-day, I decided I could leave work for the day and go help. I decided to stop by the hopefully by now cleaned out apartment to see if I could do anything there. I drive up to the gate that was miraculously open, so I didn't have to call him to open it for me. I got out of my Jeep and headed to the front door of the apartment, walking by the dining room windows on my way in. I couldn't see inside, but could tell that all the furniture was gone.

I found the door cracked a bit and went to push it open ...

It slammed in my face and locked.

And that was the moment. My trust had been completely broken and I felt like a broken egg with the yolk flowing out of my insides. My mouth tasted like copper and I almost passed out from hyperventilating.

I knew. Like a flash, it hit me that my partner had been having an affair with the "friend" that came to help us move. That while they worked together over the summer at a gig out of town, they had had an affair. The entire summer and all my repressed suspicions surfaced and I suddenly saw every clue I'd ignored for three months.

I can't forget the milliseconds later when the door opened and there he was, stammering, red-faced, pretending that the door handle was faulty. All I could say was, "How could you do this??"
That moment, with all of my belongings packed in boxes at my new, jointly owned house, was when my innocence was lost, when I realized that people you trusted could seriously wound, that others whom I loved, trusted and respected could do things that I couldn't fathom of doing to someone. That people were capable of lying to my tear-streaked face as I begged for the truth.

We stayed together six more years, but they were painful and riddled with distrust, so much so that I even started lying. During that time, I became obsessed with rifling through his wallet, trying to crack his e-mail password, going through trash bins for scraps of paper with clues to his lies. I became something akin to a drug addict who couldn't help myself from checking his cell phone for past or placed calls. I got a strange joy out of finding bad things and rubbing them in his face. When I look back to that time, I almost see myself as physically ugly, kind of like those public service announcements to stay away from meth that show people's mug shots progressing from a normal looking person to a person that is barely recognizable. The lack of trust... no, more the active distrust, made me into a person that felt ravaged with illness.

It's taken me several years to be able to believe in happy endings again. To actually attend a wedding and believe in the future of two people together. To watch a romantic movie without scoffing. To see a couple who openly espouses monogamy without thinking to myself, "Which one's cheating?"

And, most importantly, to be able to trust another human being again with my heart. And, I do.

My new love doesn't promise the white picket fence or absolute monogamy, but he swears he will always tell me the truth... and I finally believe him.

I do have what I call flashbacks... I'll not be able to reach him one night and my mind will run wild with the scenarios. I'll see him talking to someone else and touching them and I go right back to the scared lover I once was with my ex, peering through the crowd, trying not to be seen so I can catch him in the act. I always tell him how I'm feeling... and, most times, he's patient... He understands that I'm a veteran and will, from time to time, believe I'm back in the war .

But, I do trust him...

I just hope he's not lying to me.