How do you rebuild trust after lying/cheating has taken place?

So, I am not so much interested in advice, as hearing from others what happened in their relationships when cheating/lying occurred and how they dealt with it. Does anyone have experiences where you were able to trust again? What did it take?

I spoke about this in a previous post today. I am coming from a place where my partner and I are allowed to sleep with others, but I only have history of being in monogamous relationships and had not yet experienced my partner sleeping with someone else. My partner slept with someone else for the first time recently... at first she told me a partial truth about it and lied about the rest. She did not talk to me ahead of time before the hook-up occurred, and then said that it was spontaneous and only once, when actually she had sex twice and it was planned. Part of the issue is that we did not communicate before hand about the need for communication while she was gone although we had talked a long time ago about how she would tell me first if something was going to happen. Part of the issue is that she made a mistake and checked out. I can understand making mistakes, while also now I am very hurt and struggling with trust in the relationship.

Anyways, I have processed a lot of what happened to me, but what I really need is to hear about how others have dealt with cheating/boundary collapses and violations/lying. I would like to hear from both sides (those that have broken boundaries and those that have had their partners break boundaries).

Thanks.
 
Practising open, honest and radical honesty is what did it for me... it has been difficult, but with practice I have come to learn how to communicate with care and consideration for my loves and still tell them how I feel at appropriate times and not a moment too late. They have learned to. That isn't to say I am excellent at it... if you read my blog from December on, you will see that I too have fucked up more than once. It's hard to be on top of everything at the best of times in monogamy, even more so with poly, therefore, to me, its better to not be and just have everything out in the open. People trust me more that way anyway, because everything is completely transparent.
 
I've cheated and I've been on the recieving end as well.

First it makes a HUGE difference in changing yourself (as a cheater) to admit publicly what you have done and make friends who can help you to hold you accountable to being fully honest and open about what you think, what you feel, what you want, what you need.
Most often, lying/cheating (in my experience) follows lying to ones ownself about needs and wants. If you get used to lying to yourself, lying to others follows.

On the recieving end, it's most helpful to me to understand that other people lie and cheat because something is wrong. Whether they are too afraid to be open about their desires (which may or may not be based on MY reactions to them in the past), or too afraid that they will be told no, or too afraid to even look into themselves to find the real need that they aren't fulfilling in themselves or they are addicted to the "high" of doing something "wrong".

If I can understand what INITIATES the issue, then I can figure out if that issue is one that CAN BE solved within the dynamic of the relationship. Sometimes it can, sometimes it can't. If it can-then letting go of the anger and rebuilding trust follows naturally along the progression of resolving the issue that led to the lying and cheating to begin with.
If it can't be solved within the dynamic of the relationship, then I can let go of the anger and begin to forgive-but not worry about rebuilding trust; because I know that the lying and cheating was a "karmic" (for lack of a better word) way of showing me where the underlying issues were that meant the relationship wasn't going to work anyway.
;)

Good luck.
 
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