Aftershock - Road to RecoverySample

The Need for Restored Trust

While this devotional is primarily written to wives, it would be helpful if you and your husband read the remaining sections together, especially since it will take both of you to accomplish full marital healing. Trust in your marriage is foundational to your healing, so we’ll take a closer look at this ingredient.

Trust is like healing water. Over time your husband must deposit trust drop by drop into your relationship, and you must collect it. This is a joint endeavor, but he must initiate it. Like water, trust can be fluid. Its level ebbs based on the conditions of the surrounding environment. Initially, it requires daily maintenance if it is to remain at a sufficient level.

Just as water can saturate dry places and turn them into an oasis, growing trust creates a progressively more restful place in a relationship. In a very real way, you’ve been traumatized, and everyone, yourself included, must be patient and understand the complex effects of trauma on your body, mind, and spirit. However, with care and planful responses to your trauma, you can begin to experience moments of relief and eventually even refreshment.

Bear in mind, experiencing a stable sense of trust and consistent positive feelings in your relationship will take far more than a few weeks. Trust most often isn’t fully realized until a number of years have passed. Patiently and humbly follow a recovery plan that shows heart-level transformation and new, sincere relational skills, not merely a brief behavior change.

Husbands who have broken their wives’ trust may have to make uncomfortable adjustments until they can repair what has been broken. One way they can help themselves is to become part of a men’s recovery group. These groups assist husbands to develop a list of “best practices” that help them avoid overwhelming temptation during this period in their lives. They agree to abide by these specific practices and check in on a regular basis with their counselor and other supportive men in their group. If they have a slip or experience intense temptation, they discuss what it means and learn how to respond in a way that shows integrity.

Next, we’ll look at what to do if your husband yields to temptation.