When to Stop Trusting Your Spouse

Women take this advice

I was Dumb and Dumber during my marriage. I mean seriously all out Legally Blonde, only unlike Reese, I never redeemed myself. My ex-husband (I mean this literally) is still laughing all the way to the bank. He might even own it.

I’m gonna give a warning to the women out there.

A shout-out to the girls. A serious offer of pre-pledge advice to my sorority sistas. The way a big sis and little sis should band together. I’m going to expose a secret.

When should you stop trusting your spouse?

Is it when you’re considering leaving them? No.

Is it when you’re thinking about divorcing them? Wrong answer.

Is it when you’re finally making the move to divorce them? Hell no!

The moment you stop trusting your spouse is when the trouble begins. Can I get a hell ya?! Drumroll. Bells ringing. Wait for it moment. Have you digested this advice?

Let me sum it up for you.

Enter severe marital trouble, exit trust. Got it?! Because I didn’t. I was dumb. A thou protest too much gal. My friends tried to warn me. Put a few pennies aside they insisted. Why? I would ask.

Because you can’t trust him they would say.

They told me the war stories of love. They spoke of men from emotionally foreign lands who fled the kingdom with everything. Guys who were sneaky, dishonest, ruthless, and morally bankrupt. The kinda people who would do illegal things in order to bag all of the riches.

Not my husband. Not the guy I met in a Catholic college. Not my Scranton sweet pea. He had values. He was a father. He wouldn’t do that to his family. He was a good guy.

So I blindly, Legally Blonde blindly trusted him.

Every night I went to bed next to a liar. While my eyes swelled with nightly tears and morning lids that refused to open, he was hiding money. To be clear, every single dime we had.

I don’t know what’s worse.

That my husband robbed me blind. Or that I naively trusted him while he did it. I slid into bed refusing to believe in the corrupt version of humanity. Let alone, that it could reside within my home.

Or that divorce, I mean severe marital discord can turn your most intimate partner into a stranger. But it can. And by the time the problems lead to the dissolution of marriage that person is unrecognizable.

Women believe they are working on their relationships. They believe they are saving the love of their life. They believe they are rescuing their family. They go all in.

Protecting everyone they love, every beat in their heart.

Except themselves. They push away nagging thoughts in the favor of the comprehensive home. I did. I disregarded the P.O. Box key I found. One that was used as an address for hidden money. I suppressed the words of my ex-husband’s co-worker as a guy who didn’t know him at all.

I looked the other way again and again.

Not because I was in denial. Because I trusted him. My denial was reserved for the demise of my marriage. But not for the character of the man I married. I believed it was stellar. Despite his emotional ruthlessness.

I didn’t strictly lose money. I lost my innocence. Something I had remarkably protected my entire adult life. Until my marriage began to fail.

Because I didn’t know when to stop trusting my husband.

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