25 – Building Trust and Faithfulness

Trusting each other to be faithful is essential to a healthy marriage. Your human heart wants to trust your spouse and wants to know that your relationship is exclusive. Trust stands on two legs, 1) a willingness to trust another person, and 2) trustworthy behavior.
Do you think that trust is freely given, or is it earned? The answer is yes, both. In many relationships you start with assumed trust that you give to each other freely, but you can only keep trust through trustworthy behavior.
The human heart gets hurt when we think we have an exclusive relationship and find that our partner has cheated. Humans, though, can be irrational with this desire for trust by maintaining a double standard. John, for example, feels hurt that his wife cheated on him, even though he has been unfaithful himself.
It’s reasonable to expect a relationship to be exclusive when you have made a commitment to each other and you are being faithful to that commitment yourself.
Trust in an exclusive relationship satisfies a deep desire in our heart. Trust, though, is based largely on how people have behaved toward each other.
If you had sex on the first date, you showed each other that it took very little to get you in bed. You started with a low level of trust that it will take time to build up.
If you didn’t have sex until you were married, you showed each other that you recognize that sex is exclusive and belongs in marriage. You established a solid foundation of trust from the beginning.
Imagine a “trust meter” where “0” represents sex on the first date and “10” represents purity until the honeymoon. Maybe "5" represents waiting until the relationship is pretty serious and "7" represents waiting until you're engaged. The trust in your relationship started at the point you chose. It can go up or down from there, but it takes time to change it.
What if trust has been violated? Can it be rebuilt? Yes, it can. The rebuilding will take the five steps described in the section on Restoring Broken Trust in Chapter 8.
Some people have had their ability to trust someone damaged by the actions of their parents or others who have broken trust with them in their past. Your spouse may have already had difficulty trusting another person when the two of you met. However, over time, the influence of the past will dim and your spouse’s trust for you is going to be based primarily on your actions and your words.
What do you need to do to build and maintain trust in your marriage? Your words and actions need to line up with the commitment you made when you married to forsake all other and keep yourselves for each other.
But among you there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality, or of any kind of impurity, or of greed, because these are improper for God's holy people. (Ephesians 5:3)
The command here is that there not even be a hint of sexual immorality. I believe this means that we shouldn’t joke about cheating and we shouldn’t put ourselves in situations where our intent is unclear.
Cheating on your spouse, or even entertaining the idea is a foolish choice. Proverbs 5 is devoted to warning us against adultery, telling us it will cost us health, wealth, and reputation. The person who is unfaithful will look back on it with regret. We are urged to maintain faithfulness in our marriage.
Drink water from your own cistern, running water from your own well. Should your springs overflow in the streets, your streams of water in the public squares? (Proverbs 5:15-16)
And we are warned to take care to take precaution not to put ourselves in a tempting situation.
Keep to a path far from her, do not go near the door of her house. (Proverbs 5:8)
If your spouse doesn’t trust you, don’t ignore it and don’t merely yell at them for not trusting you. Examine the roots of the lack of trust and discover what it will take to build trust in your marriage. If your words and actions have been worthy of trust, give your spouse time to develop a stronger sense of trust in you. If, on the other hand, you have said or done things that damaged trust, you need to change your words and actions to those that reinforce trust in you.
If you have been tempted to infidelity, it is a symptom that you need to nurture your marriage. Cheating is a fool’s bargain.
Proverbs warns us:
For the lips of an adulteress drip honey, and her speech is smoother than oil; but in the end she is bitter as gall, sharp as a double-edged sword. Her feet go down to death; her steps lead straight to the grave. (Proverbs 5:3-5)
Talk About It – Discuss what you think is the current level of trust in your relationship. What do you need to do to improve the trust in your marriage?