Episode Details

Women often ask, “how do you live with a husband you don’t trust?”

If you’ve discovered something about your husband that made you question if you could live with him, he’s likely using at least one of the 19 different types of emotional abuse. To find out, take our free emotional abuse quiz.

Did His Manipulation and Lies Break Your Trust?

Most women who can’t trust their husband discover he’s been manipulating, gaslighting, and lying. It’s important for emotionally abusive men to protect their secret behaviors and maintain the privileges they receive from being “good guys”.

Manipulation, gaslighting, and lying may follow, it can look like:

• Flat-out denial of the pornography use, whether there is evidence or not (in cases where there is evidence, he might say, “I have no idea how that got on my phone, it must have been the kids/my brother/a co-worker)
• Blaming the victim (if you would ____, I wouldn’t have to use it)
• Minimization (I downloaded it but I didn’t look at it; I texted her but never had met with her)
• Blame-shifting: “Why are you checking my phone in the first place?”
• Partial truths: “I was just studying for a test and it popped up – I did look at it, but I wasn’t searching for it”
• Gaslighting with questions like, “Do you really think so low of me?” “How could you accuse me of something like that?”

When You Find Out You Can’t Trust Him, It’s Usually The Tip of The Iceberg

Women who can’t trust their husband almost always discover he’s participating in some type of destructive behavior, like…

• Coercion
• Emotional affairs
• Solicitation of prostitutes
• Consensual affairs
• Marital Non-Consentual Touch
• Marital Assault
• Voyeurism
• Eploitation of a spouse

If you relate and need support, check out our Online Daily Group Session Schedule.

Transcript: How to Live with a Husband You Don’t Trust

Anne: We have a member of our community on today’s episode. Her name is Cristy. She’s going to talk about when she discovered something that made her wonder if she could ever trust her husband again.

Cristy: Thank you.

Anne: Just like so many members of our community, you went through. Years and years of pain, but you didn’t understand what was happening.

Cristy: No, I did not. We both went to a Christian college that’s where we met and we talked through our values. after we graduated, we got married.

Our first year of marriage, I knew something was wrong and couldn’t pinpoint it. I asked him and he lied he yelled a lot I even at one point had found myself in the car for hours, not knowing where else to go. I knew something was wrong.

Discovering I Couldn’t Trust My Husband

Cristy: Then I found it on my husbands phone. He said he had looked at it and I firmly said well, I’d like to go to counseling toge