This Is Why She Doesn’t Trust You
Audio version now available.
Serving as the facilitator for our Echoes of Recovery group has been the single greatest learning experience of my life. Below are the most important lessons, addressed to people like me. Below the list is how I gained this knowledge.
She loves her kids more than she loves you.
The lying is worse than the drinking.
Broken promises are lies.
The sound of your vehicle pulling into the driveway activates her nervous system and puts her on eggshells.
Just because you never hit her doesn’t mean you didn’t abuse her.
Yes, you do have to hear about your past transgressions again.
And again.
And again (if you’re smart, you’ll consider it a blessing because she’s telling you where it hurts).
If you apologized a lot, your apology is toxic. She wants validation.
If you never apologized, she’s waiting to hear that you’re sorry. And then she’ll need validation.
No, the changed, new version of who you’ve become is not enough.
If you go to the gym as part of your recovery plan, do it for you. She doesn’t care if you get buff. Abs don’t heal trauma.
Feelings are never the fault of the person who feels them.
She doesn’t need to just let it go. Trauma doesn’t heal without work.
Time helps, but work heals.
Yelling in the home is abuse. It doesn’t matter if you are yelling about politics or sports or your boss. If the home is not emotionally safe, she lives with an emotional abuser.
Your criticism is a dagger.
Your criticism toward her children cuts her even deeper.
It is not her job to support you. It is her job to protect her kids and herself.
The body keeps the score. Chronic pain is a sign of a lack of emotional safety.
Detachment is a permanent state of emotional independence. It is a sign of healing, not an attack on you. Reattaching is an emotional relapse.
She never owes you sex. Neither your wedding vows, nor the bible, are justification for unwanted sex.
If she is not interested in sex, it is not because she is manipulative or a bitch. There is exactly one reason: She doesn’t feel safe with you.
Her love for you is conditional, and it should be. Only her children, and probably her pets, deserve her unconditional love.
If this list feels unfair, you are not emotionally masculine.
She might always love you, but if she doesn’t like you, the relationship cannot thrive.
If you are angry at me, your relationship is doomed. If you are curious, there might be a chance.
When my wife used to tell me how she felt, I ran her emotions through a filter of her experiences. Her father was an alcoholic, and her mother was divorced twice during her childhood. I didn’t just listen to how Sheri felt, I considered the ways in which her brokenness or family dysfunction made her feelings her problem. I wasn’t curious. I was arrogant.
When I heard the women in Echoes of Recovery, over and over and over again, say the same things Sheri said, I realized that Sheri wasn’t broken. She was experiencing a very normal human reaction to the emotional abuse she was experiencing in our relationship. Her pain wasn’t from lingering childhood trauma, it was from me and my drinking and my intolerant (and intolerable) behavior.
I am in a heterosexual marriage. My wife and I have children together. I was addicted to alcohol. The statements in the list above were directed to men like me. If your situation varies in some ways, make mental adjustments as you read the list. Don’t ignore the message if you don’t have kids or if the woman is the drinker in your relationship. There is still tons of applicability. Don’t be dismissive. Be curious.
I learned these lessons from hundreds of case studies. If you are in denial, there is a lot of evidence stacked against you. I’ve studied addiction for over a decade. I have a behavioral health master’s degree. None of that was as interesting, or as pertinent, as what I learned in Echoes of Recovery.
To all those of you who have trusted me with your story, I am eternally grateful.
If you are ready to learn how alcohol, and a lack of emotional safety, have impacted you, as the drinker or the partner, both individually and in your close relationships, please take our brief survey to begin the exploration process. We hope you can learn from the lived-experience experts in Echoes of Recovery or SHOUT Sobriety.