How to fix trust in a relationship?
Maybe… try fucking other people. Maybe not.
This comes from a previous piece of writing but with more reflection and experience, I stand by what I’ve said even more than before — and with more reason than previously.
So I was in a heterosexual, monogamous relationship. I was one of his first partners and he had been my only sexual partner.
We began dating when I was 15. My previous exposure to relationships was the nonsense you see in mainstream TV and my parents’ divorce. The divorce had happened because my dad had an affair and that woman became my step mom. We’ve dealt with it all, and I love the woman, but it undoubtedly fucked me up when it came to trust.
The result was that my mom grew tougher and less willing to put up with bullshit, and she passed her lessons on to me. Lessons that lived in catch phrases like: ‘once a cheater, always a cheater’ and ‘treat them mean, keep them keen’. They were always light-hearted but they stuck with me and formed my foundational thinking and expectations when it came to relationships.
Cue the first boyfriend, the one at 15. I’d had my sexual debut with him and he was my everything. He was the lens through which I looked out to the world. If we were good, the world was good. If we were bad, the world was bad. And I was head over heels in love with him. I expected the world from him and I believed he was my world and naively, that I was wholeheartedly his.
One day, we were going through things on his phone and a slightly-more-than-flirtatious message came through. I confronted him and he tried to lie about it. My heart sank and everything came crashing down. I was done. I had given him everything and he went and did this?! I couldn’t believe it. He had ruined everything.
But we overcame it. The relationship had too much to offer to throw it away over something so frivolous.
This went on to happen a few times with different people, except he had begun to hide messages with more intensity — which I actively looked for because of how broken our trust was, and because I simply (and terribly) felt entitled to. I kept looking and I kept finding.
I don’t know why I never ended it even though I was absolutely broken. We always moved past it with decent sex and otherwise healthy behaviour. We treated long conversations like band aids and sex like stitches but nothing really fixed the trust. The relationship was an active volcano, always ready to erupt.
I had gotten so jealous and insecure that I was personally offended when I found out that he was watching porn. I would throw the worst slanders at him and mutter terrible things under my breath out of the blue. I wanted him to hurt as much as he had hurt me.
He had put me through hell but I had grown toxic.
It became a toxic, emotionally abusive, untrusting space. And both our demons were feeding on it.
THEN SOMETHING CLICKED.
Between an XConfessions subscription and growing older, something just changed.
I began following many porn stars and sex workers on Twitter. This gave me a look into the lives of people who connect with different people on different levels in different ways.
I got to know a different side to sex and personal connections. I got to understand why someone would want connections beyond their own relationships. But most importantly, I got to understand what makes it all work.
Trust and communication.
They were honest with their partners about what they were doing and what they wanted.
I began speaking to my partner about different connections and fantasies and experiences and triggers. It took long but we got to be completely open about things we’d never even admitted to ourselves.
Then, after watching porn together, initiating some intense dirty talk and having that-was-so-fucking-incredible-did-my-vagina-just-explode sex, we explored sex with other people; and we explored it together.
We found and spoke to other people and couples on different platforms but in ways that, when we deleted the platform, we deleted the experience. We downloaded new messaging apps so that we didn’t need to exchange cell phone numbers and nudes were shared but faces were covered.
We took photos together, crafted messages together, discussed scenarios together and experienced it together.
The actual experiences weren’t great. From awkwardness to spontaneous ED, it just wasn’t what we expected.
But it taught us to speak about things we wanted as individuals and as a couple. It helped us get over things we hadn’t been able to deal with before. It helped us regain trust in a surprising way. It helped us understand each other with no judgement. It helped us feel loved, desired, respected and appreciated in intimate ways that we’d been neglecting between ourselves. It also reminded us what we had within each other.
We also learned that when we could speak about something so intimate and difficult, that other difficult topics like money or failure became easier to discuss.
I’m not in a relationship with him anymore but I’ve learned that I might not be monogamous; and I’ve learned how important it is to have that conversation.
