Brooke,

This is completely confusing to me – can you please help me understand your answer to another person’s question?

Your answer:
I know many people who trust their spouses and their spouses are lying to them.

How can that be possible?

When you set yourself up to need to be able to trust someone, and the only way you can trust them is if they tell the truth and they don’t tell the truth, then you are inviting nothing but conflict.

So the desire can’t be that they tell you the truth. The desire has to be that you accept that they will be them.

My question: I get that my desire would be to accept that they will be them rather than desiring they tell the truth (b/c I cannot control their behavior, and at the same time don’t want my feelings to be dependent on their behavior), but here is the confusing part – you know people who trust their spouses even though their spouse is lying to them – how do they do that? And if the way they do that is by basing their trust on something other than their spouse being honest, what is it that they base their trust on? I just don’t get how you trust someone if they are a liar. (But I DO get how you need to accept that person as they are). Can you please help clear up my confusion about this?

Thanks,
Chris