T0324 continued part 4

[Train]

I hear you, cat.

I agree we should always look at ourselves first in a relationship and own what's ours. My post was actually more about my own personal experience - as it related to my personality - especially when I was here the first time in 2005. In other words, I actually wasn't referring to me in a relationship; I was referring to me on these boards. I can only speak for myself. But sometimes, I took the "look inside" thing a little too far and ended up accepting *more blame than I should have* for things that weren't on me *while my H was wayward* and I was here. The blame I actually deserved for things I did (or didn't do) while we were still M was plenty. Perhaps I didn't make that clear enough in my post. (Again, a possible downside to my rambling ... )

Re: trust but verify:

Another personal experience (because I can only use that in anything I offer to others who are suffering here or in the real world) ...

My H - after returning to our M after his A last year - voluntarily left his cell phone by my side of the bed each night for the first few months he was back home, and he provided me a list of all his usernames and passwords. This is now my own personal benchmark/standard for how open a formerly-wayward spouse should be when returning home after an A.

With H being that open, my frantic desire to "verify" faded very quickly. He did his part. And then I did mine: I stopped snooping. (Being a cynic, I also realized that there are ALWAYS ways he can have another A, which made my efforts to "trust ... but verify" feel really futile. I also realized that nothing good came of me finding emails and texts that were on his phone from the days when he was wayward. I wanted to become "unstuck" and move forward, and I couldn't do that as long as I was snooping.) But it was my H who led the way on that by being so willing to be open and answer all my questions, even the ones I had after "snooping." He even offered to go through his phone and emails *together*.

HOWEVER, T's sitch - in the short time her H has been home - was vastly different. He started pulling away from her, making her (naturally) want to find out what was going on with him. He stopped talking to her, making her suspect the worst and making her FURTHER curious to find out what was going on. She naturally felt she *needed* to verify at that point. (And he'd only been home a couple-to-a-few months if I'm remembering correctly!) She wants to trust but verify and discovers he's sleeping with his phone in his pocket. And then he points a blaming finger at *T* in the MC session???

Yeah. I'll stand by my original post on that one.

Trust but verify is temporary; the former-WAS controls a lot of just how temporary that will be by being lovingly open, honest and transparent. T was nowhere *near* "warden"-status at that point, IMO.