“How can I ever trust again?” writes Amelia. “After what I’ve been through, I don’t know how I can ever trust anyone again. How do I get over that?”

It’s a great question, isn’t it? Amelia is an emotionally abused woman who had the courage to write down what so many of us ask ourselves, over and over again… Once we’ve finally admitted to ourselves that our relationship with an emotionally abusive man is dead in the water.

First, you have to admit to yourself that your emotionally abusive partner quite deliberately betrayed your trust, over and over again.

Then what do you do?   

You do the thing that we all do that guarantees you’ll keep on hurting: you tell yourself a story about why an emotionally abusive relationship happened to you.

Why you, rather than anyone else? What was so wrong with you?

And then set about finding answers.

Without even asking yourself:

“Am I asking the right question in the first place?”

There’s an important principle you need to learn: when you ask lousy questions all you’ll ever get will be lousy answers.

There are a ton of better questions you could be asking yourself instead, like:

“What’s going on here?”

What’s really going on is that you have reached the end of a damaging and destructive relationship.

Hooray!!!

That can only be good.

So, then you come back to the other question:

“How can I ever trust again?”

Scary, or what?

What makes it SO scary?

Once again, it’s a lousy question.

Try this one instead:

“Who can I ever trust (again)?”

Different, huh?

 

When you got together with your emotionally abusive husband, you invested your trust in what we Brits call “a wrong ‘un”.

I’ve worked with hundreds and hundreds of women now and, you know what? They all had a clear idea that there was something very wrong with their Mr Wonderful. But, hey, Love is about trust, and giving, and believing, isn’t it?

So it is.

BUT…

It’s just not a good idea to Overlook Mr Wonderful’s Nasty Feet (and legs, and torso) of Clay with a view to replacing them with something better, a little further down the line.

That kind of thinking should tell you something important about your worldview.

It could tell you that you don’t value yourself enough to trust yourself, and your intuition.

It could tell you that when you invest your trust in the wrong places – and the wrong people – disappointment, and heart-break are, more or less, guaranteed.

It could tell you that, in reality, your concerns begin and end with you.

Realizing you don’t know who to trust, or how to trust, can be the beginning of your healing journey.

If someone knocked on your door and said:

“Hey, I have an absolutely fabulous scheme, here. Just give me all your savings, and I’ll invest them. You’ll turn a handsome profit, and live happily ever after, as a result. You have my verbal guarantee. Trust me on this.”

You probably wouldn’t go for it, would you?

Chances are, you’d either send the person packing, or want to see concrete proof before you were prepared to trust them.

And yet, when Mr Nasty came a-courting, you chose to trust him – and distrust yourself.

You chose to value him – and disregard yourself.

You chose to invest in him – and disinvest in yourself.

You’ve been disinvesting in yourself ever since you first connected with him.

No wonder you feel at rock bottom.

Before you can trust, and invest, in a partner again, you have to learn how to trust, and invest, in yourself safely.

After all, if you don’t feel you’re worthy of your own investment, why on earth should anyone else?

There’s only one right place to start, when you want to turn your life around, and that’s with you.