Can Trust be Restored in a Damaged Relationship?

God is showing me, slowly, that trust can be repaired once broken. It takes time, and effort, and there may even be some pitfalls. My husband is still learning how to communicate with me, as I am learning to better communicate with him.

I still have a hard time believing his word sometimes. But he seems adamant that he only looked at the porn as a test, to see how far he'd come, and that he wasn't aroused by it. That's not the only part of the conversation we had, but that is his final answer.

I'm still spinning everything that was said in my head... when I confronted him originally, he said he just "slipped" and seemed very upset that he'd "faltered"... but then once he left for the trip and we got on the phone, the story changed to he was testing himself, but when I asked him what he had done, he froze... which in my mind makes no sense at all - him slipping and faltering is worse than just testing himself and not feeling anything as a result... So why say the worse of the two out of panic?

Because now the other story looks like a cover up, in my mind. I hate not being able to read people's minds. I'll tell you what if only I could hear what people are actually thinking instead of saying.

Now there is the possibility Adam could be mildly bipolar as it is genetic... he doesn't seem to have it anywhere near the level his mom, but he does seem to have slight ups and downs that seem to be beyond the normal level of regular mood swings. And one thing I've learned about bipolar is that when presented with a stressful situation, the more "natural" result is for the person to lie (no matter how silly or backwards the lie is.)

God is leading us to find out more. To seek counseling and medical council regarding the possibility of bipolar disorder. I thought we were doing ok without some form of counseling, but we were obviously fooling ourselves.

So please pray for us as we continue to rebuild the broken trust and our damaged marriage. I read something the other day about someone asking a couple how they stayed together so long (something like 60 years) and they said "back in our day, if something was broken, we fixed it, not threw it away and got a new one..."