Love means ALWAYS having to show you’re sorry.
To err is human,
to take full responsibility for it,
face and pay all the consequences,
is divine
Have you ever been lied to, stolen from, cheated or cheated on and wonder if there is a way back from betrayal?
If you’re the one who has done the betraying read and watch the video of the following airtight formula for earning back trust and follow it.
If you’re the one who has suffered from betrayal, send this article and video to the one who has done it to you and tell them this is what you need in order to trust them again. Once trust is broken by betrayal, can it be regained?
There is a road back, but it takes practicing the 4 R’s to respond to the 4 H’s you triggered in the other person by a betrayal of their trust. The 4 H’s and the 4 R’s:
1. To ease the HURT you need to demonstrate REMORSE to show that you know you damaged something in them, by looking them directly in the eye and admitting you’re truly sorry, with no excuses (this is the stumbling block for very narcissistic people and something Bill Clinton had trouble with during the Monica situation).
3. To lower their HESITATION TO TRUST you need to REHABILITATE yourself to let them see a new way of dealing with those situations that caused you to stray and that you actually prefer to your old destructive behavior.
4. To get them to stop HOLDING ONTO A GRUDGE, you need to REQUEST FORGIVENESS after practicing those 3 R’s for a minimum of 6 months so they can become a part of your personality.
If the other person is still unable to forgive you after that, you are no longer unforgivable (if you haven’t gone beyond betrayal into abuse), they are unforgiving. It’s clear what is in it for you if they forgive you, but what’s in it for them? When you earnestly practice the 4 R’s above, you enable the person you injured to go from fear and loathing to feeling safe, trusting and even liking you again—and that feeling is called, “euphoria.”
*A full explanation of the 4 H’s and 4 R’s and how to use them to rebuild trust is available in (Perigee) by Mark Goulston with Philip Goldberg.
One final suggestion, confront, stop and cut your losses with evil people at the earliest opportunity. For everyone else who are merely flawed, find a way to forgive them, because if being unforgiving takes you over it will turn you bitter and turn you into that parent or relative that learned it from and you told yourself you would never want to become.
We appreciate your perspective. Re-earning trust includes the very important component of understanding why you choose to commit infidelity in the first place. Research is clear that affairs are not the fault of the marriage, nor the betrayed spouse/partner, but rather a response to or escape from one’s own unaddressed emotional issues; see http://www.dearpeggy.com/affairs.html#2 for the basic research on this. Esther Perel’s research also shows that affairs happen in good marriages, too, so we cannot blame the marriage for “causing” it.
Laura S.
Executive Director
Infidelity Counseling Network
http://www.infidelitycounselingnetwork.org