Rebuilding trust and communication in a marriage - Advice?

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Xaphiir

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Hi everyone, this is my first post on the forums (basically “long time reader first time commenter” sort of deal). I don’t want to get into a really long story so I’m going to try and summarize my situation before asking for advice kind of quick.

I’ve been married to my husband for almost seven years, our marriage is still incredibly strong and I can confidently say that there is no chance of divorce anywhere in our future, especially as we both are SUPER excited to be joining RCIA later this year and discovering and learning more about the Catholic Church together. He does suffer from bouts of depression from various neglect/abuse he went through growing up, and this unfortunately lead to some…I guess the best description would be ‘emotional cheating’ over the past year. It wasn’t with any specific woman, nor was it in-person with anyone. That’s sort of the part I don’t really want to get too in-depth about but mentioning it is important for my question!

We’re working through this rough patch together. Going to church every week is helping and I’m sure RCIA in September will help even more, but we’re still so new to the Church that we’re joining and we’ve both unfortunately got a lot of social anxiety so we’re taking baby-steps as far as socializing.

SO MY QUESTION, after all the rambling, is: Does anyone have any sort of reading/books, possibly online communities, or just general advice on how to rebuild a damaged trust in a marriage? I don’t want to say ‘broken’ because I still trust this man with my life, and promise to God that our love is still so strong, but discovering this sort of situation and having a lot of anxiety myself is definitely difficult.

I feel like the best way for us to get through this together would be for me to see, and experience with my husband, his learning more about his faith and the Church. Communication is really the biggest thing for us, partly because of what happened and also greatly because he (from past abuse) just has so much difficulty communicating in general, even with me. I’m positive that growing together in God will bring us back together, but since we’re still so new to the Church neither of us really know where to turn to as far as resources/reading/etc in this situation. Even just a recommended bible study for couples I think would be super helpful, but especially so if there was possibly any sort of studies/books about rebuilding the strength in a relationship after something like this.

Thank you so much for any help given here!
 
You might find Retrouvaille helpful. It’s usually a weekend seminar sort of program to improve communication in marriages. It’s Catholic based, Here’s a link.

Congratulations on joining the church! Keep in mind that it’s a hospital for sinners, so not everyone you meet at church will be a saint, yet.
 
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I don’t have any recommendations sorry,but just to caution that I believe that trust should be only rebuilt when the other spouse is trustworthy.
Hopefully by reading Catholic books etc your husband will have a change of mentality and growth in maturity and then become someone worthy of your reinvesting your trust into.

The only reason I’m mentioning this is because I have read of wives re -building trust for a husband after his infidelity/s only for him to do it again, so I think the cheated on spouse should tread cautiously and wisely.
 
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Viki63 said:
You might find Retrouvaille helpful. It’s usually a weekend seminar sort of program to improve communication in marriages. It’s Catholic based, Here’s a link.
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I would second this. I hesitated replying because I have no first hand experience; presenter couples are (or have been) through similar times in their marriage where trust was lost.
 
Thanks for all the replies so far (and so quick)!

Viki63 - Thanks! I’m not sure if we’ll be (financially) able to do a retreat any time soon but I will definitely save this link.

Rozellelily and Mtatum1958 - I so appreciate the concern and care, but the level of trust hasn’t been damaged quite THAT much between us. Even before we were joining the Catholic Church, and especially now that we are, divorce really is just no on the table for either of us. We’re committed to staying together, and growing together.

TheLittleLady - These links look great! It looks like there’s some good book recommendations mixed into the list too, and that audio link from CALive sounds really promising. ^-^

I know I said this in my first post as well, but I don’t want to ‘sign off’ on this post making it sound like I’m ‘closing’ the topic or anything, so – recommendations of books to read together would be excellent, since books are fairly inexpensive for the most part. Even if the book is geared more towards helping someone get over past abuse/learning to communicate with their loved ones in present - that’d of course be geared more towards my husband, but we could definitely still read it together.

Thanks again everyone!
 
You have had many good responses. You will have to see which ones fit in with your particular situation. Since you said that trust really isn’t that damaged and you are committed to each other, I wil put forward another option. A Worldwide Marriage Encounter helps couples to build on the foundation of their good marriage and help it grow and focus on one another and God. Marriage Encounter Information

It is usually a Friday evening to Sunday afternoon commitment, so it may not be something workable in your situation.

Ongoing prayers for the both of you.
 
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