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I'm taking an Organizational Behavior class and I'm currently reading about leadership and such. I came across this passage:

“Once it is violated, trust can be regained, but only in certain situations that depend on the type of violation. If the cause is lack of ability, it’s usually best to apologize and recognize you should have done better. When lack of integrity is the problem, though, apologies don’t do much good. Regardless of the violation, simply saying nothing or refusing to confirm or deny guilt is never an effective strategy of regaining trust. Trust can be restored when we observe a consistent pattern of trustworthy behavior by the transgressor. However, if the transgressor used deception, trust never fully returns, not even after apologies, promises or a consistent pattern of trustworthy behavior.”

It's really making me think. In my situation, there was never an opportunity to rebuild trust, since X is the cowardly type that ran away as fast as he could from the mess he made. I've done a lot of reading on SI and I thought this was an interesting view and wondered how people would think it applied to the whole infidelity picture. Sorry in advance for being a geek that thinks she is finding nuggets of wisdom in dry old textbooks. (Mods, please give this a ride if I'm posting in the wrong forum - I wasn't sure if this was the right place.)

Thanks for posting this!
I do think it applies to infidelity. It is well written and thought provoking.

I like that passage. We are 4 yrs post A and even as late as yesterday I was questioning myself why despite all of his efforts, I still could not totally trust my H. He has given me no reason to suspect anything is amiss, and has been incredibly remorseful, but I just can't move to trust totally.

The passage you posted makes sense. It validates why I can't move to total trust and why I probably never will. That is disappointing at 30 years of marriage now....but it is what it is. I am not sure I could 100% trust any partner (if I were to get a new one) again.

Tonight blakesteele shared a quote about vulnerability:

“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to be sure of keeping your heart intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully around with hobbies and little luxuries, avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safely in the casket of your selfishness. And in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will not change, it will not be broken. It will become unbreakable, impenetrable, and irredeemable. The only place outside of heaven where you can be perfectly safe from the dangers of love is hell.” ~C.S. Lewis

[This message edited by ladies_first at 11:00 PM, September 19th (Thursday)]

Reading this passage makes me so sad as I believe it to be true and I wish it wasn’t. Currently suffering my way through my WH’s 2nd A (DDay start 6/13) and knowing that trust will never be fully restored is what is making it so hard for me to commit to R. After his 1st A (DDay 12/12) I worked so hard on trusting him again – and it was working. I was getting there and I had hope. I knew that I would never trust him 100% however I felt confident that I would get pretty close. 10mths later he’s in A number 2 whilst I thought we were back on track and in R. The trust was already fragile and now once again completely broken. So much deceit & deception. I have wrapped my heart up tight and am protecting it. I used to trust him without question and I miss that. I try to remain positive and believe that it will come back but the “Miss Reality” voice in my head tells me that this will never be the case. This passage just confirms it. I don’t think I will ever be able to fully trust any partner again. So is it a case of better the devil you know? Accept that this is as good as it’s going to get? I now know the signs so possibly not fully trusting will help me to remain alert & hopefully protected against any future As. Any more and I walk away for good. Thank you for sharing it – the voice in my head is saying I told you so.