Re-learning how to trust ...

Re-learning how to trust as a child of infidelity involves understanding why your parent was unfaithful. This is a very difficult step for adolescents, who lack the life experience to put their parent’s behavior in perspective, and it is almost impossible for young children, who expect their parents to be perfect. But a mature adolescent or an adult child of infidelity can consider their parent’s behavior and determine the valid reasons for why it may have happened. This doesn’t mean justifying parental infidelity; it means looking at the behavior in a more objective light. Perhaps your parents had serious marital conflicts, which led one spouse to seek validation or comfort in another partner; maybe the cheating parent was himself a child of infidelity and unconsciously modeled his behavior after his unfaithful mother or father; or perhaps your parent used affairs to prop up a sagging ego.

In putting forth the effort to try to understand your parents, and recognizing that they have their own frailties and emotional injuries, you may come to realize that each of us is on a life path in search of what we need to feel whole, and that we often create crises with the person who is closest to us in order to resolve past issues. Understanding what happened between your parents is crucial in preventing you from “acting out” your loss of trust within your own relationships. Instead of sabotaging your own happiness by engaging in self-defeating behavior, you can learn to be more open and more trusting with appropriate individuals by acknowledging the need to trust, giving yourself time to assess the trustworthiness of a particular friend or partner, and developing an understanding of why your parent was unfaithful in the first place.

--- You can find more in my book "Parents who cheat".