Trust and betrayal

Here's another post where I wax lyrical about the nature of relationships. lol

Today I choose to talk about the subject of trust and betrayal. I
think they're issues that everyone can relate to.

I was thinking a lot lately about my aunt, my Mum's sister, and how
unbelievably horrible it must have felt for her husband to leave her
for someone else.

Well, not just that. If you don't know the story yet, let me explain.
The "other woman" was also 10 years younger than her and happened to
be my mother-in-law.

It's been just over two years since my aunt's husband ran off with my
mother-in-law and the ripple effects from that are enormous. When
relationships break down, it effects just everyone connected to the
couple.

The person most affected, however, continues to be my aunt. She's
still a complete mess.

It also tore apart the lives of their children (my cousins) and my
husband (who no longer speaks to his home-wrecking mother) but at the
end of the day, my aunt is the one left utterly alone and feeling
completely discarded.

She's now 60, and that's hard, because she feels like she's got
nothing to look forward to, whether that's true or not.

That person, who she married in good faith, was the person she was
going to retire with, grow old with, and be with as the kids left home
and they were left on their own to live out their golden years. Thing
is, he *was* a good husband and a devoted husband for 22 years.

He adored his wife and kids and everything was "my wife and kids" this
and "my wife and kids" that, but in an instant he turned on his
beloved wife and kids and left the country to be with a woman whom he
only knew for two weeks (they met at *my* wedding, of all things!) And
he never came back.

So after all the blame, the hurt, the messy divorce - after all of
that, she's left on her own.

He, on the other hand, is off living it up with a horribly, decadent,
selfish woman who we no longer have anything to do with. (Oh, and
they're planning on getting married, which will make my husband a
step-sibling of my cousins and therefore, my step-cousin. If such
things exist. Gawd - how Jerry Springer. Yeah, I know it's a little
hard to follow. I'd draw a diagram if I could be bothered.)

After spending 22 years with an adoring husband, how could my aunt
*not* implicitly trust him? It's not a new event in my life, by all
means, but I think different things about it all the time. You see, I
also trust *my* husband implicitly. He's a beautiful person, a
complete angel and, like my aunt, I have no reason to not trust my
husband.

How on earth would I feel if, one day, he dropped a bombshell like
that? How would I feel if he came home and said that he was in love
with someone else, that he didn't love me anymore, and that he was
leaving.

Because that's exactly what it was like for her - a total shock. Bam!

I must say, I've never thought about it from that point of view
before. I've always acknowledged that it must've been really painful,
but I never thought about how it would feel if it happened to me.

How awful it must be when someone who loved you and cared for you
suddenly turns on you. When that person suddenly doesn't love you
anymore.

You'd question everything. You'd wonder if he really meant all the
things he said, if he ever *really* loved you, if he wasn't just full
of hot air, full of words with no meaning. You'd wonder if it ever was
real - and it's just so sad.

And I actually don't understand it.

How does someone suddenly stop loving someone else - all in an
instant? How?! Does it just go away? Does it turn into something else?
How can someone just change their mind, all in a blink of an eye?

Is it a guy thing? The ability to switch off like that?

Because I know that guys fall in love much quicker than girls do.
We're more cautious about it, we think a lot about what we're getting
into. I mean, even my mother-in-law would have calculated carefully in
her head that stealing someone's husband would be better than living
on her own and went ahead with the affair (that's the type of person
she's always been)whereas I don't think my uncle even thought about it
- he just was consumed by lust and dived in.

With guys, they get into states where they're consumed by the thrill
of a girl and go all Tom Cruise-insane on the inside. So if they fall
*in* love quicker, do they fall *out* of love quicker too?

And if so, how prepared does a woman need to be?

I love my husband as if he were my own flesh and blood and he's a
kind, sweet, loving person. I like to say that I scored one of the
very few men on this planet who isn't chock full of bullshit!

So I couldn't fathom that he'd betray me. But at the same time, the
reality point to the fact that half of my extended family are
divorced. Yup, despite being Catholic. lol. And the ones who aren't
divorced aren't necessarily happy or with someone who they *can*
trust.

So who I am to be the exception?

You can go through life liking a lot of people, even loving some of
them, but trusting them is a whole different thing.

It's not like back at school where you totally trust your best friend
and tell them everything and have no fear that they don't completely
adore you back - of course they do! Because they're your bestie and
that's their job.

But things change as you get older. Things happen which make you build
that Great Wall up around yourself with very few windows through to
the real you. You definitely don't let people into your heart in the
same way you latch onto friends as a kid or to romances as a teen. You
get wary with age.

You see, hubby is the only person who just loves me through and
through despite my flaws (I'm not including my parents here - parents
are a whole other matter - they *have* to love me!) He's the only
person who I can open up to without fear.

So I just don't know what I'd do if he flipped out on me. I think I'd
end up totally devo, barricading those tiny windows and cutting myself
off completely. I'd never want to trust anyone again. I'd completely
lose the plot!

Maybe that's what my aunt feels. She says that she'd rather have been
made a widow than go through what she's gone through because then she
wouldn't feel rejected or unloved or discarded. I guess I understand.

Even financially, women usually get the raw deal in divorce. No matter
how many stories you hear about an ex-wife totally rorting a man out
of all his hard-earned goods, in reality, the whole "no fault" divorce
thing means that things get split fifty-fifty and the woman usually
loses out because of that. That's what happened in my aunt's case.

So to add to the pain of being betrayed, she found herself in a
situation where she had very little Super to retire on (most women
take some time off to have kids and then work part-time - it's
impossible for them to have as much retirement funds as men), she had
to take care of the girls on her own (yes, they're over 18 but they're
still at home and one is still a full time student), and she had to
re-mortagage their home. So she also had to get full time work to deal
with all of that.

It just wasn't fair - at 60, to have to get a full time job when most
people are winding down.

I actually lost all faith in the legal system last year when I
attended two days of court for the divorce hearing. She didn't ask for
him to leave her, none of it was her fault - it was totally out of the
blue - and yet, she has to go through being both emotionally fucked up
and financially crippled. Two different types of stressors and both
just horrible to deal with.

So how important is it for women to plan for such things? I can say
that I do actually have a plan in my head for what I'd do to cope
financially if hubby was gone. That came after his cancer diagnosis.
How could I not think such things?

I'd sell our house, sell our apartment that we jointly own, and rent
out my apartment and move back home with my parents for a while. It's
all sorted out in my head.

But things would be entirely different if we had to go through a
divorce. *Sigh*

I know I'm crapping on a lot here, but, in summary my questions to my
readers are these:

1. What is with the ability of men to "switch off"? To just give up
and stop trying in a relationship - and not actually care. And then
not even think about what they've done.

2. How prepared do women need to be to cope on their own? Is it being
pessimistic and thus, jinxing the relationship and not fully trusting
anyone? Or is it prudent to brace oneself against these things?