Breach of Trust

It's so horrible when old issues rise up and rear their ugly heads when you are at ease. At least, when you think you are.

My husband and I are on the verge of buying a home. The bid was accepted. Now, it's just a matter of tying up loose ends - details.

Ever since I heard the news, I have been ill at ease even though it should the happiest time of my life. As much as I convinced myself that I forgive him for a past failure, the old feelings have resurfaced.

You see, I don't have a close-knit family and so, my core group of friends has become my tribe. It is my friends who I lean on in troubled times and share joyous occasions with.

In my last marriage, there was so much in-fighting that I became the scapegoat for many of my ex-husband's relatives' misdirected anger. I was told not to confront the issues as they came up and in lieu of this, I expected that he would come to my defense. That never happened and there were times when he would join in the persecution. This went on for months while we were living with his sister.

Then one day, his brother-in-law insulted him and he found an apartment for us to move into in less than a week. How quickly he acted to deal with his discomfort and yet, expected me to suffer with it for months.

I promised that I would not allow myself to be treated in such a manner in the future.

For the most part, I had been getting along real well with my husband's family. When a similar thing started to happen with some distant relatives of my husband's, I put my foot down and told him in no uncertain terms that if he wasn't comfortable with me confronting people directly, I expected him to speak up in my defense. He did but it was a few months after the fact when it would make no difference to the offenders. Although I told him doing so this late in the game would just make me look petty, he went ahead. He had the right intention of keeping his word but he's a known proscratinator and waited too late. To add insult to injury, he broached the subject as if trying to confirm that what I had said might have been a misunderstanding on my part. I was quite angry.

Time passed and I was able to put it in the back of my mind. Then, my husband began pressuring me to go back for a visit a year later with new baby in tow. Between a death in the family, having to go back to work the following month and the stress of adjusting to having a new baby in the house, it was all I could do to keep my emotions in check. The old feelings of disappointment in my husband resurfaced no matter how hard I tried to pack them back in.

While they were friendly and smiling lots around my husband, there were more than a number of occasions when the younger set decided to play a game of sneer and antagonize when he wasn't around. I waited until the trip was over to tell him what went on because I figured that he would address the issue with the same timing and similar manner than the last incident.

This time, he did respond a bit quicker but still managed to keep from confronting the issue head on. His reasoning is that these people didn't know me well and couldn't have a reason for causing me trouble. I explained that people don't often need a reason for hateful behavior other than they are unhappy with themselves and need to take it out on people they feel won't be able to retaliate or whose feelings they don't think matter. I also told him that his saying they couldn't have a reason for doing so implied that I had made it all up.

We have talked about this issue many times in terms of my expectations that he should follow through on things in a timely manner. I was also that if he is as proactive about helping me to feel he is backing me up, then I won't have a problem weathering a few storms here and there. If I feel unsupported by him, it means he is not keeping to his end of the bargain of maintaining a good level of trust between us - it makes it hard for me to trust him in other ways.

Now, we are on the verge of a major purchase and the old feelings have resurfaced. Yes, I am fighting the urge to think bitterly how quick he is to act on and be timely for something that he wants. The selfish person in me wants to dash all of his dreams so that he can feel the disappointment I felt the year before and the year before that. My gypsy heart tends to look upon "permanent" things with suspicion and distrust. The "run-flee-sprint" reaction is typical of when I fear 'this is just another way to anchor me' but no one can do that to you but yourself.

Then, I think of the reason he first told me as to why he wants to buy a house. He wants me to have a place to call my own because he loves me dearly. And if I didn't really want one, I would never have spent time searching for a home.