Do You Know You're Wrong

The trickiest part of a relationship is navigating all the moral questions. As if emotions don’t muck up the waters enough, you have to figure out the dos and don’ts when you’re in a relationship. What’s bad and what’s good is always one landmine away from ending up in a confrontation with your partner.

One of the trickiest parts is communication. Another is trust. When the latter is violated it makes communication trickier.

You’re just two people. You’re human. For married couples, the church should put new vows together for people to use. Maybe it would help couples to remember things better when problems arise.

Do you promise to love, honor, cherish, and be willing to move on when your partner screws the pooch?

If you’re not moving past things and willing to take a leap of faith that they won’t make that mistake again, you’re doing it wrong.

How many problems do couples that stay together struggle with because of the aftermath of one of them screwing the pooch?

A young couple that loves each other can get into all kinds of rough waters when one screws the pooch. It doesn’t have to be an affair or infidelity, although that happens far too frequently. No, it can be a simple violation of the trust between two people.

For example:

A young guy comes home and tells his girlfriend and recently named fiancee about an issue with his longest friend having a porn addiction. Unfortunately, she’s become attached to the other young fellow's girlfriend.

A couple should be able to depend on the ability to talk to their significant other, and he trusted her that he was safe violating the “Bro Code” by talking to her openly. Unfortunately, she didn’t understand that meant she couldn’t share it with her friend and the other guy's girlfriend. Two young men, friends since childhood, would be friends no more.

That violation of trust wrecked a friendship, but the wrecking ball still swings.

The young man who loved his soon-to-be wife promised he forgave her, but did he? The incident caused him to be withdrawn about life problems, influencing how much he shared, and creating distance. He wanted to forgive her but struggled to let it go.

Did he forgive her? The trickiest part of a relationship, be it a long-time friendship, a romantic relationship, or a close work relationship, is that at some point a person might run afoul of their counterpart and create a problem. Forgiving doesn’t have to go straight to forgetting. It does require a certain middle ground if you’re going to get past things.

In all honesty, after watching this sordid mess, the young man shouldn’t have been so fast to share it with his woman. It wouldn’t have been a big deal. However, when your lover of many years says “between you and me,” that’s the ultimate secret between a much more important relationship.

The young man has to find it in himself to realize he’s holding onto things and he’s let that one incident define the past couple of years. It’s affected his ability to trust because he lost a 20-year-long friendship. He also has to learn how to put it truly behind him, especially now that he’s married the young woman. Otherwise, his withdrawal will continue to create a rift, and resentment and regret will fester on both sides.

I forgive you should mean I’m willing to take a leap of faith and not bring this up again. Because that’s what it is, a leap of faith that you are willing to trust them to prove they won’t make that mistake twice. Hopefully, every relationship that hits this speed bump will be able to take that leap of faith when the trust has been compromised by a human error.

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