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 1 
iQuestions Expert, Michael Sytsma 
 
 
Question: 
 
My spouse had an affair. Will I ever be able to trust again? 
 
Answer: 
 
I’m sorry that your spouse had an affair. That’s really damaging in a 
marriage, and will create ripples that go for a long way. 
 
Can you develop trust again? Most definitely you can. 
 
Sometimes, I’ll give couples this example: when we get married, we 
have this bucket of trust that we fill up with grace. In other words, I 
move into my marriage with my wife, and I choose to trust her. My 
bucket is full of trust for her. 
 
We do things as the course of marriage goes on, where I’m not smart 
and I’m not thinking, and I withdraw some of that trust from her. But 
then I do better, and I re-instill some of that trust. 
 
So, it’s kind of dynamic in going up and down—that level of trust. 
 
Having an affair is like taking a shotgun and blowing the bottom totally 
out of the bucket. All of the trust runs right back out. And it doesn’t 
matter how “trustworthy” you are, you can’t refill that bucket, because 
the bottom is gone. 
 
If your husband had an affair, as much as it doesn’t seem fair, it’s 
your job to put the bottom back on that bucket. You have to make 
that initial step of choosing to trust him. If he’s broken, if he’s 
repentant, if he’s really working on stopping that relationship and 
 
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really turning back to you, that will be a bit easier, but it’s still your 
task to put the bottom on that bucket. 
 
Now, know that to begin with, that bottom is going to be tissue paper-
thin. For husbands who have had an affair, it’s really important to 
know that any little lie, any little deception, is kind of like dropping a 
big rock through that tissue paper. It busts open, and all of the trust 
runs right back out again. 
 
So, it takes a while for the bottom of that bucket to get hardened, and 
to begin to hold the trust. You may have to do an awful lot of things to 
begin to rebuild that trust, once she has put the bottom on it. 
 
This is a long journey. I tell the couples that come to see me for 
recovery from affairs that the strongest marriages I work with are 
those that have gone through an affair and have really healed. 
 
You have to learn grace. You have to learn forgiveness. You have to 
learn mercy. You have to learn these qualities that really help to 
strengthen a marriage far better than couples who don’t go through 
such a crisis. 
 
You can get well. You can learn to trust him again. It’s going to take 
some time, but it’s well worth the work.  
 
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