Trust. A loaded gun in the English language if ever there was one. Sure, we know what it means. But what it means to me and what it means to you or our partners, or either of our best friends could be two, or three, or four dozen very different things.

I’ll give you an example. My best friend got married this year, she has been with her husband for about four years. About a month before the wedding, she was in the car with him (he was driving) and their daughter and he asked her to send a text to his brother letting him know they were on the way round. She went to sent the message but when she opened his inbox, the last message he had received from his brother read ‘Haha. Make sure you delete that!’. Ironically, he hadn’t and she saw what her brother in law meant- her fiancé’s last message was telling his brother about how, while on his stag do in Amsterdam, he and his mates had gone to a strip club and taken part in a sex show, and had amongst other things, eaten a banana out of a prostitutes you know where. Instead of reacting as I probably would (knives, nettles, broken glass, boiling tar, you know the stuff), she asked him if they had gone to any strip clubs on his stag do. He claimed they hadn’t.

Of course, after he had then lied to her face she confronted him about the message and what had gone on. By the end of the day, despite how upset she felt, she had decided that ‘she didn’t want to cause a fuss as there was nothing she could do about it’.

I don’t know. Obviously, it’s their relationship, they have an 18 month old daughter and at this point she was around 8 weeks pregnant with the next one. But for me… I don’t know what I would have done. I suppose it’s different when you’ve been together a long time and you think you’re confident about the relationship and it’s future. And yes I know: What happens on the stag blah blah blah… But for me? I could not have just put something like that to one side by the end of the day. The image of my partner with his face in a Dutch prostitutes crotch makes my stomach curdle, it would gnaw away at me, I know it would. Sure go to a strip club. Go to all the strip clubs in the ‘dam. Oggle to your heart and eyes and dicks content. But DO NOT eat fruit out of a hooker. That is just not cricket. Not with me it isn’t. And then, when caught red handed, don’t lie. Surely that’s the even bigger problem. He knew she wouldn’t like it, so he lied about it. I couldn’t cope with that. I would start to wonder what else I had been lied to about because I might not like it.

Of course, we all make jokes. We all flirt at some point. We all make eye contact with a stranger every so often. In my job I take a lot of shit from men but I can damn well give it back. But at the end of my shift, G will walk into the pub and they all know him and know he is there to take me home. Jokes are jokes and I know that he works in an environment where there will be banter as well.

So what is and is not acceptable for you? I wonder if perhaps, I am worse than most women when it comes to this. I know G watches porn, which doesn’t bother me although I know it would have when I was younger and it does still bother some women I know. He happily admits it so it isn’t a problem. But I’ve had two past boyfriends who adamantly claimed they didn’t then when I caught them with porn it caused real problems because they’d lied. I imagine he has a bit of banter in work, same as I do or when he’s out with his mates but I don’t care. I know he is devoted to me.

G and I have talked fairly extensively about trust. He works long hours- 10am to around midnight 5 days a week. In the evenings, I am either at home with my daughter or I am in work. It is very rare that I am anywhere else. So of course, he knows where I am and where to find me.Not that he’d need to of course, but because of my circumstances, I need to have the same absolute faith in what he’s doing as he can have in me. I have too much time on my hands to spend any of it wondering. If G says he’s at work, he’s at work. If he says he’s going to see his family, or his mates, or whatever, that is where he is, I cannot afford to ask questions because if I do we’re finished.

I have had relationships in the past where I have put my trust in someone and had it beat me around the head. I suffer from chronically low self esteem, paranoia and fairly serious anxiety. If I started thinking along the lines of whether or not G had anything to hide from me, I know I would not cope. I have never looked through his phone, nor have I wanted to. I think that feeling I need to already indicates a fairly serious problem. Either there is something to find, or there isn’t and I am concerned enough that I need confirmation, other than his word, that I have nothing to worry about.

After a conversation on twitter tonight I asked G over dinner “Can I have your facebook password please?” his answer, as I knew it would be was “Sure, why?” without looking up from his plate. He has nothing to hide. I haven’t taken it of course. I don’t need it.

At what point would you feel your trust had been broken? Do you think it really can be regained? I feel that perhaps I am still too young, too much of a novice to answer this question. I feel I have had my plateful of trouble and I want a relationship that makes me happy. It can have challenges of course, but only if those challenges are not to my trust. That has to be my main ingredient. If you were in my friends position, a month before your wedding and 8 weeks pregnant with your second child, how would you react? Would it be an issue or could you shrug it off as lad-ish behaviour perhaps gone a banana too far? If your partner would refuse to let you use his unlocked phone, email or facebook account would you be concerned he had something to hide, or simply agree that they think you’re just being nosy?

What say you readers?

Sara xx