Who do you trust when you can't trust anyone?

I used to laugh at the idea that my husband would ever cheat on me. "He's the most principled man I know," I would say. "Besides, he's clueless when women are openly flirting with him."
And the universe laughed.
I miss that conviction. The absolute certainty that my husband would never cheat on me. He just...wouldn't.
Except he did. He was.
And, if you've read my story either on this site or here, then you know what happened. I fell apart. I considered suicide. I blamed my mother for grooming me for betrayal. I blamed every horrible boyfriend I'd ever had. I blamed friends who'd betrayed me in the past. And I absolutely blamed my husband who knew what I'd gone through...and hurt me anyway. I blamed myself for not knowing better. For trusting someone who didn't deserve it.
Eventually I got out of bed, got off the floor and got on with it. At first, that was all I could do. Put a fake smile on my face, pretend I was fine.
But with more time, it became clear to me that I was becoming fine. Not great but fine.
I was doing the work to heal. Seeing my therapist, briefly attending a 12-step group for partners of sex addicts, being gentle with myself, practising radical self-care. Meditating. Running. Hiking. Culling toxic people from my herd.
But the lesson that continued to elude me was this: Learn to trust myself.
It seemed counter-intuitive. How could I trust myself when I had been so wrong? I was the last person I should be trusting.
And yet.
And yet, when I got still and paid attention to the still small voice, I could acknowledge the ways in which  had tried to protect myself, the ways in which I had tried to get my own attention. I could acknowledge that the problem wasn't that I couldn't trust myself to know what was right for me, the problem was that I couldn't trust myself to follow through. To protect myself. To create and defend boundaries. To treat myself like I mattered.
And that's a problem I could fix.
It can be hard for those of us who have spent much of our life as pleasers, those of us who dedicate ourselves to not rocking the boat.
We can confuse assertiveness with aggression.
It's a process. Of checking in with ourselves. Paying attention to where our feelings are showing up in our bodies. Noticing that fight or flee response and sitting with it to trace it back. Our bodies give us really valuable information that women, especially, are taught to over-ride in favor of not being rude or angry or disruptive.
And so rather than trusting ourselves, we trust those around us. Who tell us that everything's fine when our body's alarm signals are going off. Who tell us to "calm down" when there's an emotional emergency. Who dismiss our concerns or our wants or our needs as selfish, self-centered, silly.
It's not that we can't trust ourselves, it's that we can't hear ourselves over the loud voices of a culture that has long believed women can be believed.
When I think back, I knew something wasn't right. I knew my husband was emotionally absent. I knew he was often physically absent. I believed the "working late" and "stressed" and "too busy" excuses. I congratulated myself for being such a supportive wife, even as I was exhausted myself, and my own career was being held back.
In other words, I knew. I knew...something.
Not all the signs are so clear.
Maybe you also didn't suspect cheating.
But were you aware, on some level, that he had disengaged? Do you notice when your kids seem particularly worried? When your best friend is distracted or unavailable? We're so much better at paying attention to others' pain than our own.
But that's something we can fix.
It isn't about becoming self-absorbed, it's about becoming self-aware. Noticing what's happening in our bodies. Paying attention to our thoughts. Respecting that internal alarm system that goes off when something doesn't feel quite right.
When we feel that trust in ourselves deep in our bones, it's an amazing feeling. It's a healing feeling.
I get it now.
It has taken a long time but I get it.
I don't need to trust others when I can trust myself. That doesn't mean I don't trust others, including my husband, it just means that I'm not reliant on them to keep me safe.
That's an inside job. And I'm on it.