everyone should get a clean slate. no prejudgements based on prior relationships.

It's not fair when someone you care about thinks you're going to hurt them like others have hurt them. It isn't fair and unfortunately, it's a difficult thing for people to let go of. It's not fair for you to get blamed for someone else's mistakes or accused of being like his past girlfriends.

@XoAsianBabioX@xanga - exactly.

God if guys judge me based on my past, i'd be screwed. because there are things that happened in the past that's just way crazy. and it's not even fully my fault

If they have trust issues with you, it's something that's wrong with them and there's not much you can do to fix it.  With my last SO she always assumed I was out to get any girl I could and abuse her.  I'm guessing she had a lot of problems with previous bf's that did that to her.  I never cheated nor would I ever.  She left me and now believes that I cheated on her many times...I tried as much as I could for 3 years to make her feel safe even to the point of pretty much cutting everyone else out of my life and spending almost every minute of everyday with her so she would know exactly where I was and what I was doing.  Nothing helped.

I couldn't stand being with someone who was that insecure. Your relationship can't work if your SO can't trust you. I mean, you can try to help him trust you by telling him who are you with...but that sounds a little too much.  If he thinks you're just like his past gfs, then drop him. He's putting you on the SAME level as his exs.

I was generally the one with trust issues. My 2nd to recent relationship ended with her breaking it off since she was going off to college and exploring new things (most importantly meeting new people in certain ways). The thing was, the summer before the breakup, she always complained to me that I'm not taking the initiative to spend the most time with her before she went off for college, meaning she wanted to stay together even after she left. When in the end, she just suddenly decided to break it off.

My recent relationship had a rocky April Fools when she asked what I would do if a guy asked her out to dinner. I told her that I trusted her to make up her own decision in hopes that she would actually let the guy know she was in a relationship. She kept persisting that it would just be a dinner and nothing more. However, after she said April Fools, I wasn't laughing. I got upset over the phone and told her that I didn't really see it as a joke. I explain the prior relationship and how it would be unfair to me for her to just go with another guy when we were already 6 months into the relationship. Little that I knew, about 5 months later, she broke up with me and all she would tell me is that she wanted to be single. I never accused her of cheating, I never fought with her nor did she fight with me, and the fact that uncertainty rears its ugly head makes me jump back to my trust issues. I question whether or not my next girlfriend (when she comes along) would trigger them again.

I was the one with the issues. Every relationship, I've been cheated on.

My first boyfriend cheated on me. We broke up. 2 years later, we meet again, and considering where we both at in our lives when we dated the first time, decided to give it another go (as people *can* change, though not always).

Two things wrong with that: 1) He still cheated in the 2 years we were together. 2) All I remembered from our previous relationship was him cheating, so I didn't trust him in the slightest.

But at the same time, he also gave me plenty of reasons not to trust--and given that fact, I should've been out of there real quick. So it was two sided. I hadn't let go of the past, and at the same time he gave me good reason not to trust.

Given my past experience, right now I don't know if I could trust another guy. So I refuse to even attempt a relationship until I can get over all the cheating and lies. Otherwise it's absolutely pointless as it's only going to be hard on me, not to mention the guy, and it could ruin what could otherwise be a great relationship. So, until I can accept that not all guys cheat/lie and can be trustworthy...

So if you were dating Pete, but felt the need to date other men, why is Pete around?  Start over, find something beautiful that you would do anything for and do what it takes to stick with it.

@ieatcrayons - Amen. :/

My boyfriend has trust issues because his ex of 4 yrs had cheated on him for the last year of their relationship and he didn't know about it until afterwards.  He doesn't really trust me, though I've never given him anything to be suspicious of, and he doesn't really do anything paranoid like drive by my house or hack into my emails...

wow, I thought out of 20 comments someone would have given a solution of some kind or at least a story about overcoming trust issues.

Very early in my first serious relationship my gf set up a date with me and then didn't show up. From then on I didn't trust her in regards to showing up to dates or not disappearing on me. I would call her if she was more than a minute late, every time. I didn't fully get over this during the relationship but something she did to try to fix me, helped a lot.

She would put me in a situation where I had to trust her and then reward me if I did what a trusting person would do. It was really hard for me to do this; even little things like waiting for her in a certain place while she ran an errand drove me nuts. I'll just give one concrete example so you can get the idea.

We went to the jewelry section at an everything store and she asked me to pick out a pair of earings for her, which she would buy without looking at. While I picked them out she went clothes shopping. After picking them out I started getting all of these paranoid thoughts that she wouldn't come back, that she had left me there. Well, she came back and did exactly what she said she would do, and blindly bought the earings and then proceded to wear them the rest of the week. Every time I saw her, she was wearing the earings I picked out.

I doubt this exact technique would work on someone who thought their SO was cheating on them but I'm sure there's something using the same basic principle that can help. The only thing I can think of is to actually do something with just the other person, making sure everyone knows it's not a date and then set a time when your SO should join you. If both parties show up at the right place at the right time then trust has been tested and rewarded.

Oh wow. This is an interesting situation. In my experience, there will come a make or break point with you guys where you just can't take it anymore and you end up cutting it off with him. He's got to trust you eventually and he's not going to learn that if you keep talking to him (Aka. Giving him what he wants). This is just what happened to me. The boyfriend I'm with now was like that. I would never cheat on anyone. Ever. I couldn't live with myself if I hurt someone that badly over something stupid. He couldn't seem to believe that though. He was always calling and checking up on me and accusing me of doing things with other people that I never would have considered doing. I dealt with it all though because I loved him and I thought that our relationship was worth more than some petty argument. And then things just kept getting worse and worse. He said he would change but it didn't happen. I guess in his mind I was still with him so I couldn't be doing anything that bad. So after a particularly bad scenario, I sucked it up and broke up with him. I told him not to ever call me or talk to me again basically and that he needs to get his life together. He still texted me every now and then to tell me how much he still loved me and stuff and to tell me how he was doing. After a couple of months he seemed to have changed a lot so I gave him another chance. We had it a little bit rough at first but he was really trying and I would call him out on it whenever he seemed to start acting like he used to. Eventually he stopped doing it and we've been great ever since. He's proved to me that he loves me enough to learn to trust me. And things have been pretty great ever since.

@locketine@xanga - I did things like that too though not quite the same. I tend to be a bit mean when I feel threatened and I felt threatened whenever he started acting that way. I'm one of those people who has to have my space. So I would put him in a situation where he had to trust me like going to spend a night at a friend's house or telling him I didn't feel like talking. If he was respectful and let me alone when I asked, I would text him within an hour or two at the most and I was happy because I had my space and would let him know by being really nice. That's just how I am when I'm happy. If he freaked out, I was pretty mean and basically told him to fuck off. Then I wouldn't talk to him for a long time because I was angry and upset and really needed to cool off before I lost it. I know it sounds horrible but when I gave him sympathy before, things would just get worse. So now I make sure that he understands when he's wrong and let him know without sympathy. I know other girls have been horrible but I haven't and I don't deserve it. I'm not going back to the way things were and he knows that he just can't act that way and expect me to stay with him. Now things are better. We talk about things and he actually listens to me now. I rarely feel the need to be angry anymore and he lets me know when I screw up too. We work things out instead of just me refusing to argue and him yelling at me. It might not be the best solution for everyone but it worked out for us.

Oh my gosh, sounds exactly like my ex. Hes the one with trust issues for no reason, because he KNOWS i would never ever do that yet still keeps it in the back of his mind. & guess what he ended up cheating on me twice? & last night he tried telling me that i can't go out and dress up for halloween while hes gonna go & party, when he has no right to tell me what to do. I've given him more that 3 chances, & hes messed up every single time. That finally i've realized i deserve better, & im not going back to someone who doesnt do anything but make my life miserable.