If You Can’t Trust Your Boyfriend, You Shouldn’t Be With Him

Relationships are built on trust, respect, and communication. You need all three to have a successful relationship, and they should come naturally if you’re with the right guy. However, if one of those things collapses, the rest will follow pretty soon after. If he doesn’t respect you enough to be open, how can you trust him? And if you can’t trust him, how can you be with him?

1. There’s a reason you don’t trust him. If your intuition is telling you that something’s wrong, why aren’t you listening to it? He’s obviously given you a good reason not to trust him, so why are you still with him?
2. Trust doesn’t mean innocent until proven guilty. That also doesn’t mean you can treat him like a criminal until he earns your trust. If you start off your relationship questioning his every move, then he won’t even feel like it’s worth it to prove that he’s in it for the long haul. Fix your own trust issues first, and then start looking for an open and honest relationship.
3. Trust is a two-way street. The less you trust him, the more untrustworthy you become. You’re so untrusting that you snoop through his phone, social media, or even web history. This makes it pretty clear he can’t trust you either. He does have a right to privacy!
4. Your relationship isn’t worth the stress. When you don’t trust your boyfriend, all you do is worry. The right man will be a stress reliever — after all, you need confidence in your relationship, not constant self-doubt. If the fact that you can’t trust him is causing your relationship to be more work than reward, then it’s time to reconsider why you’re even together.
5. You’ll never be truly happy. Because you’ll always be wondering what he’s doing and who he’s with. How can you be happy when your relationship makes you so miserable? An untrustworthy man just isn’t worth the effort. The right guy will bring you peace of mind, and when you can fully be confident in your relationship, that’s when you know it’s truly happy and healthy.
6. You’ll always worry he’ll cheat. Even if he never does, the stress and anxiety of constantly worrying he might stray will drive you nuts! Feeling secure in your relationship is the foundation of a healthy one. It’s too hard to imagine a future with someone who might be tempted to slink off with the first girl who pays him attention.
7. You’ll feel intimidated and insecure around attractive women. You’ll always be looking over your shoulder at other women, comparing yourself to them and worrying that they have something you don’t. You should never feel like you have to compete with other women in a healthy relationship. He should only have eyes for you and treat you like the amazing woman you are—and you should feel secure in that knowledge.
8. Your friends will start to resent him. It’s only natural to vent about your relationships to your closest friends, but if they find you constantly complaining about his gallivanting, they’re going to start judging his worth. Harsh but true. If you had a friend whose boyfriend made them more unhappy than happy, you’d want them to leave him too. It’s also worth noting that even in a healthy relationship, if you only mention the negatives to your friends, they only know the negatives and will form an opinion based solely on them. Same goes for your mom. If you want her to like him, keep your relationship problems between the two of you.
9. Your self-worth will be depleted. It’s never a good thing to completely lose yourself in a relationship. Just because you’re now a couple doesn’t mean you aren’t your own person. Your guy should bring out the best in you, not the worst. When you can’t trust him and feel too dependent on him, your self-worth will start to plummet downhill faster than you can imagine. The worst reason to stay with someone is for fear of being single. It’s not fair to either of you and you CAN do better.
10. You’ll stop going out on girls’ night. It won’t seem fair that he can’t go out on boys’ night without a drama so you’ll start to distance yourself from girls’ night. You both need time alone with friends; it’s perfectly healthy to spend time apart and you both deserve it. Without some downtime with the girls, you’ll find your friendships drifting, accentuating your feeling of alienation and exacerbating your trust issues.
11. You’ll start spying on him. While we all love our apps and gadgets, having them (and your partners) at hand makes it very tempting to sneak into his messages. Once you take the plunge and start reading his messages, it becomes addictive and all-consuming. Aside from this being a clear sign you don’t trust him, it will be very hard to break the habit.
12. Accusations will become a daily occurrence. Maybe he receives a missed phone call in the night or simply won’t leave his phone out of his sight. Maybe he says he’s leaving work and you’re sure it wouldn’t take 45 minutes to get home. Whatever it is, you’ll pick up on it and use it as a reason to be suspicious. It could be something but it’s probably nothing. From the other side, he’ll start making accusations back at you for similar scenarios he doesn’t know the truth about either. All of this will become too much, too hard, and too exhausting.
13. Your jealousy will know no bounds. Finally, your idea of what’s appropriate behavior towards other women will get warped. An innocent touch on the shoulder of another woman won’t seem so harmless and you’ll hate every minute of your jealous fuelled rage. You’ll know deep down that it’s irrational but you won’t be able to shake your deep seeded trust issues.
14. It’s the definition of dysfunctional. When you don’t have trust in your relationship, then it’s just plain unhealthy. In order to have a healthy relationship, you need to feel secure. When you can’t trust your partner, you’re automatically insecure about your relationship. So if you can’t trust him, then the best thing you can do is let him go and find someone you can.
15. Things will never get better. As much as you think that this dynamic could change with time, that’s just not true. Trust, once it’s gone, can never be restored. Somewhere in the back of your mind, you’ll always be thinking “what if?” and not in a good way.

Signs you can’t trust him

1. He’s secretive with his phone. He turns the screen as far away from you as possible while texting, he always puts it face-down around you, and if he’s leaving the room for even a second, he takes it with him. What’s going on with his phone that requires such discretion? Unless he’s secretly working for the CIA, there’s no reason for him to be so shady, but this is one of the most obvious signs you can’t trust him.
2. He goes AWOL for days at a time and never offers an explanation. He might vaguely mention that he’s “going to be busy this week,” but that often translates into him disappearing without a word for days on end. When he comes back, he’s hesitant to give too much detail about what he’s been up to and acts like you’re weird for asking.
3. He’s cheated in past relationships. While not everyone believes in the whole “once a cheater, always a cheater” concept, there is a lot of truth to it. If he thought it was okay to betray his previous partners, the chances of him doing it again are pretty high. Yes, there are some guys who really do learn from being unfaithful and hurting their partners, but they’re few and far between.
4. You regularly catch him in lies. You might love him, but you definitely shouldn’t put your trust in him if you’re always catching him in lies. It doesn’t matter if they’re little white lies about whether or not got an A in high school French or whether he liked the dinner you made last night or more serious topics like lying about drugs or alcohol, his financial situation, or cheating. If he can’t be truthful, you can’t trust him.
5. You always get the feeling there’s something he’s not telling you. Whenever he tells you a story, you always feel like there’s a lot that’s left out. It’s like he gives you the surface details but stops short of revealing everything, and it’s like this all the time. What is he hiding? What is it that he’s not telling you? Questioning this on a daily basis can be enough to drive you nuts.
6. Your gut tells you that you can’t trust him. At the end of the day, it’s so important to listen to your gut. If there’s a feeling in the pit of your stomach that this guy isn’t reliable or honest, listen to that. You should never ignore red flags or the screaming warnings of your intuition for the sake of keeping the relationship going. You deserve so much better.