How to Heal Your Trust Issues

Call Her Daddy

Alex reflects on how a formative, toxic relationship warped her understanding of love and security, leading to deep trust issues that followed her into subsequent

Key takeaways

Alex recounts discovering her first serious boyfriend cheating on his lap with his ex at a party he claimed he wasn't attending.
She describes how the betrayal trained her nervous system to become hypervigilant, leading to behaviors like checking phones and analyzing social media activity.

Main topics

Trust issues and betrayal trauma
Hypervigilance in dating

Notable quotes

Familiar doesn't always mean healthy, but sometimes familiar just means I have been here before, so I know what to do.

Conclusion

The episode offers a raw, practical roadmap for breaking cycles of betr

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) Hello, Daddy Gang. Welcome back to another Sunday session. But more importantly, it is Football Sunday. Do you see this dramatic outfit that I have on? I just want to be so clear. There's about to be so much drama in the Cooper Kaplan household today. It is Eagles versus Rams, okay? And this year, this year the stakes are just a little bit higher because... We obviously have a new member that will be entering the family. And this child, this baby, we're trying to figure out, is this baby going to be an Eagles or Rams fan? Okay. If Matt has anything to say about it, Rams through and through. Okay. The baby's wearing blue. If the Coopers have anything to say about it, fly Eagles fly. E-A-G-L-E-S. Eagles. Okay. So yeah, so today it's going to be a very heated situation. Both sides of our family are coming over to watch the game. It's definitely going to be a shit show. Because we're a lot of big shit talkers. I will say every single touchdown scored, it's going to just be a justification for which team our child needs to be repping, okay? And Matt, if you're watching this, which you should be because you need to support your wife and you watch all my episodes, right? I just have to say this. Speaker 1 (1:21) Have you bought a Rams onesie yet for our child? I didn't think so. I didn't think so, Matt. Also, shout out to Erin Andrews, because after I interviewed her, she literally, all of, everything I'm wearing is from Erin Andrews. I, listen, I have Eagles gear, but when she gave me this little number, I said, Matt is gonna hate this, and I'm gonna love it so much. Okay, honestly, let me just say something. Speaker 1 (1:47) Now, you guys know, I guess I like sports, obviously, but I love the Eagles. And let me just say the Eagles performance last week was so horrific. So I'm just going to pray that they have like a little bit of a better showing this week so they don't completely embarrass me. And I'm not just like showing up here in a full windbreaker, just like repping my team and they just lose horribly. Eagles fans, can you please show up in the comments so that we wipe out the Rams fans? E-A-G-L-E-S, Eagles. Let's just like get it going in the comments. Now that we've got the Eagles out of our system. I want to talk about... Speaker 1 (2:20) The relationship that changed you today. And no, I don't necessarily mean your first love or the person you thought you were going to marry. I want to talk about the relationship that changed the trajectory of every relationship that came after that for you. So maybe they cheated on you. Maybe they were an incredible liar. Maybe... You spent months hearing, no, babe, she's just a friend, only to eventually find out that she was very much not just a friend, speaking from personal experience. Or maybe it wasn't one huge betrayal, right? Maybe it was years of inconsistencies and half-truths and moments where something just didn't feel right. But every single time you questioned it, somehow you ended up being called the crazy one. And then eventually maybe, You got out and you blocked them. You moved away. You cried over it to your friends. You went to therapy and you moved on. Except... Did you? Did you is the real question today. Today, I want to talk about the relationship that gave you trust issues. Because even when that relationship ends, the... Truth is, the version of you who learned how to survive that dynamic is still living and breathing and follows you into your next relationships. You start dating someone new and they're doing everything right, but you're sitting across from them while they're on their phone and like your eyes start switching and you're like, who are they texting? Oh, like why did they just put their phone face down? why haven't they responded to me in an hour when I just completely saw them active on Instagram? So they must be lying. And why were they being so nice tonight? Like, what is the catch? Like, are they hiding something? Daddy gang, I want you to know I'm coming into this episode. Speaker 1 (4:14) Fully having lived this, this was my life. And as lovely and healthy as my marriage is now, trust issues have been a huge part of my dating history. And honestly, some of those old patterns even showed up in the beginning of my relationship with my husband. Throughout my relationships. I admit I have done it all. I have gone through phones. I have interrogated. I've gotten the Instagram password. It's so much harder than it seems. I've hacked the system before and I'm not proud of it, but it is the truth of what I experienced. And I know there's a lot of people watching who have also done the same. And when you have been there, you know how far you can take it. If anything, like sometimes you're like. God, I'm good. Like I am talking about you are calculating how long someone has been active on Instagram versus how long it took them to text you back. And then I'm talking about intentionally sitting across from someone where there is a mirror behind them so that you can see what they're doing on their phone through the reflection of the mirror. Or maybe it's the glasses, right? But here's something I understand now that I really could have never understood back then, which is I wasn't born. knowing how to do this. None of us were born knowing how to do this. We learned how to do it. And for me, there was one relationship in particular that really ingrained this in me and influenced me. This was one of my first like really, really serious relationships. I really thought that I was in love with this person. And I do believe I was for what I was capable of understanding of love at the time. Right. And. When I got into this relationship, almost immediately there was a power imbalance. He was a little bit older than me. He was always busier. He was less available. And pretty quickly I learned that being in a relationship with this guy meant that my nervous system was constantly going to just be all over the place. And if he didn't text me back, I would go on Facebook, throwback. I would see he's active on Facebook and I would immediately get a pit in my stomach. So I would be like refreshing the page, refreshing the page, looking at chat. And then maybe I would post something hoping that he would see it, right? Maybe he'd finally message me because he saw that I posted a cute picture or a new album or I posted something on my wall. And then if he did message me, immediately I would get relief, okay? He still likes me, we're good. But that was only the half of it. Speaker 1 (6:54) in this relationship dynamic there were so many red flags and and one of them was like his stories just didn't add up and I'd always feel like something was wrong and so understandably I would ask him about it I would just be like hey this doesn't really make sense whenever I did that he would make me feel crazy and he would say things to me like I was suffocating him or I'm paranoid or I don't trust him and I'm ruining our relationship. And so naturally, especially with this power imbalance and this age gap and all of it, like I would feel insecure and I would start to feel guilty. And so I inevitably would apologize and I would pull back and I would convince myself like, shit, like maybe I am crazy. Like I'm just acting young. This is embarrassing. I need to stop. I remember one situation so clearly that I'm going to share today. Um, so when I met him, he was friends with his ex and his explanation always. Speaker 1 (7:56) I mean, it made sense on paper, right? Like, okay, they had the same friend group and everyone hung out together and it would be weird if everyone had to pick sides and they couldn't be at the same places anymore. So like they've just kind of like stayed amicable and they're all in the same friend group. And honestly, when I met him, I was completely fine with that. Speaker 1 (8:16) But then whenever we were all together, I would notice these tiny things that anyone would notice. They would kind of linger at the house parties or at the bar and they would talk longer than everyone else or they would always kind of like seclude themselves in moments. And there was just this energy between them that understandably made me think, wait, is this actually just two exes being amicable or are you guys secretly enjoying this a little too much? And every time I brought this up to him, he made me feel insane. Not only was I jealous and I so paranoid, but now I was apparently threatening the entire friend group he had convinced me. Like the conversation would quickly become, everyone's going to hate you if you keep making this such a thing. You're making it so awkward on everyone. Why are you being so insecure? Like it's not like that. Speaker 1 (9:11) And because I already felt like an outsider coming into his group of friends and he was older than me, I then had nothing left to do but just question myself. Because what? I'm going to lose him? No. I had to be like, okay, maybe it is me. Maybe I am being dramatic. Maybe I'm seeing something that isn't there. Maybe I just need to chill out. And then one night, one stormy night. um there was a party and I was on the phone with him and he told me that he was tired he was gonna stay and he wasn't gonna go to the party and so I decided okay I'm gonna stay into like you know since my boyfriend's not going I'm not gonna go to the party and it was mostly his friends and at the time one of my good friends that I made in that friend group ended up calling me and convincing me that don't just stay home because your boyfriend is not coming like come to the party, come with me, like, let's have a girls night. It's going to be so fun. And so I said, okay, great. Speaker 1 (10:25) Daddy gang, I walked into this party. Speaker 1 (10:31) And I will never forget it. It's a house party. I walk in. Speaker 1 (10:35) And immediately I look like into the living room and he's sitting on like a lounge chair and his ex is sitting on his lap. And they're like in each other's faces, fully flirting, staring into each other's eyes, having like a complete alone moment. And there is me. It's like this scene from Tell Me Lies. Like I felt like Lucy in the fucking coconut bra. I'm like such an idiot. I like dressed all cute. I think I had like a little like denim mini skirt on with a tube top and my fucking straightened hair. And I just froze.