Dear LFTP: the drinking-establishment letter and rebuilding trust

• I exchanged numbers and agreed to lunch with a man I met while my husband was in class — how do I rebuild his trust?

A listener married four years (together ten) writes that while her husband was in a class, she went to a drinking establishment, met a man, exchanged numbers, and agreed to meet him for lunch — then realized it was a big mistake and never went; her husband no longer trusts her. The room's counsel: the number exchange was too far, she should have told him upfront, and now she must be honest ('I don't trust you' is a fair thing for him to say) and set expectations. A host frames the danger plainly — 'this is how people end up cheating' — in hour-long conversations where the other person only sees your best. Opposite-gender friendships aren't wrong, but a marriage this important gets protected 'even if it seems a little bit extreme.' Analogies fly: a host imagines his own wife telling him she 'came upon a felon,' and notes, 'like Ben always talks about,' the same small-church/big-church dynamic applies to relationships kept in and out of sight of a marriage.