Rebuilding Trust in a Relationship

Broken trust in a relationship is among the most difficult things to overcome. Trust is foundational, and without trust, a truly healthy relationship is at best unlikely, at worst next to impossible.

Maybe that is the point you're at; if you're wondering whether your partner should even be your partner anymore, read on. This article takes a look at how to re-establish trust in a relationship and continue making a conscious decision to keep that foundation strong.

Can you rebuild broken trust in a relationship?

The short answer is: yes. However, like any worthy endeavor, rebuilding trust takes time, intentional effort, and persistence. While it may seem like there are many significant differences between a healthy marriage or relationship and a strained one, with commitment and emotional support, significant steps can be taken with relatively small changes.

That being said, many of us are not well-equipped to make the necessary changes on our own, especially once we've gotten to the point where trust has been damaged. This process involves many small - but influential - changes that build up over time.

Because these steps can be difficult, it may be necessary to have someone help you and your partner through this process. A counselor or therapist's objectivity can help break through some of the inevitable hurt and help both partners feel heard/understood while also getting to the root of the issue.

Why is trust so vital?

One of the first lessons that we learn in life is whether or not we can trust a person - our caregiver. Our early experiences with this contribute to something known as our attachment style, which continues with us throughout the rest of our lives and can impact relationships decades later.

When we believe we can trust someone, we let our guard down and are more likely to be vulnerable, speak freely, and feel more at peace. If that trust - and therefore the peace and safety that rely on it - is disrupted, we may struggle to regain our footing without intentional effort.

Signs of lack of trust in relationships

Before exploring how to save your marriage or relationship, first we should look at how to know if your relationship issue is lack of trust. There are many reasons we may no longer feel safe or secure in a relationship: infidelity, lack of quality time/date nights, underlying mental health issues of individual partners, disagreements on finances, lack of physical intimacy, and more. And when we lack safety and security - in therapy terms, when we struggle with attachment - trust erodes.

Rebuilding trust in a relationship is a crucial step toward being able to fix things, communicate openly, practice forgiveness, or whatever other areas may need addressing.

Areas impacted by lack of trust

Since trust is one of the foundational aspects of a relationship, most if not all areas of the relationship are impacted by decreased trust. These include but are not limited to:

• Your sexual life

• Willingness for forgiveness

• Your ability to move forward

• Your ability to maintain an emotional connection

As you can see, lack of trust is not just its own issue, but one that radiates out into all aspects of the relationship. Being able to address a lack of trust is also a skill that will serve you well over time because of the factors that go into the endeavor and the positive impacts they are likely to have on your relationship.

As you can see, trust is vital; therefore taking steps to rebuild it can be a weighty process. On the other hand, though, when we are intentional and do take those steps, rebuilding trust has a positive impact on a multitude of other factors within your relationship with your partner.

Who is impacted by trust issues?

Lack of trust can be an issue at any stage of a relationship; from a new relationship just starting out, to a marriage on the verge of divorce, and any couple between. In order to address that, forgive, and build a stronger foundation, we need to work toward understanding why. Is there a specific incident (cheating, a specific disagreement that caused pain/hurt feelings, etc) or is the lack of trust stemming from something more vague (a perceived lack of commitment, a hard time letting go of a past incident, lack of good communication, etc)?

Once we understand the why, we can begin to address the most important step: teaching you to save your marriage or relationship.

How do you repair trust issues in a relationship?

One of the first steps toward repairing trust is deciding what that looks like for your specific relationship or marriage. Some people choose to seek advice from peers or look at the example of loved ones in successful marriages or relationships, others choose to pursue professional help (marriage counseling, couples therapy, etc), and others decide to go it on their own. Whatever choice you make, it is important that both members of the couple be on the same page.

Once you feel ready to move forward with whatever your choice is, recognize that this will likely be an emotional experience, with plenty of talking and eventual focus on underlying issues. As cliche as it sounds, relationships take work and each partner being committed to the journey.

It may also be helpful for each partner to seek their own individual therapy throughout the process. While it differs for each practitioner, some therapists may even require that as part of the process of working with a couple.

Rebuild trust through "trust first aid"

Everyone is going to respond to a breach of trust differently, but no matter what this will likely be an emotional process. Just as we would respond to a significant physical injury with first aid, we can use "trust first aid" as an initial step toward repairing relationship trust and gaining forgiveness if needed.

This first aid consists of a few steps:

• Take your time

  • With any process, if we rush, we are doing ourselves a disservice

• Be intentional with words

  • This helps avoid regret later on

• Recognize that everyone recovers at their own pace

  • No one gets to dictate when their relationship partner should be "over it"

• Agree together on who to share with

  • If both partners are committed to making it work, limiting outside opinions will likely be important

• Name feelings

  • This helps our brain calm down and recognize a wrong is being addressed

• Practice patience

  • With self and with others; hurt feelings increase our likelihood of acting impulsively or irrationally toward another person

• Practice self-compassion

  • Even the most successful marriage or relationship has struggles!

Reestablishing (relational) safety

In order for a troubled marriage to become a happy marriage, safety must be present. Usually when we hear the word safety, we think of being physically safe; however, emotional safety is vital to any effort toward rebuilding trust. Emotional safety is the idea that we can share our thoughts and feelings without fear of being attacked or ridiculed by the person we are sharing with. It contributes to relational safety, or the ability to feel safe when interacting (or relating) to others.

One of the most trusted couples counseling resources is the Gottman Institute, and they have an acronym that can be helpful to keep in mind when pursuing this aspect of rebuilding trust: ATTUNE

Awareness of your own and your partner's internal world

Turning toward each other by noticing when your partner seeks your attention and responding

Tolerance of distress, different perspectives, uncomfortable feelings, etc

Understanding of your and your partner's wants, needs, feelings, fears, and communication style

Non-defensive responding - in other words, commitment to understanding rather than defending

Empathy toward each other

Once the above aspects are in place, it greatly increases the likelihood of success when rebuilding trust and making strides toward a healthy relationship.

How couples therapy or marriage counseling can help rebuild trust

Taking the first step to start rebuilding trust can be a daunting responsibility. When you feel lost or overwhelmed, it can be helpful to have the support of professional help. Marriage counselors are trained to help partners explore past incidents that contributed to a lack of trust.

A couples counselor can also help ensure that both partners are taking steps in the same direction. While only the couple can decide if the relationship is worth saving, the couples counselor can help ensure each partner feels heard and seen.

While processing past incidents can devolve into blame and additional hurt when tackled on your own, a marriage counselor can help partners talk through their perceptions of what happened, take responsibility for individual parts of the process, and reinforce commitment to the relationship.

What type of counseling should we seek?

Just as there are many areas of speciality for mental health generally, there are areas of specialty for couples or marriage counseling. Here at It Begins Within, we have several mental health professionals who are specifically trained to help partners work through the pain and hurt of infidelity. When engaging in a process as delicate as rebuilding trust, it's important that you can depend on both your partner and your chosen professional to provide you with safety and understanding.

Infidelity work can be especially taxing - however, when committed, even infidelity is an event that can be recovered from with effort. Moving forward from a betrayal involves first regulating and helping the hurt partner to feel heard; it is important to talk with your therapist about what the process will look like so that everyone is on the same page about what to expect from the process. Talking through the factors that led to the betrayal will come in time, but first we must tend to the most recent wound.

Because infidelity work and the process to rebuild trust can be so intense, at It Begins Within, we offer a specific type of therapy known as an intensive, with multiple hours of therapy a week. You can reach out to our office to talk more about what that looks like, but for an example you can check out this link: Learn more about Couples Intensives

Evaluating your relationship after repairing trust

Whether you choose the therapy path or not, once you have put in the work to understand what happened in your relationship, you'll likely then look to understanding what got you there. Cheating - or any other type of betrayal - doesn't just appear from nowhere; at least one partner wasn't getting their needs met and sought to get those needs addressed elsewhere. By the time of a betrayal, the incidence of needs not getting met has often happened multiple times. Partners need to feel comfortable and safe to express their feelings and needs in the relationship.

Rather than holding back when frustrating things occur - potentially leading to resentment - having a healthy amount of trust and effective communication skills ensures that both partners can be heard even when bringing up a difficult topic.

This may require ongoing therapy to be able to safely air out issues without fear of pushback, or it may simply involve being intentional with your partner about how to check in and not let things slide. While letting things go has its place, continually doing so increases the likelihood of you ending up back in a cycle of resentment or lacking connection.

Maintaining a healthy relationship

So once you've taken the steps to rebuild trust in a relationship... now what? You and your partner look to the future, of course! In order to decrease the likelihood of breaches of trust in the future, there are a few areas you can intentionally focus on.

Intimacy

When we hear the word intimacy many of us automatically think of sex; however, there are many types of intimacy, including physical, emotional, spiritual, and intellectual. Each person will have different intimacy needs, so working with your partner to understand what they specifically need in the relationship is an important maintenance step.

Communication

If we can't successfully communicate, we'll struggle to make any significant strides toward maintaining a good relationship. Communication involves many aspects, including active listening, seeking understanding, giving your partner space to process and share, and knowing when to take a break.

Healthy conflict

Avoiding conflict entirely is both unrealistic and impossible. What we want to ensure instead is engaging in healthy conflict with our partner when it is necessary. Healthy conflict includes ensuring that both partners are heard, not lashing out or using inflammatory language, and taking breaks when needed. While the adage of not going to bed angry seems like a positive thing, sometimes sleeping it off and allowing cooler heads to prevail may actually be productive - as long as you ensure to actually return to the subject.

While healthy conflict looks a bit different for everyone, avoiding what the Gottmans refer to as the "4 Horsemen" of contempt, stonewalling, defensiveness, and criticism is a good start. Make sure that when you approach conflict you do it with a goal in mind and do your best to keep a steady head. While emotions provide valuable information and are valid, if we let them completely take control, we are likely to say things we don't mean or not get our point across clearly.

Connection

Connection is one of the first things that draws any couple together; however, as time goes on, it may be one of the areas that we do not nurture as we assume that connections simply stay strong. But like any skill, we must put in work to maintain the strength of our connections with others.

This can take many forms: set aside specific time for a date night, have check-in rituals, think back to little things that were meaningful early in your marriage/relationship, etc. This particular aspect will look different to every couple (and, potentially, each partner), so talking it through with your partner and being on the same page is vital.

What to keep in mind

While rebuilding trust is a process, it is often a worthy one. A successful marriage or relationship does not come from a life free of conflict, but from a life spent working to understand your partner, forgive the occasional mistake, and recognize that most people - including your husband/wife/boyfriend/girlfriend/partner/etc - have good intentions. That's not to say those intentions are an excuse, but allowing space for an explanation, validating each other, and being intentional with time spent are all steps toward successful relationships.

Because this process is difficult, it can be helpful to have someone objective in the relationship's corner to help guide you. While it may be difficult to hear vulnerable statements from your partner, you can think of a couples therapist as a sort of translator who helps ensure that everyone is getting the same message out of what is being said.

If you'd like assistance in the process of rebuilding trust in your relationship, please reach out to us at It Begins Within - we're uniquely equipped to assist you in this journey, no matter what stage of it you find yourselves at.