Rebuilding Trust After it's Broken

Happy to be collaborating with Function Health because it has been transformational in my personal health journey! When you understand your health, you can take better care of yourself and have more time on this earth with the people you love.

I love Function Health because it gives me access to 100+ lab tests and detailed insights from licensed clinicians. This helps me make better choices to support both my mind and body. Click here to try Function.

Trust is one of the main foundations of all relationships. A groundwork of trust permits us to open up and be vulnerable, allowing us to share our full, complex selves with another person. Trust means we won’t feel judged or threatened when we admit a shortcoming or fear. Trust allows for humans to be imperfect beings and feel supported in the process of growing and making mistakes.

Trust also means we can feel sure of our partner and their commitment to our relationship. It allows us to relax and feel at ease in our home and our lives. Trust creates space for more to be possible, more creativity, more growth, more joy, more contentedness.

But trust needs to be built and earned step by step in a gradual process shown by actions, rather than just words. As your relationship grows and builds, so should your trust in each other. There are so many ways to build trust, but the main one is to consistently show up for your partner in a caring and loving manner. To give them your attention, to listen to them, to accept them fully as they are, and to be there for them.

Opening up to your partner with vulnerability is another way to build trust. When you can open yourself up to your partner despite the fear and tension it may bring up in you, this is a huge opening for your relationship. Consistency is key to building trust.

Following through with what you have committed to do is essential. Being honest and not hiding things from your partner is paramount. This is important to establish early on in your relationship and applies even to small white lies. If you find yourself holding back or lying to your partner out of fear of hurting their feelings, you are actually hurting your bond more by not allowing full trust to develop.

When trust is absent or broken, it creates a dynamic of fear and insecurity that can cause tension and harm. This robs a relationship of its comfort and threatens the long-term viability of a partnership. If you cannot trust your partner, intimacy is lost and replaced by disappointment and fear. I have seen many great relationships end when trust is broken. It is good to have boundaries and not allow yourself to be mistreated, but at the same time, you shouldn’t expect your partner to be perfect and never make mistakes.

I believe in many cases trust can be regained and rebuilt if both partners truly want this and work toward it patiently. If responsibility is taken for the transgression, which often needs to happen a few times. If open and honest communication is reestablished. If you get to the root of why trust was broken, rather than just the surface level of what happened. If you can hold your partner with compassion and understanding, while not sanctioning their misdeeds. If you can see your partner as a beautifully complex and imperfect being who makes mistakes, but who owns up to them and learns from them.

Share

All of these conditions can lead to building an even deeper and stronger trust. But it will take time. It is not a weakness to give your partner a second chance with accountability. Though in some cases, especially when both partners do not want to put in the work, or the transgression is too deep, the relationship will not be salvageable.

If your trust has been broken in the past, this may cause you to have your guard up around others and expect them to hurt you in the same way. This pattern needs to be acknowledged and faced, communicated openly with your partner, and treated gently and patiently.

This is an excerpt from my new book How to Love Better, which is temporarily 49% off the original price on Amazon. You can also get a copy in bookstores everywhere.

I noticed that I needed to take better care of my skin and have started using Wild Roman daily. The difference it has made has been incredible! I liked the results so much I ended up getting some for my brother, my best friend, and my cousin. My two favorites are the face serum and the face moisturizer. I love how simple the ingredients are and how they feel on my skin. Use the code DIEGO10 for 10% off. Click here to check out all their offerings.

My new app for couples Ready Together is now available on iPhone and Android!

Ready Together has a lot of new useful updates that can help you and your partner elevate your emotional intelligence and love each other better. Sara and I are really enjoying using it. One of the best parts of Ready Together is getting to appreciate each other in more thoughtful ways than normal.

The questions you can answer as a couple are thought-provoking. I’ve noticed that after Sara and I both check in and can see each other’s responses, it usually strikes up a nice conversation where we talk more about our answers.

I love hearing how so many of you are enjoying using Ready Together with your partner!

Download it and use it for free on iPhone and Android. Hope it serves you well!