Relationships need to be built on trust. If this is absent from a relationship, it is doomed to failure. Trust can be broken in small ways or large ways, and it is inevitable that it will happen at some point in a relationship. You may not even realize that you are having trouble trusting your partner until something starts feeling “off” with one another. Even if nothing feels broken, it is important to think about if you fully trust your partner.
To explore if you fully trust your partner, it is important to ask yourself if you are having open conversations. Are you opening up about fears, insecurities, and doubts that you are having, or are your conversations kept at surface level? When having conversations, is there plenty of eye contact or is this difficult to maintain? Are you both active listeners, taking in one another’s problems and discussing them, or daydreaming in silence? Are you making each other a top priority in life? Putting your partner’s needs ahead of your own needs to happen to fuel trust. When partners make sacrifices and intertwine their lives together it leads to ultimate trust.
Other areas to dive into include physical intimacy, the admission of mistakes, and the dynamic of your relationship. Physical intimacy does not have to mean sex, it is doing little things like holding hands, kissing, and snuggling during a movie. These details are needed to get to a higher level of trust. The same goes for admitting mistakes. It is far more beneficial to own up to a mistake than to simply spout off a return criticism. Last, is the dynamic of the relationship consistent? If one partner is constantly demanding change, only to be met with immediate change that slowly fades back to the way things were, this will not work. Trust means being able to count on a consistent dynamic with each partner’s needs being met.
You may read this and think wow, we have a long journey ahead of us, but the good news is that there are ways to build toward trust. More good news is that you do not have to do it alone. Relish can help coach you through communicating with your partner. This app will create lessons that are unique to your situation and activities that will help bring you closer to your partner. With a little help, trust can be built and maintained. This can be done with meaningful communication, being vulnerable, respecting your partner, assuming the best, having difficult conversations when necessary, spending quality time together, and understanding that all of these things need to be done by both partners, not just one. Rebuilding trust cannot happen quickly and takes effort and commitment, but it will be worth it.
