Can You Rebuild Trust In A Relationship?

When trust is broken in a relationship, it can cause a lot of harm. If trust is broken repeatedly over time, sometimes years, it becomes very difficult to repair and stay together.

Whether trust can be rebuilt depends on the situation, and the way in which trust was broken. If you are willing to ...

• Own what happened and take responsibility
• Learn from it
• Change behaviors
• Apologize
• Making new commitments backed by action.

Then you have very good chances of repairing trust and healing, even growing, from what happened (and if not, it becomes very difficult to repair trust and stay together).

In order to rebuild trust in a relationship, some important steps to take are ...

Get really specific about where trust was broken. It's a different situation if your partner showed up 5 minutes late to an appointment or emptied your retirement account and ran off with a lover. Both could be characterized as "broken trust", but obviously not the same.

Instead of stating a general, "I don't trust you!", get specific. Is it that you don't trust your partner to be with the kids? Or to shop for the right ingredients for dinner? Or to be faithful?

Getting specific makes it easier to repair trust, and it also makes it easier for the person who broke the trust to do something about it.

For the person who broke the trust, the first "something" to do is to go through a complete apologies process. Just saying, "I'm sorry" just doesn't get the job done.

A complete apologies process involves steps such as ownership of the behavior, demonstrating to your partner that you understand the impact of your actions, making amends to repair the damage, making new promises, and of course, keeping said promises.

If trust has been broken repeatedly over time, or the breach was severe, repairing trust is process over and extended period of time, not a one-time apologies process. It takes many new promises that are repeatedly and reliable backed by action to heal from breaches of trust. It takes the ability to clean up when you fall short of your promises.

In the process of repairing trust, make sure you acknowledge and speak out loud your appreciations for the efforts and progress made. If my partner had been lying to me, but now I see real demonstration of him or her being truthful, I make sure to say, "Thank you so much for telling me that, I really appreciate it".

Repairing trust takes willingness from both parties. Even if your partner was the one to break trust, it also takes willingness from you to learn and grow from what happened, and willingness to let go of what happened (with proper apologies and new actions from your partner).

Final word, breaches of trust, betrayals, affairs, lying, etc. are difficult to deal with in a relationship. It brings up all manner of feelings and the hurt can run really deep.

So get help! The faster the better. Call coaches like us, use a local therapist or a trusted friend. But don't just stew with it on your own, that doesn't help anyone.

One of the ways you can support your relationship to have strong trust, is by having solid communication skills. And one of the best ways to do that is to enhance your understanding when there's something you disagree on. 

We created a 90-min mini-workshop for couples to deal with stress and disagreements, How To Be More Understanding During Disagreements. In this workshop-from-your-couch, we are going to help you:

* Find understanding

* Relieve tension and stress

* Discover common ground between each other

* Get on the same page

* Learn techniques to de-escalate during conflict

* Get back to connection

Register here: https://loveworksforyou.com/how-to-be-more-understanding-during-disagreements 

We have helped thousands of couples navigate crisis and stressful times, and we'd be honored to help you, too.