So your relationship has trust issues? You’re normal!

We work with very few relationships that don’t have trust issues or insecurities of some kind. 

When trust is broken or damaged, you don’t feel safe.

Maybe you know you can’t fully be yourself, show your heart, let your guard down. You don’t have the confidence that your partner understands you or will act in ways that benefit you. 

Maybe the two of you come to agreements and then the follow through is lacking, so next time you come to an agreement you’re skeptical that your partner will do their part. If your partner feels the same way, you might both be watching and waiting for the other to change before you put any work into doing your part.  

You’re in a “you change first” stalemate. 

But how do people get to this state? How do trust issues in relationships develop? 

We can help! We are couples therapists in Southern California. We provide marriage counseling in Temecula, CA and Riverside CA. We are also available for online couples counseling in California. Our couples therapists specialize in relationships and relationship healing. Learn more about us here.

This post will outline how trust issues develop in relationships. The previous post in this series defined what trust is and gave the story of a sample couple who healed their trust issues, and the next post will give you ideas for how to deal with trust issues and insecurities in your relationship.

At the most basic level, trust issues in relationships develop when someone breaks the relationship contract. For example, we agreed we would be monogamous and you slept with someone else—Relationship contract broken. 

Unfortunately, the terms of our particular relationship contracts often aren’t spelled out. We have a lot of assumptions about how our partners should treat us that we never communicate to them. We often have assumptions or expectations that aren’t clear even to ourselves until we have our feelings hurt or are let down by our partner. 

Here are some common ways trust issues develop:

• Affairs: emotional and/or physical

• Financial mistakes: losing money gambling, excessive spending, taking on debt, hoarding money

• Control or intimidation

• Physical violence

• Emotional manipulation

• Lack of emotional safety: used something I said in a vulnerable moment against me in a fight later, shared my secrets, criticized the way I felt or thought, or just didn’t listen when I needed to talk

• Condescending comments

• Took emotions out on the other: making me pay when your boss or friend or family treated you bad

• Didn’t repair the relationship properly: Mistakes happen. Miscommunication and hurt feelings happen in all relationships. When our partners are dismissive, defensive, or otherwise don’t apologize or repair properly trust issues can develop

• Made promises you can’t or didn’t intend to keep: sometimes we agree to something in the moment because the conversation is uncomfortable and we just want it to stop. Some people don’t know how to say no or don’t know their own limits, so they over-promise or agree to everything. And then trust issues develop when the person can’t or doesn’t follow through on the things they promised. Saying “yes” to keep someone happy in the moment hurts your relationship when you can’t follow through on that yes or when you can’t follow through without resentment about how much is being asked of you.

• You came to the relationship with trust issues from the family you were raised in or previous relationships: You might find it hard to trust anyone or maybe you really want to have trusting relationships but YOU’VE NEVER EXPERIENCED THAT so you don’t know how to create it. Therapy can help you learn new ways of relating to others. 

• Your partner didn’t understand or show sensitivity to the trust issues you brought to the relationship: maybe you can see that the trust issues in your relationship started before you were with this person and have gotten worse because your current partner didn’t know how to be sensitive to those things.

• You stayed silent and didn’t tell your partner what you needed in repair: this is a tricky one to own up to. You might be blocking your own healing by not telling your partner that you’re hurt and need an apology. Your trust issues might continue because your partner doesn’t know they exist or doesn’t know how to help you heal. 

• You stayed silent and didn’t tell your partner when something was wrong: your partner might develop trust issues with you because they don’t feel confident that you will tell them when you are hurt or when something isn’t working for you. Your partner might get to a point where they don’t believe you when you say everything is fine because so many times in the past you’ve stayed silent or said things were fine when really they were not fine. 

If you found yourself identifying with anything in this list, know there is help. This blog post is not a substitute for therapy. And couples therapy can help with trust issues in relationships. Sometimes the trust issues are so complex it’s more than you can handle on your own. If the fix were easy, you would have done it already. And maybe there have been small breaches of your relationship contract that you have been able to fix on your own and this one is just bigger. 

If you’re struggling with trust issues in your relationship, please don’t wait any longer to get help. Our couples therapists are available to help you in our office in Riverside CA, for virtual marriage counseling in Temecula CA, and for online couples counseling throughout California.