Repairing Trust Issues in Your Relationship - Tips from a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist
Trust.
It’s a foundation of relationships. Trust is one of the load-bearing walls in your relationship house. But what is it?
Trust is so much more than the belief that your partner won’t cheat on you. It is the sense that your partner has your back, that they value your interests and comfort as much as their own, and that they will act in ways that benefit you. (This definition is based on the work of marriage researcher and expert John Gottman.)
Many people experience trust as a felt sense. It’s something they know is there or not but might have a hard time defining. And because it’s hard to put words to, people often struggle to know what to do once trust issues develop in their relationships.
Does your relationship have trust issues? Can trust issues in relationships be solved? If you have them, do you know how to deal with trust issues and insecurities in your relationship?
This blog series on trust in meant to bring you hope. Building trust doesn’t have to be mysterious. We CAN define what trust is, and we can give you steps to take to fix your trust issues. And that is a hopeful and happy thought.
This post is the first in a series about dealing with trust issues in relationships. In this post we’re telling the story of a couple who healed from their trust issues and in the following posts we’ll address how trust issues develop and how to deal with trust issues and insecurities in relationships.
Let’s start with our sample couple (We protect the privacy of our clients. This isn’t the story of a real couple; it is a composite of several real couples we have helped at Inland Empire Couples Counseling). Our couple has been married for over 10 years. From the outside, they seem like the perfect couple: good kids, successful careers, stable and safe housing, enough extra to do some fun vacations and home upgrades.
But they aren’t happy. Their relationship is plagued by trust issues and cyclical fights. They just can’t seem to get out of this rut where they keep having the same fight over and over. It never goes anywhere and their trust issues seem to get worse. Part of what’s so hard about their situation is that they can’t even agree on why they have trust issues in their relationship. Neither of them has cheated, no one has lost a bunch of money gambling, they aren’t physically violent with each other; they don’t have any of the big things they think should give a couple problems with trust.
Our couple enters therapy when, after years of trying to fix things on their own, one of them says “Enough! We go to therapy or we consider divorce. I don’t want to get divorced, I really don’t, but I can’t keep living like this. And there’s too much good in our relationship to just give up.”
They start therapy. As is typical, the first few sessions with their therapist focus on getting to know them, their relationship, and the history of their current problems. Then around session 5 or 6, this couple has a breakthrough! Their therapist lays out the steps for working on their trust issues and rebuilding trust in each other. And all of the sudden there’s hope!
They feel hopeful about their future for the first time in a long time.
It is truly eye-opening for this couple to know that there are concrete steps they can take to fix their trust issues. Their future no longer looks like more of the same fight over and over. They are so excited to know, finally, that there is something they can DO to help themselves and that building trust isn’t some mysterious thing that magically happens. They can actively take steps to work on their trust issues.
The couple finishes therapy in another 6 sessions, feeling more in love than they have in years. They were able to finally understand what was causing their trust issues all these years; they learned new ways of communicating that helped them understand each other. They were able to see each other with compassion as they came to see that they both had been trying all these years to love, to connect, to feel safe. And that made it easier to forgive. They found their way back to each other.
If you’d like to work on trust issues in your relationship, please schedule a phone consultation below. We would love to be a part of helping you and your partner find your way back to each other and fall in love again. Do you still have questions about counseling in general or us specifically? Visit our FAQs page to find out more! We are now offering online and in-person counseling services in Riverside, CA; and online counseling services in Temecula, CA!!
Sometimes when you’re in therapy to work on trust, a one-our weekly session just isn’t enough to process all you’ve got to work through. We have a solution for that: a couples therapy retreat. You can do 6-8 weeks worth of therapy in one weekend, working with two experienced couples therapists to help you and your partner get your relationship back on solid ground. Learn more about our couples therapy retreats here.
