How to Rebuild the Trust in Your Relationship

From: Dr. Frank Gunzburg

Have you been suffering because the trust has been destroyed in your marriage? Have you felt your relationship being torn apart because the trust you once had for your spouse has been undermined by mistakes, lies, or deceit?

If so, the very foundation of your marriage is in danger, and if you have any hope of saving it you will have to confront and address your trust issues fully and work to rebuild the trust that has been shattered. Whether it was shaken by a series of mistakes and misunderstandings as Jill’s and Tom’s relationship, or it has been decimated by the devastation of an affair, you have to work to rebuild the trust if you are ever going to build the happy, healthy marriage you are hoping for.

Trust is the foundation for your marriage. It is the solid ground on which you build a meaningful life with another person. Everything else in your marriage comes out of the trust you develop with your spouse. Your sense of safety, your ability to openly reveal emotions, free communication, honest conflict resolution, a fulfilling sex life, all of these things are built on the foundation of trust. If you can’t trust your spouse, there is no way you will be able to create a happy life with him or her.

Unfortunately trust is a very complicated issue. It isn’t only relationships scarred by infidelity that suffer major trust issues. Marriages where there is no sexual infidelity can suffer from a lack of trust as well. Sometimes this lack of trust is justified and sometimes it isn’t. Either way, the problem is the same. A breach of trust in your relationship causes serious problems for your marriage.

When the trust has been cracked, when the foundation of your relationship is unstable, it can be very hard to rebuild. In fact, trust issues can arise even when a perceived breach of trust has occurred. In some cases one spouse may actually act in an untrustworthy manner. In others, one spouse may misread the other’s behaviors and assume they are behaving in an untrustworthy manner.

The problems are even more complicated when the lines of communication in your relationship are unclear or non-existent. When you hide things from your partner, when you lie (even when you tell little white lies), or when you omit certain information (omission still counts as a lie), you make trust issues in your relationship all that much more difficult to heal.

You can overcome these problems. You can learn how to be open and free with your spouse and your spouse can learn how to completely trust you wholeheartedly. But it isn’t always easy, it takes practice, and it takes know-how. We are going to look at each of those pieces of the trust puzzle in this section.

To start you on your journey to a more trusting relationship you should begin by understanding that there is more than one type of trust. In fact, trust isn’t as black and white an issue as most people think it is. As with so many things in life, it has layers of complexity.

Dr. Frank Gunzburg is a licensed counselor in Maryland and has been specializing is helping couples restore their marriage for over 30 years.