DEVELOPING TRUST Arguments about dishonesty, jealousy and infidelity are basically about trust. Do you trust each other? Have you done something to damage that trust? Have you been betrayed in the past, and therefore have a difficult time trusting this partner? Trust requires maintenance, because it is quite easily damaged. Early in a relationship, both partners get to demonstrate their trustworthiness. If promises are kept and feelings are respected, the trust grows. If the partners experience roughly the same degree of trust, the relationship will thrive. If one partner is not trustworthy, the other will feel betrayed. However, it is also true that a partner can feel betrayed even if the other person did nothing wrong, especially if that partner has already been betrayed in a previous relationship. Allowing emotional trust to grow the same way we allow financial trust to grow makes more sense. Thinking about investment of trust the way we think about investment of money makes it easier to understand: when you first meet someone, no matter how pleasant the encounter, you’re not likely to take your life savings out of the bank, hand it to them and say “If you treat this responsibly, we can be friends.” Don’t do this with your heart and self-esteem, either. Trusting someone else with your financial resources takes a long time: after years of friendship, in which the other person has demonstrated that they are responsible with money, you might happily and confidently make a loan or make a financial partnership with them. Emotional investments should be as cautious. Waiting to see whether this person you’re excited about is worthy of your emotional investment makes a lot more sense, but most people aren’t cautious when they become involved in relationships. People who have been betrayed often realize in hindsight that they trusted someone who wasn’t trustworthy in the first place, setting themselves up for disappointment and hurt. Once you have been betrayed in love, it is much more difficult to trust a second time, and if you don’t understand how trust is built and maintained, it seems difficult and mysterious to sort it out. Often, innocent actions can threaten the trust in a relationship. One of you can develop a business friendship, for example, and if you’re not open with your partner, the business friendship can take on threatening qualities for your partner. It’s a very familiar story, one I work with repeatedly while counseling couples. Dishonesty and mistrust in relationships is a timeless problem, going back as far as history is recorded. The Bible and ancient Chinese, Greek and Roman writings are full of stories of betrayed trust. Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet” is a story that ends in mutual suicide when information goes awry, and both lovers mistakenly believe they’ve been betrayed. “Othello” is about murder motivated by jealousy and distrust. And it’s not just an old story. Today’s news is full of stories of domestic violence prompted by betrayal, suspicion, and jealousy. Today’s political news is full of untrustworthy shysters that people mistakenly trust. BUILDING TRUST: In order to have a trusting, reliable relationship with your partner, you must be reliable and trustworthy yourself. If you make a promise to yourself, do you keep it? If you’re unable to keep an agreement with yourself, no one else can trust you. In addition, your own untrustworthy behavior will lead you to believe that others are also unreliable. Your trust of your partner thus begins with your own self-esteem and self-control. The trust between you needs to develop in a reciprocal fashion, with each partner demonstrating to the other that trust expected is trust given. Reliability is crucial to the success of your relationship. If you’re not sure how much you can trust your partner, back up, slow down, and begin to build that trust before going further. If you can’t yet trust yourself—also back up, slow down, keep the relationship going slow until you repair the problem with yourself. If the trust between you and your partner has been damaged, you will need to work together to rebuild that trust. How do you build trust? Make agreements that are sensible, and keep them. Trust grows in a relationship over time, as contracts are kept. Be on time, pay your debts, and treat your partner with respect. When you can’t keep your promise, say so in advance; if you can’t do that, apologize and ask how you can repair the damage. The process is much the same whether you’re building trust with yourself or someone else. The following guidelines will help you put these methods into practice: GUIDELINES FOR BUILDING TRUST: • Remember fear breaks down trust. Don’t frighten your partner (or yourself) by testing too hard, risking too much, or demanding the impossible. If you begin to feel frightened, talk about it. If you want to be told what is going on, don’t make it too hard for your partner to be honest by making threats or reacting hysterically, or with rage. • Keep each other informed. Lying or sneaking does even more damage than breaking contracts. If you slip up, tell the truth. If your partner errs, be open to hearing it without flying off the handle, and negotiate a solution to the problem, using the problem solving steps in the first section of this chapter. If your partner keeps messing up, and shows no sign of change, or if you can’t keep your bargains, couple counseling is crucial. Do not delay, use the guidelines in chapter seven and go immediately. • Make agreements: Learn to make clear contracts and renegotiate them before you break them, as discussed in Chapter Four. • Give it time. Patience and communication are your best allies. Sharing your secrets with your partner strengthens the trust between you over time. As you learn that you both make mistakes, and no one's being deliberately hurtful, trust builds. As it does, you can begin to relax the rules, and allow yourselves more spontaneity. ©2024 Tina B. Tessina. Adapted from Money, Sex and Kids: Stop Fighting about the Three Things that Can Ruin Your Relationship 2nd Edition Author Bio: Tina B. Tessina, Ph.D. (www.tinatessina.com) is a licensed psychotherapist in S. California since 1978 with over 40 years’ experience in counseling individuals and couples and author of 18 books in 17 languages, including Dr. Romance’s Guide to Finding Love Today; It Ends With You: Grow Up and Out of Dysfunction; The Ten Smartest Decisions a Woman Can Make After Forty; How to Be a Couple and Still Be Free; 52 Weeks to Better Mental Health, and her newest; Stop Overthinking: A Workbook. She writes the “Dr. Romance blog, and the “Happiness Tips from Tina” email newsletter. Online, she’s known as “Dr. Romance.” Dr. Tessina appears frequently on radio, TV, video and podcasts.
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