Rebuilding trust in marriage

Losing trust destroys your whole world. Even your love for your partner. ILLUSTRATION | IGAH

What you need to know:

  • Before you start trying to rebuild trust, ask yourself what your relationship really means to you.
  • If your partner’s guilt-tripping you with “you should be over this by now”, then they still haven’t understood the impact of what happened and how it affected your feelings.
  • Think about your expectations, and talk about them. Don’t keep them to yourself as secret tests!

Trust’s so easy to lose, and so hard to rebuild. And isn’t only about cheating. Trust’s lost when your spouse breaks a promise to stop drinking.

Or lies about where they are or who they’re with. Or doesn’t support you when you’re ill, or have lost your job, or been bereaved, or have a new baby.

GUILT-TRIPPING

Losing trust destroys your whole world. Even your love for your partner. You start avoiding them, and feel constantly anxious and wary.

So before you start trying to rebuild trust, ask yourself what your relationship really means to you. Because if it’s only about money and status, then rebuilding trust’s probably not worth the effort. Trust should be based on a deep love for one another, mutual respect and support.

Recognise that rebuilding trust takes time. Months. A year. Even more. So if your partner’s guilt-tripping you with “you should be over this by now”, then they still haven’t understood the impact of what happened and how it affected your feelings.

Expect a sincere apology that expresses remorse, acknowledges your hurt, and takes responsibility for putting things right. If you hear an apology that tries to justify what happened, blames you, or minimises your feelings: “Come on, it wasn’t that bad!” you haven’t got there yet.

Re-establish your partner’s dependability. That means seeing your partner deal with situations where they could potentially backslide, but instead they do the right thing. Like coming home at the time they promised, attending AA meetings regularly, or going to couple therapy with you – and really participating.

LEAP OF FAITH

Think about your expectations, and talk about them. Don’t keep them to yourself as secret tests! You may have some non-negotiables, like getting sober or breaking off an affair, but whether they’re negotiable or not, you need to discuss and agree them. It helps if your partner takes the initiative. Like she gets treatment for her depression, or he drops his disreputable friends.

If all’s going well, but you still just can’t seem to trust again, it may be because you’re still stuck on negative, repetitive thoughts about the past, or what might happen in the future. Decide to bring yourself back into the here and now. Watch your partner’s current behaviour rather than brooding over what happened before, or what might happen in the future.

Once you’re sure your partner’s behaviour has become dependable again, it’s time for a leap of faith. That means deciding to believe that your partner’s good behaviour will continue into the future. Whatever happens. Then you can let go of all your monitoring and suspicions. And begin to forgive.

Now you’re back in a trusting relationship. And the bad things that happened will gradually fade out of your everyday thoughts. You’ll never forget any of it, but now your naive “it won’t happen to me” trust has been replaced by something much stronger. Because now you know what can go wrong. And have fixed it.