Tips on How to Regain Trust in a Relationship

Understand What Trust Is And Why It’s Important

If you’ve completely lost faith in your partner’s goodness and reliability, this one’s for you. Trust is an integral part of every relationship. So, when it seems to vanish overnight, the entire relationship is at risk of crumbling. Let’s get right into steps you can take to regain trust in a relationship. 

Identify the Behaviors That Led to the Loss of Trust

If you’re reading this, you’re probably in a tough spot. You might feel highly emotional, incredibly stressed, or flat-out angry. Lost trust has emotions involved, but you’ll need to control yours for now as you read through our tips. You must take a step back and fully examine the situation.

Ask yourself: What behaviors led to the loss of trust? The answer could be clear-cut but ask “why” a few times to really get to the bottom of it. Did you find out that your partner has been cheating, whether emotionally or physically? If so, get to the root of the issue.

Perhaps they felt that another person filled a need they had that you haven’t been providing. If possible, pinpoint the behaviors both parties made to lead to the trust-breaking incident.

Be Open and Honest With Each Other

Throughout the rebuilding process, practice total honesty. After all, it’s a huge part of trust. You have to be transparent in your communication to resolve prior issues and prevent future ones. Makes sense, right?

Trust requires a foundation of honesty. If you’ve already followed our first tip, you may have already established that secrecy, lying, or another form of deception played a part in the broken trust. It’s only natural that agreeing to be honest from this point forward is the next step!

Make a Plan to Restore Trust

Every goal becomes more achievable when you lay out a plan of attack, and it’s no different when it comes to trust-building. So, once you’ve pinpointed those distasteful behaviors, commit to a new plan. Discuss and write down steps that you can both take to build trust again.

Remember to keep both parties accountable; this can’t just rest on the shoulders of one partner. It’s a team effort. Don’t dwell on who ruined the relationship. Follow through with your steps once you’ve created them!

Work on Communication and Conflict Resolution

What two skills are extremely life-changing when it comes to trust? Communication and conflict resolution, of course! You and your partner must talk about both of these critical skills if you want to regain trust. The two go hand in hand, too, so increasing your skill in one can only benefit the other.

You’ll need to work on communicating clearly and respectfully. When conflicts arise, work on calmly handling them. In both of these skills, practice using empathy and listening closely to your partner. These skills will really go a long way in building back trust.

Increase skills like communication and conflict resolution to foster trust.

Take Responsibility for Your Part in the Breakdown of Trust

This tip is a tough one to swallow. If you’ve been on the receiving end of untrustworthy behavior, it can be tempting to stand on a pedestal and point the finger at your partner, but you must reflect on what you can change about your behavior to help the situation. What could you have done better? What was missing from your actions?

Perhaps your partner was withholding information from you and you felt hurt by it, and therefore lost trust. Well, you may come to find that due to your lackluster listening skills, your partner did not actually feel comfortable telling you.

Or perhaps you tend to have a judgmental attitude toward your partner, which deters them from being fully open with you. It’s behavior like this that you must hold yourself accountable for. 

When you commit to improving anything in your power (about yourself) to fix the broken trust, it’ll benefit both parties. Your partner will appreciate your effort, and it’ll make you realize even more that you two are a team. It takes two to build trust!

Be Willing to Change

You don’t need to change the core of who you are, but you may need to actively alter behaviors or habits that led to the fallout. Practice healthy skills like active listening and keeping an open mind. You may need to learn to forgive past mistakes or how to be a more present partner in the relationship.

Don’t shy away from taking action to improve your situation.

Earn Their Trust Back

As a whole, earning trust involves little (or big) actions that add up over time. This takes commitment and loads of patience, but it’ll be well worth it! Be supportive, always show up when you say you will, and don’t break promises. Stay true to your word, and expect the same of your partner. Show time and time again that you’re worthy of trust.

Give Them Time

Healing takes time and effort. Practice being patient and kind to yourself and your partner. Respect each other’s healing process. Set aside time to check in with each other and fully understand how the other party is doing. All of this will be necessary to rebuild that valuable quality of trust. In the end, though, the waiting period will be worthwhile.

Set aside time to work through trust issues with your partner.

Seek Professional Help

Do you feel like you’ve tried it all to no avail? Are you and your partner simply not seeing eye to eye? It happens. You’re not alone. And the good news is, you don’t need to tackle this on your own.

Look for a reputable relationship professional who can help the two of you come together and have constructive conversations. Professional guidance counselors have expertise that can help you work wonders in your relationship and move forward quickly. Don’t write them off!

Feel free to seek professional help at any time to improve your situation. There are even online professionals that can counsel you if you aren’t comfortable with in person care.

Move Forward With a Strengthened Sense of Trust

Plenty of effort and time and conversations will go into rebuilding trust. At some point, though, you have to understand it’s time to keep moving. Take these new strategies you’ve learned and continue building more memories and happy times with your partner.

A trust fallout doesn’t necessarily mean the relationship needs to blow up. Just keep working together, and you can grow stronger after this incident.

how to regain trust in a relationship