If something is bothering you in your relationship, you must be willing to say so out loud, to your partner. Doing so builds trust, and trust builds intimacy. It may hurt (you or them), but you still need to do it because no one else can fix your relationship for you. Just as causing pain to your muscles allows them to grow back stronger, introducing some pain into your relationship through vulnerability has the power to make your relationship stronger.
Along with respect, trust is the most commonly-mentioned trait crucial for a healthy relationship. Most people speak about it in the context of jealousy and fidelity—trust your partner to go off on their own, don’t get insecure or angry if you see them talking with someone else, that sort of thing.
Trust goes much deeper than worrying whether or not someone is cheating. When you’re in it together over the long-term, you need to be ready, able, and willing to discuss topics deeper than the surface. If you learned you had cancer tomorrow, would you trust your partner to stick with you and take care of you? Would you trust your partner to care of your child for a week, or longer, by themselves? Do you trust them to handle your money and make sound decisions under pressure? Do you trust them to not turn on you or blame you when you screw up?
These are hard questions, and they’re even harder to contemplate early on in a relationship. “Oh, I forgot my phone at her apartment! I trust her not to sell it and buy crack with the money… maybe.”
The deeper the commitment, the more intertwined your lives become, and the more you will have to trust your partner to act responsibly and take care of you and your relationship.
If you cannot trust, you cannot be trusted. Distrust breeds distrust, as all emotion feeds on itself. If your partner is always snooping through your stuff, accusing you of doing things you didn’t do, and questioning all of your decisions— naturally, you will start to question their intentions as well: Why is she so insecure? What if he is hiding something?
The key to fostering and maintaining trust in a relationship is for both partners to be completely transparent and vulnerable, which I freely acknowledge is no easy task, and does come with exceptions (as I’ve discussed elsewhere in this blog):
If something is bothering you, say something. This is important not only for addressing issues as they arise, but it proves to your partner that you have nothing to hide.
Those icky, insecure things you hate sharing with people? Share them with your partner. Not only is it healing, but you and your partner need to have a good understanding of each other’s insecurities and the way you each choose to compensate for them.
Make promises and then stick to them. This is particularly important if trust, at any level, has been broken during your relationship in the past. The only way to truly rebuild trust after it’s been broken is through a proven track record over time. You cannot build that track record until you own up to previous mistakes and set about correcting them, and this is the way.
Learn to differentiate your partner’s ‘shady’ behavior from your own insecurities (and vice-versa). This is a difficult, and will likely require some form of confrontation. In most relationship fights, one person thinks something is completely “normal” and the other thinks it’s really “effed up.” It’s often extremely hard to distinguish who is being irrational and insecure and who is being reasonable and merely standing up for themselves. Mood can throw sand into these gears as well, as we are often not ready to rationally consider others’ views when we are angry, upset, bitter, resentful, and so on. Be patient in rooting out what’s what, and when it’s your insecurity that’s causing the issue (and sometimes it will be, trust me), be honest about it. Own up to it. And strive to be better.
Trust is like china— if you drop it and it breaks, you can only put it back together with a lot of work and care (and alas, it requires expert work to make it anything close to its original state). If you drop it and break it a second time, it will split into more pieces and it will require more time and care to put back together again. But drop and break it enough times, and it will shatter into so many pieces that you will never be able to put it back together again, no matter what you do.
Now I’m thinking that maybe a piece of china wasn’t the best analogy here, but it’s already written, so… you get the drift.