We hear it all of the time. I have trust issues. They have trust issues.
I mean don’t we all have trust issues about something, somewhere?
Well gather around children today we’re going to talk about what it means to have a “trust issue”, the importance of re-setting your trust, and how to do it. Easy peasy, right?
Typically when someone confesses that they have a problem with trust they are referring to having been betrayed or lied to or manipulated, or hurt in some kinda uncool way and not being super keen to sign up for any more of that any old time soon. And the reason for sharing is to put you on alert that their behaviour may be reflective of their reluctance. Oh yay.
Sometimes it’s a way to say Small ask but you’re gonna need to not take it personally if I basically imagine you doing terrible bad things on the regular.
As you can well imagine that tends to go over well in new and old relationships alike.
It feels amazing when someone doesn’t trust us. Even when they aren’t calling us a cheating scoundrel outrightly, being included generally and by default in the grouping of who and how a heart gets broken isn’t a lot of fun.
Even when we feel a measure of cool and compassionate about it, and we want to support our person through their doubt and fear, no healthy individual wants to be heavy lifting in this area indefinitely. Not a recipe for relationship bliss.
Sometimes the fearful person is actually asking you to take some demonstrative measures to make them feel loved in a measure great enough to overcome their fear. And that makes for some really super duper heart gripping, tender, watchable moments of romantic comedy at its finest that make us all want to be won over on a daily basis as an antidote to all of the stupidity in life. I call them the “boom box” moments, referencing that 80’s film Say Anything where John Cusack wins over Molly Ringwald by serenading her at the window of her teenager bedroom.
Because at the heart of it all, we all want to be loved.
Unconditionally.
Passionately.
Devotedly.
Loyally.
Joyfully.
That’s the root of it.
What’s the rub?
That holding onto old wounds, steering from fear, looking at new and existing relationships through the lens of hurt does not lead us down the yellow brick road to the land of Love-Oz.
Our expectation of hurt, in kind, does not save us from hurt.
It just makes hurt a constant.
A baseline.
A pre-emptive wound conjoining an old one, or many old ones.
We simply create the pain of new betrayal without waiting around for the technical betrayal.
And unlike the fix we get from watching it on Netflix, no amount of boom boxing and dragon slaying and grand gesturing ever satisfies the need. It simply creates more hunger for reassurance.
Us humans are pretty fascinating, hey?
But there are bigger and better reasons that this approach is not going to work for us beyond the misery and self torture it causes.
If we don’t re-set our trust we don’t leave room for someone to show up differently for us.
We effectively BLOCK ourselves from the love and goodness we are so desperately in need of.
This is true whether we are in a new fresh clean slate of a relationship or whether we are working from within a marriage or an LTR. It’s true whether we are afraid of being cheated on or taken advantage of financially or of not having our needs met, or of not being seen or heard, or anything other unfairness.
Without the re-set, our new or existing beloved will always be in a state of defense or attack, and conflict will grow and negatively reinforce itself.
Even if you’re hilarious about it. Or cute about it.
Let’s look at a real life example of Mister X who was cheated on in the past.
That sucked. To be fair.
It meant loss and heartache, but also feelings of being rejected and ‘less than’, unworthy of his partner, failing in some way.
So he dumps her, a year goes by, he meets a new wonderful woman who makes him laugh and laugh and laugh, and she is beautiful and successful and a wonderful mother and she thinks he is dreamy, but but but, he worries. He knows that there are other men who see what he sees; who think she is a sexy babe and an incredible catch and some of those men may have more to offer than he does, bigger success, bigger bank accounts, bigger muscles. He tells her this isn’t a you problem, but I’m going to need to look at your text history with that man who has more money than me. And if I could just ask you to explain why you liked that story on Instagram, because after a small amount of extensive deep research into the situation it seems that he also has a fancier career than me and has rescued more than one kitten this year. Also, it would really help to reassure me if you would stand on your head and recite a poem about your undying love for me.
That is a lot of energy that isn’t being directed toward nurturing your current relationship.
You are not showing up in a confident, masculine expression of yourself.
There isn’t much space for your sexy new gal to feel appreciated.
The attention she is getting is negative.
You don’t feel good about the constant pillaging of her devices.
She is going to want to hide things from you, even when there is nothing to hide, because she fears your reactions.
Voila, you have now created really solid reasons to be lied to in someone who never had the impulse to lie to you.
Let’s consider for a moment the person that did lie; yes we all know that this wasn’t the banner way to handle the relationship or her struggles, whether those were about self esteem or the relationship itself.
She handled it from a place of fear, insecurity, avoidance.
How is more of the same going to get you anywhere meaningful?
It won’t.
What will provide safety in your relationship future?
Arming it with the things your last one never had.
Or making sure you’re teaming up with someone who has some support, a practice of self insight, similar values.
Investing in it. Giving it more of those things you want more of.
Let’s look for a moment at a different kind of trust issue. They’ve been married 15 years. In their earlier years together she went through a lot of trauma and developed some tendencies toward emotional soothing through overspending.
Now she has done a lot of work and has corrected many of her habits. But it’s not perfect and it’s never going to be perfect because they have actual differences in their approach to money. Left to his own devices he’d go to the grave wearing a holey t-shirt with a big untouched bank account and she’d ride into heaven in a Porsche wearing a Prada suit.
But, where is the incentive to give up the 3000 thread count sheets for the spare room seasonal makeover if he is emitting an involuntary low whine whenever the Amazon truck slows down in front of their address? If he’s grinding his teeth and looking at her like she’s one Starbucks away from a complete backslide into the land of financial ruin?
There is no getting on top of it this way, no peace for either of them.
So how do you re-set your trust?
I’m not talking about proving trust, or earning trust.
But if I was, I’d say that working hard on your behaviour, getting support and having honest conversations from a place of truth, is a pretty good earn.
I’m talking about changing the mindset and the conversation in a direction that creates safety in the relationship. We feel safe when someone invests in us, when they share meaningfully, when they are vulnerable. But we have to be vulnerable ourselves to get to that place of safety; to let it in and to build it up.
So if you want to re-set your trust in relationship, here are your easy peasy steps:
- Focus on what you want and need in your relationship instead of on what you didn’t get in the past. If you want to feel safe and close, loved and adored, take the time to consider and appreciate the actions and behaviours that instill those feelings in you. Work out steps that can be taken to answer those wants and needs.
- Build positive communication around those needs. It’s okay to ask for reassurance by owning your fears and concerns and triggers such as I find myself struggling when I see the Amazon truck. It would really help me if you shared more often what your plans are with purchases. But you need to be sharing and asking from a supportive place rather than a reactive one. I really appreciate that you have, when you…
- Choose to practice an expectation of good faith in your relationship instead of blame, testing, or attaching meaning to a specific behaviour. You both agree to make honest efforts out of love and respect for one another which means your default position is to assume they are not flirting in that Instagram message or carrying on inappropriately, even if you don’t love the message. I can’t emphasize this one enough. We need to accept that each person is operating in good faith so that if we don’t agree with one action or behaviour or if we feel some kind of way we are not explaining the disconnect by automatically indicting our partner. If we accept their efforts are in good faith we are much more likely to dispel senseless fear and resolve differences of perception or perspective. I trusted you not to do a thing from my list of triggering things slides too easily into blame. Whereas viewing the ‘thing’ from their place of intention allows us to solve a disconnect without attack and defensiveness. If you don’t believe your partner is acting in good faith, if you can’t start from this place, then it’s time take a step back from the relationship, get some help to get back to square one. Do not pass go.
- And last but not at all least, there are steps that can be taken to heal wounds and hurts. We need to take agency over this healing. If we don’t believe that we are worthy of love and loyalty and respect, we’re setting up our partner to fail to prove it to us. If we don’t love ourselves, how can we trust anyone else to?
Much love
Erin