What is trust?

Trust, which is the main topic being discussed in this episode, is difficult to define, because it often means different things to different people. Traditionally, it’s fairly mono-normative, because it usually has to do with staying faithful to someone. When reaching out to our listeners, we collected a few different perspectives on what trust can mean:

• “Trust is all about what makes me feel secure in my partner relationships (and family and friend relationships).” 

• “Trust means knowing that I always have enough information to make an informed decision about my life or our relationship.”

• “Trust requires me to feel like I'm being considered when making decisions that would tend to impact me.”

• “Trust means a sense of safety.”

• “Trust means that my partner knows what is important to me in a relationship.”

• “Trust means vulnerability in sharing (and working to heal) things that could affect our partnership — it also means that he can trust ME to be a safe recipient of his vulnerability.”

• “Trust also means reliability, that if someone says they will create an agreement, or show up in a certain way, that they follow through on that.” 

• “Trust is having a reasonable idea of what someone will do, and thus being able to align your actions to theirs.”

• “I need to trust that a partner will tell me their truth. Especially if it is awful or painful.”

Creating and maintaining trust

From our patrons:

• “Trust is established through a combination of words and actions. If someone does something often enough, you can trust them to do it again in the future.”

• “Maintained by doing regular RADARS and having open honesty.” 

• “Sharing what I need to feel secure in the relationship.”

• “Sharing what love language/signs of connection I need to feel this security in reality.”

• “I look for nurturing - have we created a space between us where we can be honest about our feelings? Or a space where we know we can navigate how to drink and still ensure consent? Or a space where we can have heated debates and still respect the other person at the end?”

• “Owning and sharing personal shortcomings with one another.”

• “Creating trust happens when my partner shares something important to them or who they are and I can listen, try to understand, and accept the vulnerability.”

As for the science, the Gottmans mention “Sliding Door” interaction opportunities a lot — turning TOWARDS your partner as opposed to turning away from them. If, over time, you fail to take your partner’s bids and work to understand them in a moment of need, trust will erode. One of their graduate students also came up with the acronym ATTUNE to describe how to foster healthy trust:

• Awareness of your partner’s emotion;

• Turning toward the emotion;

• Tolerance of two different viewpoints;

• trying to Understand your partner;

• Non-defensive responses to your partner;

• and responding with Empathy.

Regaining trust

Dr. Magdalena Battles’ COME FORTH method for regaining broken trust in a relationship:

• For the offender: COME

  • C: Come Clean (Be honest and tell your partner what happened).

  • O: Open yourself emotionally (Show remorse, Ask for forgiveness, do some internal introspection). 

  • M: Make meaningful conversations (Discuss fears and why the breach of trust happened in the first place. Try to figure out and relay the root cause of the issue). 

  • E: Engage in full transparency (BE HONEST, relay information that may have been previously unknown or hidden). 

• For the victim: FORTH 

  • F: Forgive (Might need to happen when you have physiologically and emotionally regulated. Try to approach the other person with empathy). 

  • O: Open conversations (Use “I feel” statements, try not to blame, invite your partner to have safe and open conversations with you). 

  • R: Request what you need (Discuss what you need in order to heal the relationship and try to set some reasonable goals/expectations). 

  • T: Talk about the betrayal to a professional or confidant (Don’t keep your feelings bottled up, but probably talk to someone else before unloading a lot of intense emotions on your partner). 

  • H: Heal yourself and the relationship (This will take time depending on the offense).

Some of our listeners had input as well about how to regain trust that has been previously lost:

• “Acknowledge the pain that it caused and the consequences of the other person’s trauma.”

• “When a breach of trust occurs it requires some grace and space to allow trust to re-blossom. Both folks have to be willing to work on it.”  

• “I think the first step to repairing a breach of trust is to admit that it happened and hear the feelings around it, before jumping into solutions.”

• “Part of trust is asking people to tell me what's going on with them and not what they think I want to hear.”

• “Trust is something that I have to choose over and over again.“

• “If a breach of trust happens, I need to understand why it happened and what it means to them, what led up to it and what their feelings are after.” 

• “I need to see that they don't want it to happen again. So, renegotiations, changing agreements, scripts, expectations are one thing that might happen.”

Creating, maintaining, and regaining trust are difficult, but the more we understand about our interactions and how they affect our perceptions of people, the better. What does trust mean to you in your relationships?