Everyone needs to be able to trust their partner. When you first enter into a relationship, you are in the trust-building phase. As you get to know each other, trust grows. If trust is broken during the relationship, repairing it is quite difficult. Building trust is never as easy the second time. If you sense that your partner is growing distant from you that is a sign that something is wrong. Maybe they are starting to make decisions without you. If you feel like your relationship is moving in the wrong direction, you want to take action as early as possible. In this section we will analyze how you might have damaged the trust in your relationship and how you can begin the process of repairing that trust. The most important thing now is to not give up hope. Do not give up on your relationship. It takes a tremendous amount of trust in a person to fully accept them into your life. You are extremely vulnerable. He sees you with your guard down, and in your weakest moments. And you get to see him in his most vulnerable moments.
Over the course of your relationship, you are hopefully building up a great deal of trust. You start out with small trust and build up to larger and larger things. When you first go on a date with a man, you are exhibiting a level of trust. Trust that he won t be weird or creepy. As you start to date and spend more time alone together, that trust builds. Allowing someone to be in your house while you are asleep takes a lot of trust. Eventually, you build up to trusting that he won t cheat on you. As your relationship progresses and loyalty to each other is clear, you start to trust that he will keep his word to you. That he will do his part when it comes to paying the bills. You trust that he won t gamble away the rent money. Eventually you trust this man to raise your kids with you and make sure they have a happy childhood. When trust is broken, the relationship as a whole is damaged. Many times the relationship fails to recover from this wound. The problem with broken trust is that it is like an infection. Once your partner catches you in a lie, he will start to question everything you have ever told him. When you repair the trust in your relationship, it can be stronger than ever before. The mistake is giving up hope too soon. We all make mistakes. Now is the time to rebuild and strengthen your bond.
There are some obvious ways that trust gets broken in a long-term relationship, such as cheating or a secret addiction. When something like this rears its ugly head, you can easily feel overwhelmed. There was no time to prepare yourself and now you feel terrible. You are sitting there on the floor, emotionally wounded, and wondering, what happened? When you have committed a betrayal or broken trust, you need to be the one to take action to repair the damage. The first step is to apologize. Most people don t really understand this word. We use it all the time so flippantly. You need to actually regret what you have done. On a core level you want to empathize with your partner. How would you feel if you were on the receiving end? The deeper you dig into your emotions the more heartfelt your apology will become. You want to be honest about your feelings. An apology without honesty will never work. The second half of the apology is where most people really screw up. You have to commit to never doing it again. Most people don t WANT to do it again. That s not strong enough. Your relationship won t last. You have to make a real commitment. If you can t stop yourself from cheating, then you should break up instead.
If it s your partner who has betrayed your trust, it s difficult to advise you on what to do. You know your partner. You have to look at yourself in the mirror and decide if you can ever recover. Do you deserve to be treated better? Or was this a one-time aberration in an otherwise wonderful relationship? When it comes to cheating and large breaches of trust, there is a big difference between forgiveness and repair. You might be able to forgive your partner, but sometimes the trust never comes back. Maybe you are now constantly checking his phone and worrying every time he is home late from work. That is not a healthy relationship. What you want to avoid is shouting and becoming overly emotional. Of course you are hurt, and you have every right to feel that way. But when we get overly emotional, we say things that we can t unsay. We can make the situation worse and even come off like the bad guy if we go too far. You don t want to lose the moral high ground in a moment of angst. When dealing with a large breach of trust you want to take the time to really understand your feelings before you decide whether to save or leave your relationship. Later on we will discuss how to repair minor transgressions, but I wanted to get through the big stuff first.
Here are a few examples of ways you can attempt to repair the trust when you are the transgressor. In each example, we use the name Ricky for your partner. After Cheating On Your Partner I am so sorry that I ve done this to you. I should have never broken your trust you re everything I need and I was too stupid to realize what I had with you. I did it and I regret it so much. I am going to come totally clean with you because what we have is special and I don t want to ruin it. I want you to see me for everything I am and have done and I really hope that you can find it in your heart to forgive me. I want to work with you to fix this and I want to hear what you have to say. I will do whatever it takes to make this right. After A Hidden Addiction Of Yours Comes To Light I know that you are probably disgusted with me right now at how I could have kept that a secret from you for so long. I should have come to you sooner and gotten help. I am so ashamed of myself, but please understand that I want to get better. I want to get through this with you at my side and with your support. Do you have any ideas on what we can do to beat this and get life back to normal?
These suggestions are just guidelines for extreme situations. Don t try to repeat them word for word. Speak from your heart. The three main points you need to get across if you have really betrayed the trust of your partner are the following: 1. You are truly sorry and regret what you have done. Admit your mistake and don t try to make any excuses. Trying to shift blame and excuse your behavior will simply make you look disingenuous and unapologetic, which is not what somebody who has been cheated on wants to hear. 2. Try to get across the message that you really want to make it better and are ready to commit to a plan in order to repair the broken trust. 3. Let them know that you are ready to listen to their opinion and how they feel about the situation, giving them the chance to ask about anything they need to know. This is not the time to hide anything. Only shining the light of truth can save you now. Now, the only thing you can do is hope for forgiveness. If he forgives you, you need to develop a plan together to prevent this problem from coming back. Approach it as a team. Small breaches of trust happen in every relationship. Most people are guilty of committing at least some of these breaches. Often they are the results of miscommunication or mistakes of omission.
When you don t tell your partner that your new friend at work is a man or you don t mention when an ex sent you a message on Facebook, trust can start to slip. You haven t done anything wrong yet, but his feelings still might be hurt. It s these little mistakes that can slowly kill a relationship. Maybe you make promises to come to events that are important to him but you get stuck at work. Over time, he stops trusting that you will show up when he needs you. He will slowly lose his trust in you. Eventually he will start to think of himself as a separate person. He won t feel like he is part of a team anymore. A bit of doubt will start creeping into his mind. He will start to question if he s in a relationship at all anymore. All too common is the stereotypical workaholic parent who constantly promises to go to their daughter s singing recital or bake sale. The problem is, work always gets in the way. Now your child is in tears while you try to explain that work isn t more important than them. Even though your actions disagree. If something similar to this is taking place in your relationship, then you need to take action whether it s your partner doing it or you are the culprit. These issues are easy to solve as long as you tackle them as a team. It s easy to shift into blame mode. He is the one missing all your child s special
moments. Do not get drawn into that broken mindset. It only serves to push you two further apart. The first step is to agree as a couple that there is a problem. Then work on finding a solution together. If he is working too late and missing your child s special moments, maybe he can start going to work earlier in the morning. That way he can put those extra hours in without sacrificing family time. Maybe there are other ways you can support him to make sure he gets out of work on time. The only way to find solutions is to talk to your partner with that goal in mind. Don t waste time with blame. Focus on solutions. If you are the one who is slipping up, then you want to start with a powerful promise. You only want to make this promise if you really can keep it. Don t fall into the trap of constantly making big promises that you can t keep. You need to really let your partner know that if the trust is broken again, there will be consequences. You can set up a punishment and reward system, as a couple. Some of us can only learn that way. Try to share ideas as a couple that will work for you. Each relationship is unique and different people respond to different kinds of motivation.
This gives your partner an incentive to keep their promise. When you combine this with a reward afterwards, it helps to solidify a foundation of trust once again. Making sure you deal with trust issues as soon as possible goes a long way to ensuring that any wounds can heal quickly. The longer you leave trust issues unresolved, the longer the emotional scars take to repair. There are many ways that you can betray your partner s trust, even by accident. Even it if wasn t on purpose, they are still hurt and your relationship may still be at risk. Sometimes you may not even realize that you ve done something to upset your partner and their negative reactions can come at unexpected times. When this happens, you want to immediately try to find the source of the problem. If you wait too long the issue becomes locked in their mind as a permanent failing on your part. As soon as they bring up an issue, make sure to stop whatever you are doing and pay full attention to what they are saying to you. Say something along the lines of: I can tell you re upset with me. I love you and don t want you to be unhappy, so please tell me if I ve hurt you in some way.
If he points out something you did earlier and you didn t even realize it, then you need to isolate what happened. Sometimes things that mean nothing to us can be very significant to other people. If you find that your partner gets upset with you because sometimes he misinterprets things you say, you can train him to start looking for an understanding before getting annoyed or upset. Example: JANE: Our parent-teacher conference is scheduled for Thursday at 2pm. I d really like for you to make it to this one. I m concerned about Leslie s grades. BOB: What are you saying? That I don t care about her grades? You know slammed I am at work these days (Instead of getting drawn into an argument, Jane pauses, and says to him gently ) JANE: Honey, what do you think I meant by what I said? BOB: Look, It s not my fault I didn t go to the last parent-teacher conference! I had meetings with clients all day. I know that I ve been missing important things that are going on with the kids, and I feel badly about it, I just have work obligations I can t get out of
JANE: I know you work very hard, hon, and we all appreciate it. If you can make it to this one it would mean a lot to me because I know you re as concerned about Leslie as I am. We re a team, we re here to support our children and each other. BOB (calming down): I know babe. Sorry about raising my voice. I m going to reschedule some things for Thursday and make sure I m at that conference. That phrase what do you think I meant by what I said? forces him to think about the root cause of why he is upset. In this case, Bob lashed out because of his own feelings of guilt. He feels lousy every time his work schedule forces him to miss a parent-teacher conference, or one of his children s soccer games, etc. Now, because Jane has identified this as the root cause of his frustration, she can remind him that they are a TEAM and she is here to support him, just as his role is to support the family financially. With a few words, Jane transformed a possible argument into an opportunity for them to feel closer. issues of broken trust and miscommunication. You now have the tools you need to deal with
In the next chapter, we re going to reveal all of our best secrets for creating Conversation Magic. You re about to discover some of the most powerful words of all