Building trust is vital for a healthy relationship.

Without trust, a relationship can't grow and risks failing.

Aladdin reaching his hand out. He asks Princess Jasmin,

So how do you build trust with your partner?

Keep Your Promises

Making commitments or promises to your partner that you don't intend to fulfill will only lead to broken trust.

Only make promises that you intend to keep!

Mike from Stranger things telling Eleven:

Choose commitments and promises that are doable and realistic to ensure that you're capable of fulfilling them.

Strive to fulfill the promises and commitments that you make to your partner.

Be Honest

Trust is built by honesty, and broken by dishonesty.

Telling lies will only cause your partner to lose trust in you.

man saying

To build trust with your partner, strive to be honest and avoid telling lies. Even white lies can cause problems!

Be Vulnerable

To trust someone, you need to allow yourself to be vulnerable with them.

Person made of a white blob with caption

  • Express how you feel

  • Reveal your secrets and fears

  • Share your intimate thoughts and feelings

Withholding these thoughts and feelings will lead to secrecy and mistrust between you and your partner.

Communicate Clearly And Honestly

A man saying,

Being clear about the commitments and promises you make will help ensure you can meet them. You can also avoid a loss of trust if you fail to meet those commitments.

Build trust with communication by:

  • Openly and honestlycommunicating your expectations for your partner

  • Listening to your partner's expectations of you

  • Informing your partner beforehand when you don't foresee meeting a commitment or promise

Quiz

Mason promised their partner that they would take them to a movie on Friday. It's now Thursday and Mason suddenly has to work Friday evening. Mason should:

Be Consistent

Trust in a relationship is built and maintained over time, not over one occurrence.

There are countless opportunities in a relationship to build trust, and likewise, to break trust.

Failing to keep a couple of minor commitments or promises may not break the trust in your relationship, but doing so continuously or failing to keep major commitments or promises definitely can.

consistency

Repair Trust When It's Been Broken

When you or your partner breaks trust, it needs to be repaired.

Two animated people on a beach with caption

Repair broken trust by:

  • Taking accountability and apologizing

  • Practicing forgiveness

  • Discussing what broke the trust and how to fix it

  • Changing your behaviour to not repeat what caused the loss of trust

Quiz

Mason needs to rebuild trust with their partner for cancelling their movie date. Mason should:

Take Action

caption says

Are you working on building trust with your partner? If so:

License:

Your feedback matters to us.

This Byte helped me better understand the topic.

Get support to take action on this Byte