Building Trust in a Relationship

There are many factors that determine the success or failure of couples, and trust in a relationship is one of them.

Having a solid foundation of trust helps partners feel secure with one another. Being in a relationship without it can cause someone to develop a lot of doubts and insecurities.

Trust is hard to earn and easy to lose, which is why it’s usually one of the most common things that make or break couples, no matter how long they’ve been together. The key now is to understand its role in a relationship: why it’s important, how to go about building it, and what to do to make sure it is nurtured and maintained.

Importance of Trust and Respect in a Relationship

Knowing how to build trust in a relationship is useless if you don’t understand why it has to be done in the first place.

People enter into all kinds of relationships all the time — to seek pleasure, to have fun, or to look for the love of their lives. What differentiates casual dating from the real deal are usually the values that a relationship needs to last for a long time.

Two of these necessities are trust and respect.

Respect for someone is shown when you recognize their value and admire both who they are as a person and what their role is in your life.

When you respect someone you’re in a relationship with, you listen to their opinion and do your best not to upset them. You admire their goals in life and believe they can overcome whatever difficulties they encounter.

Having respect for someone often makes them your equal, and this makes it easier to foster love and earn trust.

Trust in a relationship, on the other hand, is a natural byproduct of respect. If someone obviously holds you in high esteem and sees your worth as a person and a partner, it becomes less difficult to be vulnerable with them. You can trust that their love for you will be there when you need it most.

Trust and respect are only two ways of honoring love in relationships, but they work in coordination with each other. Without respect, trust is impossible to achieve; trust, in return, serves as the coals that keep the fire of respect burning.

Elements of Trust

Earning trust is no easy feat, so you need to know exactly what it requires before you start building and maintaining it in your relationship.

There are just as many elements of trust as there are different kinds of trust. We have the trust between business associates, trust between people and institutions, as well as the trust between friends, family, and lovers.

For trust in a relationship, we can look into these key components:

Capability

The ability to participate in the building of trust is an important factor to consider.

You need to know if you’re capable of both giving and receiving trust in order to better approach this endeavor. Sometimes, people with a great fear of trusting others can find themselves unable to go through the process. They might be hesitant or ingenuine in their efforts, and it will only be counterproductive to the entire point of the exercise.

Consistency

Building trust and respect doesn’t happen overnight. It requires careful and continuous work, and it usually doesn’t result in instant gratification.

To make sure you cultivate trust in a relationship, you need to be consistent in all you do. You must set clear goals and have all your efforts be a reflection of those goals.

Reliability is an important facet of trust, and the last thing you want is to leave your partner with conflicting evidence of your intentions.

Communication

Trust is a two-way street, and it cannot thrive in a relationship that lacks healthy communication.

For couples to know each other’s needs and expectations, they have to communicate with each other openly. This eliminates anxieties and doubts that can stem from leaving many problems unspoken.

When you’re building trust in a relationship, you can’t leave things to assumptions. You need to ensure that your partner feels safe enough to talk to you about their concerns and is dependable enough for you to do the same with them.

Challenges of Dating Someone with Trust Issues

When you break someone’s trust, chances are they’ll find it harder to have faith in others. When this cycle is repeated, they can eventually develop trust issues.

Dating someone with trust issues can be hard in building trust in a relationship. It turns the whole thing into an uphill battle, because the efforts you exert can either not work or backfire.

People with big trust issues can also be more susceptible to conflicts like unreasonable jealousy, self-doubt, and the inability to commit. For couples who are not always physically together, making the relationship last can even seem almost impossible.

Other challenges also include misunderstanding attempts to bond as something with an ulterior motive, refusing to open up, and comparing current partners to exes who treated them badly.

It’s harder for those who’ve been hurt or betrayed before to believe when someone is trying to build trust with them, but it’s not impossible. Yes, it can take twice as much effort, but it can also make the payoff greater and all the more worth the sacrifice.

Activities to Build Trust

The sooner you start working on building trust in a relationship, the easier it becomes since you leave less room for more doubts to emerge.

You need to work in tandem with your partner and practice effective communication so it’s a mutual goal. Lucky for you and everybody else, there are plenty of activities to build trust that are available for couples wherever they are in the world.

Below are some examples:

• Acts of physical intimacy (e.g. hugging, cuddling, sleeping together, etc.)

• Regular asking (and fulfilling) of favors

• Making and keeping of promises

• Sharing of secrets and weaknesses

• Admitting to mistakes and asking for forgiveness

• Trust-building exercises (e.g. trust falls, blindfold games, etc.)

Trust Is Earned

Attraction can be instant, but trust definitely takes time.

Trust in a relationship is especially harder because it asks of couples a continuous dedication to the cause — to the goal of nurturing confidence and faith within the person you are actively choosing to spend the rest of your life with.

It can be a demanding endeavor, with highs and lows and even really tough times that will make you want to quit, regardless of the love you bear for your partner. What’s important is to hold fast. The first step to building trust is to have some for yourself.

After all, some things may be given, but some of the best ones are earned.