Trust Within the Marriage
Trust is a very important aspect of any relationship. Trusting your partner is essential to the marriage. Having a sense of trust leads to increased feelings of security and overall marital satisfaction. When partners do not trust one another, working together as a team becomes impossible.
Sometimes people have difficulty trusting even if their partner has never betrayed them. This may be caused by a variety of things, including past hurts. Perhaps, childhood abuse has led to difficulty trusting again. When children are abused by their parents or other adults they have trusted, it can be difficult to trust people again. Or perhaps the hurt involved a past partner cheating or lying. Such scenarios can cause ongoing relationship problems if they are not dealt with effectively.
Mental illness can cause people to have difficulty trusting as well. Anxiety Disorders can cause people to envision “worse case scenarios” that may involve worries about cheating. Other mental illnesses such as depression or personality disorders can lead to these feelings of mistrust also.
Another possible reason for mistrust is the other partner has been caught lying or perhaps even having an affair. This can cause many feelings, including anger and betrayal. It takes a lot of work to regain trust after it is lost.
Signs of lack of trust may include things such as checking a partner’s cell phone to see who they have been in contact with. It may also include checking emails for voicemails as well. Lack of trust may cause a person to question their partner’s whereabouts or activities. Less obvious signs may include not sharing feelings or not have an emotional connection or sharing intimate secrets.
Therapy can help people with trust issues if they are motivated to work through their issues. If you don’t trust your partner or if your partner does not trust you, consider therapy as an option. Improving trust and dealing with the issues behind the lack of trust can help improve many aspects of the marriage.
I believe that one of the most effective ways to build or restore trust is to do what you say you are going to do at the time that you said you were going to do it. Most of the promises we make are small, but they are all significant. The more promises we make and keep, the more trust grows. To not come through on a promise is a way in which we lose trust. For instance, if you say you are going to be home at 6pm, and are, you contribute to trust. If you come home at 7 or even 6:15, you erode trust. If you say you will take out the garbage and do, you build trust. If you say you will and don’t, you lose some of it. We must be careful not to underestimate how important it is that we are people of our word. If lack of trust is an issue in your marriage, make a commitment to following through on your promises. If trust has been shattered, be prepared for it take a long time for the trust to be restored to the level that it was. That’s the thing with trust: It takes a long time to build, and only a split second to destroy. It takes work to restore it, but no relationship can survive without it.