Trust is the building block of a long-term, serious relationship — it’s no wonder that trust issues are one of the most difficult things to move through when they crop up. Is there any way to actually heal trust issues so you aren’t just white-knuckling through them? Here’s what I recommend. 

Are your trust issues in your relationship, or do they come from elsewhere?

When we talk about “trust issues,” we could be talking about any range of things — the fear that our partner is cheating on us, that they’re lying in general, that they don’t love us (or not as much as they say they do, or as much as we love them), that they’re going to leave us, that they’re drinking or using again… the list goes on. 

In all of these instances, a problem with trust could be based on something that’s actually happened in your relationship or past behavior from your partner: they’ve cheated before, they’re relapsed before, they’ve lied about something major. It could be based on something your partner hasn’t done, but previous partners have — you’ve been cheated on several times by toxic exes and now you find it difficult to trust that anyone new won’t also cheat. 

In some cases, trust issues based on past relationships (or even your childhood or developmental experiences) can evolve into a kind of permanent baseline issue with trust that looks a lot like intense, unmitigated anxious attachment. This is a helpful distinction to make, because if the basis of your trust issues are coming from inside the house rather than your external relationship, then no amount of work on your external relationship will make a dent in them. Anxious attachment, endemic trust issues or other mental health concerns relating to relationships can look like:

• Anxiety or distrust that spikes when you undergo stress or difficulty, not your partner’s behavior
• You have trouble explaining to your partner what they could do differently for you to trust them more
• You compulsively ask for reassurance about your concerns from your partner, as often as daily or multiple times a day
• You experience similar patterns in other relationships in other parts of your life, like frequent concerns you’re going to be fired or that your friends are talking about you negatively

If these patterns sound familiar, it may be helpful to seek out support in the form of individual therapy or counseling — a qualified professional can help work with you to assuage some of your baseline fears as well as work on issues in your current relationship.

What not to do about trust issues

When working with less than perfect trust in a relationship, there are some avenues that might feel instinctively obvious. Often it feels like a lack of trust is based in a lack of information, and more information will mean that you feel more trust — and in a digital age, there is almost always more information we can somehow have about our partners. 

It may feel tempting to ask your partner to increase your access to information about their life: giving you their phone password, letting you read their text messages, turning on their location at all times, sharing access to their social media accounts. These aren’t inherently bad things — there are times when it makes sense to know someone’s location or check something on their phone for them — but it’s not a solution to problems with trust in your relationship. (In a relationship with a partner struggling with substances, this could look like monitoring the amount of alcohol in the house, checking their breath or their bank account, searching the apartment for hiding places, etc.) 

Unless the core dynamics that are eroding trust in your relationship are addressed, digital monitoring of your partner may only move goalposts. If you’ve been reading your partner’s texts for months but still don’t feel confident they’re faithful, it’s not hard to begin wondering if they’re using some other communication platform, or cheating with someone at work on Teams, and on and on. Even worse, dynamics of surveillance and monitoring can very easily turn into a relationship dynamic that’s controlling and invasive, becoming toxic or even abusive. 

And in addition to these risks, there’s the fact that monitoring can’t actually fix trust issues; only restoring trust can. If our relationship is only working, such as it is, on the basis of constant surveillance, it’s not a sustainable relationship to be in.

Rebuilding trust over time

So what does restoring trust actually look like? In any relationship, trust grows out of consistent, reliable follow-through over time. It will help if you and your partner can identify the areas where you struggle to trust and what reliability and consistency in those areas would look like (maybe with the support of a couples therapist). 

What does your ideal partner look like, one you feel confident you can trust? What would work as green flags for reliability and security? Maybe it’s more consistent and proactive communication; maybe it’s quiet and consistent actions that reaffirm your place of importance in your partner’s life. Work with your partner to discuss what actions will communicate trustworthiness to you, and watch what happens in your relationship over time as they commit to this project. It may not be immediate, but you may observe that your sense of vigilance begins to shift and relax. 

For this to work, both you and your partner must approach restoring trust in good faith — this means your partner must work to regain trust with patience and without resentment. It also means that you must commit to being open to trusting them; if you maintain an attitude of skepticism or accusation toward your partner indefinitely regardless of their actions, it will introduce even more resentment into your relationship. An inability to let go of distrust or negative assumptions about your partner even when their behavior indicates otherwise over a long and consistent time period may mean you’re bringing in past resentments or attachment issues. If your partner has violated your trust or cheated before and you find yourself unable to let go of anger about this even though you’ve agreed to try again and you concur that they’ve changed their behavior, it may mean you still have work to do around truly repairing after harm or conflict.

Recommended Books:

Not “Just Friends”: Rebuilding Trust and Recovering Your Sanity After Infidelity

The Science of Trust: Emotional Attunement for Couples

Securely Attached: Transform Your Attachment Patterns into Loving, Lasting Romantic Relationships ( Attached Book) (Attachment Nerd)

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