7 Important Tips to Build Trust in a Relationship With Your Partner
Trust generally is the act of placing confidence and being able to depend on someone or something.
Trust is necessary for close relationships, corporate bodies and the society to function and for any person to be relatively happy. Without trust, fear sets in.
Trust is a matter of degree, and certain life experiences can impact a person’s ability to trust others. The issue of trust and relationships focuses on the question of whether the partners are faithful and honest enough to one another.
Being able to trust your partner is the most important part of being in a relationship.
To build trust in a relationship is the most paramount to relationship satisfaction. Lack of trust and honesty is the marker of a broken relationship.
What is trust in a relationship? And, why is trust important in a relationship?
Trust and relationship cannot exist in isolation and if there is a violation of trust, the relationship is bound to go kaput.
Trust is said to be the foundation of every relationship from which a strong connection can be built. Without trust between couples, relationships won’t grow and progress to a deeper level.
About 60% of people are said to be securely attached to their partners meaning that they are there when their partners need them.
Now that you know its importance, are you wondering how to build trust in a relationship?
Here are a few tips on how to build trust between you and your partner and how to earn trust back if your relationship has suffered the blow of trust issues.
1. Communicate effectively
Looking for an answer to the question of how to trust your boyfriend or spouse?
Communication is an important factor in building trust between partners in a relationship. To build trust in a relationship, partners should communicate their problems instead of sitting on them and brooding.
When it comes to communication, do it face to face. Personal and verbal communication strengthens the bond between partners in a relationship.
Don’t decide to communicate over emails or phone calls, but instead make it more personal and direct.
While communicating, make sure you keep eye contact with your partner as researchers have found out that making frequent eye contact during a discussion strengthens the bond of partners.
These small non-verbal cues also help partners underline the importance of trust in a relationship.
2. Don’t keep secrets from each other
How to trust your partner, if you feel there are some secrets plaguing your relationship?
For building trust in the relationship between you and your partner, transparency is key. No delayed honesty or secrets, if you are learning to trust again.
Trust in marriage or relationship needs openness and honesty.
If you are planning on building trust with your partner, you must not plan to keep secrets and be open with your partner. To be a trustworthy partner, you must be honest in all your dealings and conversations with your partner.
Building trust in a relationship and keeping secrets are mutually exclusive.
How do you build trust in a relationship? The simple answer to this is to refrain from keeping any secrets from your partner.
Secrets break up relationships extremely fast, so it is essential, to be honest, and upfront about issues that arise together or individually.
If you are struggling with how to overcome trust issues, practice keeping a non-judgmental, open mind towards your partner.
Having an open mind towards your partner helps them to share their deepest darkest secrets, which is a sign that they trust you.
3. Learn to say no
How to trust in a relationship if you feel stifled by giving in to your partner’s demands, reasonable or unreasonable?
It is not everything that your partner wants is what you are willing and able to provide. You don’t have to say yes every time to everything your partner wants or proposes to do.
To build trust in a relationship it is important to remember that if you don’t like something they propose to do, simply say no. You shouldn’t be subjected to force a relationship.
You shouldn’t be forced to endure what you don’t like. When a relationship is based on equality, it will be easier for both of you to move forward.
So, how to learn to trust your partner? Don’t pander to the whims of your partner just to make them happy or to build trust in a relationship, as it will ruin the relationship.
4. Set boundaries
How do you work on trust in a relationship if one of you is always overstepping boundaries?
Having clear boundaries set together is essential to building trust amongst partners.
So, how to make your boyfriend trust you if he can’t wrap his head around the concept of downtime alone or respectful boundaries? Or perhaps a girlfriend who turns skeptical about your need for time with yourself?
Setting boundaries helps in explaining how much space you’re comfortable with, in a relationship, emotionally or physically.
Boundaries can be about all sorts of things: how much time you need alone, how comfortable you are telling other people about your relationship and so on.
Having an understanding of one another’s boundaries is helpful when it comes to building trust in the relationship.
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5. Don’t make promises you cannot keep
How to build trust in a relationship again, if there are broken promises denting the relationship happiness?
Always keep your promises! Keep your words and your promises. If you promised your partner that you are going to do something, make sure you do it.
It makes much sense that we want to keep promises we have made to our partner, but often the little things you promised get overlooked.
Keeping your promises about little things is as important as keeping your promises about the big things if you want to build trust in a relationship.
When you are late, call your partner and explain what is holding you back, remember to pick up those items from the grocery store and remember to pay the bills on time.
Remember trust is earned with these small acts of thoughtfulness and accountability towards each other.
While these things seem small and might be overlooked, they go a very long way towards building trust in a relationship.
6. Do not cheat on your partner
Do you find yourself asking, how to trust your girlfriend or boyfriend?
It is in the natural tendency of humans to be attracted to more than one person. But this does not warrant you to cheat on your partner.
Here’s the caveat about wanting to build trust with your spouse – even if you are bored with the relationship, spunk it up or else recalibrate your priorities in life.
So, how to earn trust in a relationship? Simply put, you should not cheat on your partner because they are not fun to be with or you do not enjoy their company anymore.
To build trust in a relationship, make sure you tell your partner that you’re not happy with the way things are between the two of you, and sort it out, or else seek professional help, before considering walking out of the relationship.
Because, how to gain trust back after there is a breach of trust, is the most challenging question to answer. It’s best to build and maintain trust in relationships than to later wonder how to trust someone, once you are cheated.
7. Take responsibility for your actions
To build trust in a relationship, own up to your behaviors, actions, and inactions, don’t try to shift the blame to a circumstance or someone else.
It would also be a good idea to try trust building activities for couples like:
- Scheduling fun together
- Engaging in deep, meaningful talks
- Coining terms of endearment for each other
- Asking for forgiveness
- Saying “I love you” more often
- Sharing a gratitude list
- Thanking your partner
- Befriending healthy couples who rub off their relationship satisfaction on you
- Building and achieving mutual goals (exercise, finances, professional success)
These trust building exercises for couples will help cement trust in relationships, and also answers the question, how to fix trust issues in a relationship.
One of the ways to build trust in a relationship is, to be honest with yourself and your partner as to why you made your decisions, actions, and inactions.
Want to have a happier, healthier marriage?
If you feel disconnected or frustrated about the state of your marriage but want to avoid separation and/or divorce, the marriage.com course meant for married couples is an excellent resource to help you overcome the most challenging aspects of being married.
Sylvia Smith loves to share insights on how couples can revitalize their love lives in and out of the bedroom. As a writer at Marriage.com, she is a big believer in living consciously and encourages couples to adopt this principle in their lives too. By taking purposeful and a whole-hearted action, Sylvia feels that every couple can transform their relationship into a happier, healthier one.
