Learning to Trust Again
By Kate
A way forward
The greatest weapon against suspicion and mistrust are honesty and openness. If trust has been broken between you, try and share what it feels like for each of you. This will require a lot of self-control and understanding. Try to share where you are, what your feelings are, without blaming the other. Try to listen, setting aside your own reactions, pain and hurt, with the aim of simply trying to stand in each others shoes for a while.
Recognise there may be deeper issues between you that led to the trust being broken - disappointed expectations, baggage from the past, obsessive behaviour, unresolved conflict. Try and identify these and seek help to face them and deal with them together.
Agree to keep everything out in the open, but also to treat each other with respect. If you know your partner won't like something you want to do and that you've promised to tell them all, then you will think twice about doing it. Likewise it can be hard for one of you to be honest if they get jumped on every time they are.
Does one of you have trouble avoiding lying? Perhaps one of you even thinks lying isn't wrong in certain circumstances. Does one of you have an attitude of "peace at any price", or struggle with the way the other usually reacts, which means you avoid conflict? Perhaps the other needs to change the way they react to things that upset them to make it easier for the other to be truthful. Honesty can also be used as an excuse to be blunt, critical or deliberately hurtful, or to manipulate the other person into accepting guilt. Honesty needs to go hand in hand with respect, love, tact and gentleness.