Rebuilding Trust

• Trust is essential to maintaining and building personal and professional relationships.

• Trust is fragile and can be broken in many ways.

• Through clear and honest communication, compassion, and intention, trust can be restored over time.

Trust is the cornerstone of healthy relationships with our partners, friends, family members, colleagues, and the world. It is a key ingredient in our interactions, transactions, and day-to-day functioning. We trust that our food sources are safe. We trust that our teachers pass along valuable lessons to us. We trust our partners, friends, family members, and caregivers will not harm us.

At the core of healthy relationships is trust. Trust is essential to lasting romantic relationships and friendships, and it is key to fostering commitment and loyalty in all manner of social interactions. Trust is essential to supportive and productive relationships. It is the anchor of lasting business relationships, and essential to positive outcomes in therapeutic relationships.

Terms and Conditions

Trust develops over time and is built on a foundation of mutual respect and consistency through actions that exhibit integrity and transparency. Not all humans are equally equipped to trust. The terms and conditions under which an individual can trust others are influenced by many factors, including early childhood role models, family history, trauma, a history of negative experiences — such as intimate-partner betrayal — and core beliefs regarding how the world works, how relationships work, and the possibility versus the probability of harmful intentions and risk of maltreatment or injury by others.

How Trust Is Broken

Think of the Mother Goose nursery rhyme Humpty Dumpty and the egg character who fell off a wall. “All the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t put Humpty together again.”

Trust is often compared metaphorically to a delicate object that can shatter into a million unfixable pieces with a single gesture, slip, or stumble. In this metaphor lies the truth … that trust is something that needs to be handled with care. When we take it for granted or exploit it by acting in ways that do not align with our history of integrity and honesty, we cause a tremendous amount of harm, erode trust, and destroy relationships.

Even in long-standing relationships, trust can be broken both incrementally and through single acts of betrayal. Repeatedly failing to follow through on promises, for example, may culminate in a loss of trust. An affair can shatter the trust in a long-term romantic relationship. Gossip, breaches of confidence, and little white lies, like begging off a social engagement due to illness and then posting party pics on social media that reveal an entirely different story, can culminate in a loss of trust and friendship. Failure to meet deadlines, failure to arrive prepared for meetings, or chronic lateness often erode trust in colleagues and client relationships.

When and Why We Should Consider Restoring It

Just as all relationships are unique, so too are the events and situations that culminate in a loss of trust. While not all relationships are valuable and worth the considerable investment of time and effort it takes to repair a loss of trust, many are.

The reality is that over time, we all make mistakes. At times, we lose sight of how our behaviors are impacting others. We may over-promise, seek validation from others, betray confidence, and fail in many ways to live up to our best intentions.

The good news is that trust is reparable in many situations. After all, even Humpty Dumpty, in some iterations of the nursery rhyme, was able to be put back together again. When we have been let down, lied to, betrayed, disrespected, or deceived … or we have caused others to lose faith in us, we can seek to restore faith and trust in our relationships through clear and compassionate communication and actions.

7 Steps to Restoring Trust

While restoring trust requires forgiveness, it also involves a significant investment of time, attention, and compassion. Here are five steps to repairing and restoring trust for both parties.

Decide to invest the time and energy into repairing a relationship damaged by a betrayal, misunderstanding, or conflicting intentions.

Be accountable for your part in the loss of trust. If you are responsible for betraying the trust, acknowledge and take responsibility for your actions. If you are betrayed, find compassion for a friend, family member, or colleague who has caused you harm. These actions open the door to the possibility of the restoration of trust.

Communicate your desire to talk honestly and openly about the loss of trust and your desire to repair the damage. This requires emotional honesty from both parties and a willingness to move forward in positivity to restore trust.

Talk honestly and openly about the situations, events, behaviors, and incidents that contributed to the loss of trust. Both parties need to listen with compassion and express their feelings, concerns, and impacts through clear and positive communication.

Create new rules, expectations, and relationship guidelines. Clear rules, terms, and conditions provide a mutual roadmap for restoring trust and allow both parties to move forward in positivity towards incrementally rebuilding and restoring trust.

Give your relationship time to heal.