How can I trust again?

Has your relationship history been full of people who let you down over and over again? Sometimes our history of disappointment can make it tough to trust anyone new or regain trust with people we’ve known a while. To keep past hurts from harming current and future relationships, we’ve got to understand trust a little differently. First, our brain doesn’t really “trust” people, it just takes them at face value until they hurt us. Then we say, “how can I trust you again?” We believe we have to re-create trust but our brain isn’t sure how it created trust in the first place - because it didn’t. Trust is just a lack of pain… which happens in about zero percent of long-term relationships. We let others down - not because we don’t love them - but because we’re human. The trick for building (or rebuilding) a strong relationship is to be able to separate the hurt from the person and place the anger squarely on the action. We shouldn’t hate our partner for their failings, rather we should talk about the failure and how it is not acceptable in the relationship. Successful relationships work as a team to identify risks and prevent them from happening. When mistakes or bad actions occur, the team regroups and works together to assess what happened and how to prevent it in the future. Taking action and creating safety for conversation will begin to rebuild the trust in your partner.