Trust is the sacred core of a relationship. It is the most important thing to build up and to preserve in a relationship. It is to be treated like a sacred treasure. When trust is compromised as a part of a rupture in a relationship, it is hard to repair the rupture. Not necessarily impossible, but hard. When trust is damaged in a relationship, that trust must be rebuilt diligently and persistently. 

To trust someone is to feel as if you can rely on them to act in your best interests. A big part of this in human relationships is about relying on others to capitalize on your best interests, meaning that you can rely on it being in their best interests to act in your best interests. A person’s best interests are the things that are beneficial, right and good for them. And this is unique to every individual person. In a relationship, it is really important to get to know the other person so as to deeply understand them, so you have a picture of what their unique best interests are. This way, you can behave in a way that creates trust and preserves it. This being said, especially in the beginning of a relationship, we may not execute this perfectly all of the time. There may be times when we don’t act in a way that is aligned with the other person’s best interests and so, we will need to repair trust with that person. 

It is important to understand that trust breaches really exist on a kind of sliding scale that depends on the best interests of a specific person. And it is definitely much harder and sometimes impossible to repair big ones. For example, say that a woman cares about her privacy. And say that she is at a party with her boyfriend and he reveals something to the group that she considers to be private. She then loses trust in him. But this is likely to be a trust breach he can repair. But say that this woman cares a lot about her cat and so she is very clear that no one can let the cat sneak out the front door. But he is not diligent about this and so the cat gets out and gets hit by a car. This will be a much harder trust breach for him to repair. But this whole sliding scale may be different for a woman who works for the FBI. If her job and safety depended on privacy and her boyfriend revealed something about her to a group of people, this may be a very difficult rupture to repair, if not impossible because her boyfriend has revealed himself to be a liability in a very serious way to her best interests. In fact, the cat scenario for this other woman may be a smaller trust breach. Best interests are unique to each person and this is one reason that compatibility is such an important part of a relationship. What is in one person’s best interests, may not be in another person’s best interests. One person may easily be able to accommodate your best interests. And another may not be able to do so without comprising their own best interests.          

The first thing you need to understand about a trust breach in any relationship is that unlike other kinds of ruptures, you cannot repair it right away. This is what makes a trust issue a particular kind of hell for both parties. Relationship rupture is painful and it creates insecurity and distance in a relationship. It also enflames protector personalities. You can’t “feel good” if you have a relationship rupture. But when trust has been compromised, you need to prove yourself to be trust worthy. You need to earn back or build back that trust. And a promise to do so is not usually going to work. The person whose best interests were acted against in a specific way, will need to see that their interests will be acted for in that specific way. For example, if trust was compromised in a monogamous relationship because a woman flirted with and began affectionately touching another man, trust would need to be re-built over time with her proving in scenarios where other men are around that she will not flirt with them or be physically affectionate with them. And until this happens, the distrust will be there, like an open wound in the relationship. If she again proves that she cannot be trusted with other men, this wound will get bigger. If she manages to prove she can be trusted with other men, this wound will begin to close and heal and trust will be re-established.

If you have created a trust breach in a relationship, it will take diligent energy and effort to re-establish trust. And this really sucks. It is hard to accept that you have a task ahead of you now and the reality is that you can’t make yourself or the other person feel good right away. This rupture, and the pain and fear it causes cannot be un-done. Like a wound, it will heal and that pain and fear will diminish only by proving yourself to be someone they can trust in whatever specific way instead. All the more reason to avoid losing another person’s trust above all other things in a relationship. With that said, here is what to do to re-build trust. 

1. Become very clear about what their best interests were and specifically how you acted against their best interests. Accept that this rupture (being a trust rupture) is like a wound that now must heal and can only heal by you proving to the other person that they can rely on you to act in their best interests. Commit to this diligent repair process. Commit to proving yourself to be someone they can trust. The very best way to do this, is to demonstrate over and over that you will do the opposite of what you did this time. When you do this, you are essentially saying “I see what hurt you, because I care about your best interests, I will not do it again… Let me show you that I will not do it again”. For example, if the trust breach was about breaking your word, demonstrate over and over that you will not break your word. Demonstrate this by not breaking your word on anything, no matter how big or small. 
   If the trust breach involves changing something you find difficult to change right away, then the trust must be built by proving your dedication to doing so. For example, let’s say that you lost trust because of flying into a blinding rage where you hurt the other person. But you know that this is a problem for you in general because you struggle with rage. You can’t promise that you won’t fly into a rage. In fact, doing so and then flying into a rage, further destroys trust. But you can say that you are going to commit to dealing with your temper. And this may look like going to see a therapist weekly and reading books or watching videos on anger and rage. And committing to an exercise regime that makes you feel more emotionally healthy. And creating a new protocol for dealing with your emotions when they arise etc. If the person sees that you are dedicated to their best interests by seeing the effort you are purring towards something that is in their best interests, they are likely to begin rebuilding trust in you. But you cannot be passive about this demonstration. All this said, the reality is, unless you can be relied on to act in their best interests in a specific way, they should not trust you in that way. For example, if you are someone who talks badly about people behind their back, you should not be trusted to not talk badly about people behind their back. I have to say this because of how many people want to be trusted in a certain area despite not being trustworthy in that certain area. 
2. Communicate all this to the other person. Communicate a clear understanding of what you did and why it was not in their best interests. The trust breach must be acknowledged, as well as the pain and fear it caused. There will be no repair to a trust breach without empathy. You will need to be able to communicate the why behind you doing what you did to damage their trust. This is not the same as making excuses or justifying yourself. It is simply a necessary thing to be able to clearly explain to them why you did what you did. This also helps to ensure that the other person isn’t coming to their own terrible conclusions and making things mean something that they don’t mean. And you cannot say “I don’t know.” If you don’t know why you did what you did, the other person can have no confidence that you have enough control of the root issue behind the behavior so as to be able to trust that the same thing won’t happen again. Communicate a desire to and commitment to acting in their best interests. You must communicate to them a deep level of caring about what is beneficial, right and good for them. And communicate your commitment to doing the opposite of what you did going forward. Tell them what they can specifically expect from you that will help them to re-build trust in you. This is likely to be the opposite behavior from the behavior that caused the trust breach. And then, follow through. Take full responsibility for rectifying the situation and be consistent and reliable and dedicated in your demonstration that you can be relied on to act in their best interests. If you do not diligently follow through on your commitment to re-build the trust in this way, you will have destroyed trust even further than you compromised it in the first place. 
3. In the case that a trust breach reveals an incompatibility (meaning there is no way to act in their best interests in a certain way without compromising your own), you’ve got to put this reality on the table in a way that demonstrates that you care about their best interests. Basically, in this case, you build trust by enrolling them in a kind of problem-solving mode where you both put your energy towards finding a win-win. This may mean re-configuring the relationship and it may mean changes have to be made that are not pleasant or preferred for either party, but they are in the highest and best interests of both people. And then, those changes that accommodate for the best interests of both people, must be carried out. This isn’t the ideal situation. But never the less, it will build trust because it is still an overt demonstration of this: I do care about your best interests and want to be an ally and advocate for them. So, when I become aware that your best interests are in conflict with mine, I won’t just play a zero-sum game. I will lend my energy to figuring out the highest and best scenario that is in alignment with what is beneficial, right and good for you and me. For example, let’s say that two friends live together. One of them is a musician and the other is in college. Let’s say that the musician wakes up late at night to record a new song that popped into his head at 3 am. He wakes up his roommate, who just so happens to be trying to get enough sleep for his law school admissions test and he knew his roommate had this important test before hand. This damages trust in the relationship. But let’s say that the musician realizes that he can’t revolve his creative cycles around the best interests of his friend in these college years. To build back trust, the musician would need to prove himself to be an ally and advocate for his friend’s best interests by recognizing this incompatibility and perhaps the solution the two come to is that they no longer live together. But he may show his dedication to the friendship by finding a great person to sublet and making an effort to spend quality time together when his friend is not in classes.   
4. Prioritize what fosters feelings of togetherness, closeness, connection and emotional intimacy. A trust breach by definition harms the security in a relationship. When relationship security is damaged, there is less tolerance for space in a relationship and feel-good connection needs to be re-established. This means the priority should be spending time together, speaking their love language, reconnecting on an emotional level, maybe also a physical level (depending on the kind of relationship it is). Basically, you want to ask yourself: Aside from building back their trust in me, what can I do that will feed the relationship and make it feel better? What love language can I speak to them that will be most effective? What quality time might we spend together? What experiences might we share? What conversation might we have? It is not a time to go along with business as usual. For example, you don’t want to create a trust breach with your girlfriend and decide to go out for a boys night anyway. You’ve got to demonstrate that the other person and your relationship with them really matters to you.                          

When it comes to trust breaches, the biggest enemy is: Patterns. Patterns in this context meaning trust compromising behaviors that happen over and over again. For example, if you withdraw when someone needs you, this can cause a loss of trust. If this is something you do again and again, especially no matter how many times it is brought up as an issue, you are demonstrating the pattern that you will withdraw and therefore cannot be trusted to be there when the other person needs you. The mind is wired to recognized patterns. And this is smart. If you eat a plant and get sick not once, but two times, even more three times, it is a pattern. It is smart to avoid that plant. If you demonstrate a trust compromising pattern, it is smart for someone not to trust you in that area. And once a pattern is established, it is even harder to re-establish trust. It will not do anything to simply do differently “next time”. You will need to demonstrate a full change in pattern and for an undefined period of time for the person to trust that the pattern has changed.

The truth about trust is, you need to earn trust. Trustworthiness is yours to demonstrate. The vulnerability in a relationship is that the other person has to be willing to allow you to do that. Sometimes this means putting themselves in vulnerable positions to let you build that trust. But unless you can be relied on to act in someone else’s best interests in a specific way, they should not trust you in that way. Trust is one of those things that may take a long time to build up and a long time to get back, despite the fact that it can be lost in an absolute instant. But, with commitment and the willingness to demonstrate that commitment, trust can be re-built.