How to Build Intimacy When You Have Trust Issues in a Relationship

When two people are in a relationship with each other, they have the opportunity to open themselves up to each other and build up a history of fruitful and positive interactions. If you accumulate enough of these positive and fruitful interactions with a person, that usually allows you to continue being open to them, and avoid trust issues.

Trusting other people with pieces of ourselves isn’t an easy thing. For one thing, not everyone is trustworthy, and it isn’t always easy to let other people into our inner world. If there are trust issues in a relationship, such as in a marriage, between friends, colleagues, or family members, it makes that situation difficult to navigate.

But because of the temptation to sexual immorality, each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband. The husband should give to his wife her conjugal rights, and likewise the wife to her husband. For the wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does.

Likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does. Do not deprive one another, except perhaps by agreement for a limited time, that you may devote yourselves to prayer; but then come together again, so that Satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self-control. – 1 Corinthians 7:2–5

What causes trust issues in a relationship?

But what lies at the root of trust issues in a relationship? Many possible causes can account for why trust never blossomed in a relationship, or why the trust that existed in a relationship has faltered or been lost and is now hard to recover. Emotional vulnerability with another person is a fragile thing, and so it can be both hard to form a bond of trust, and far too easy to break it.

In an existing relationship, trust issues can develop because someone’s behavior has generated the impression that they are not to be believed and that one cannot rely on them. Trust can be violated in several ways, including:

The betrayal of infidelity in a romantic relationship

If a person violates their vows and their word to another person, it is hard to continue to believe them and rely on their word to mean anything. The partner that’s been cheated on will lose trust in their counterpart, and that trust will have to be earned back.

Empty/broken promises

The dad who promises to hang out with his son after work to play Legos or go for a bike ride may find it hard to overcome the cynicism that may develop in that child if he breaks those promises.

The friend who borrows something and either never returns it or returns it late may find that the next time they give assurances that they’re good for it, they may be met with a long pause or an outright “No”. When we make promises and don’t fulfill them, it makes the people around us reticent to rely upon what we say. Fear of disappointment can engender deep trust issues.

Spreading another person’s business around

When someone entrusts themselves to you, they are taking a risk. That risk can pay off, but it can also backfire. If someone tells you something in confidence, and that information then starts making the rounds, trust can break irreparably. This betrayal of trust can break different kinds of relationships, whether personal or work relationships.

Some other possible causes of trust issues include the person’s attachment style, which is how a person forms emotional bonds with others. If you have a more secure attachment style, you are more likely to forgive the mistakes of others as well as trust them, while an insecure attachment style makes this less likely.

We can also develop trust issues not because of our direct experiences, but because of the experiences of others. A simple illustration is how we can base our decisions to watch a movie or eat at a certain place because of the recommendations of our friends, or sometimes through reviews by strangers on sites such as Yelp or Rotten Tomatoes.

If a friend has a negative experience with someone and shares that with you, you may find yourself struggling to trust that person, too. In the examples given above, for example, it may be hard for you to trust someone who has cheated on your friend, or sometimes when people experience frequent parental conflict they can begin to fear that their future relationships will follow a similar pattern.

Trust issues can also develop because of negative life experiences such as being rejected by peers or experiencing trauma. If people reject you and you don’t even know the reason why they are doing it, that can make it difficult for you to trust others in later life.

The Impact of Trust Issues on a Relationship

Sometimes, trust issues are localized to particular relationships because of the history that those relationships carry. So, a betrayal in a relationship will cause a loss of trust in that specific person, for example. However, if trust issues become more generalized, and a person stops trusting people wholesale, there can be massive ramifications in their life.

Being able to trust people can have many positive effects on your relationships, and for your peace of mind. If you have a relationship that is characterized by trust, you will find that it is easier to be yourself with the other person, and you feel secure and safe in the relationship.

It may also result in having a sustained focus on positivity while minimizing conflict in the relationship. Vulnerability in an atmosphere of trust allows you and the other person to be closer to one another.

On the other side of that, if you have trust issues, you may find yourself self-sabotaging your relationships and caught up in feeling constantly suspicious of the other person as well as assuming the worst is going to happen.

When you don’t trust others, you’ll find yourself building a wall between yourself and them, and that often leads to unhealthy relationships as there is an emotional disconnect. If you have trust issues, it’s difficult to forgive others when they do wrong, and with that can come feelings of regret, shame, guilt, and bitterness.

Building Trust on a Firm Foundation

When trust has been broken, or you find it hard to develop and build trust with others because of things that happened in the past, there are ways to overcome this and build healthy relationships by cultivating trust and emotional vulnerability.

To begin with, you can learn how to trust others by learning and practicing trusting yourself. Trusting yourself may look like growing in your ability to be self-aware – an awareness of your feelings and thoughts, as well as insight into how you make decisions and interact with others. In addition to this, you can work to build trust by:

Being aware of your trust issues

When your self-awareness alerts you to the presence of trust issues, you can begin by talking about them with the other person in the relationship. This allows you to provide the other person with context for your actions as well as give them insight into how you perceive and interpret their actions. When the other person is aware of your trust issues, they can also help to keep you accountable.

Working slowly

It takes time and concerted effort to rebuild trust. It requires you to open yourself up to others, to give people room to prove themselves trustworthy, and to forgive them when they make mistakes. Be deliberate and make building trust a priority to make significant progress. When you work to build trust, know that it can be emotionally intense and challenging because it may be stepping out of your comfort zone.

Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their toil. For if they fall, one will lift up his fellow. But woe to him who is alone when he falls and has not another to lift him up! – Ecclesiastes 4:9–10

Avoiding seeking control

When we feel vulnerable, one unhelpful and unhealthy way to deal with that is to try and exert control over the situation. None of us wants to be hurt, and feeling the exposure of emotional vulnerability is scary.

You can’t control the behavior of the other person, and you can’t control circumstances. Being able to trust means yielding control and the desire to control. When we don’t, we hurt our relationships because our resultant behavior most often looks like mistrust of the other person.

Getting help from a professional

Being able to understand the roots of your trust issues, exposing the dynamics that result from a lack of trust in a relationship, charting a path forward toward trust, and learning ways to cope and develop trust in others can be a huge undertaking.

Getting help from a therapist or counselor will allow you to explore your questions and learn how to trust other people and build healthy relationships. Contact our office to set an appointment with a professional therapist or counselor today.