Keys to Building Trust After Broken Agreements

It is common in relationships to talk about rebuilding trust. However, the idea of rebuilding a previous reality is a critical mistake in thinking. When you imagine you need to "re-build" trust, what you really need is to create something completely new. If a relationship has fallen apart, then it is going to require a new foundation to thrive.

The following key distinctions will help build trust in any relationship, but especially in the context of healing from the pain of broken agreements.

1. Ask what it is that you already trust in the relationship. Trust is contextual, and may exist around many things; for example, driving safely, fixing the plumbing, or providing healthy food.

2. Ask what you would like to be able to trust in the relationship. Some examples might be:

• telling the truth

• managing anger rather than giving vent to it

• listening with attention and curiosity

• identifying reactivity when it comes up

• taking responsibility for the impact one’s behavior on another

• working through judgments and get to feelings and needs

• expressing love in a way that meets the need for love

• seeing each other's core goodness

• engaging in repair

• offering empathy

3. Once you have named the kind of trust you want to build, check-in with yourself about whether and how you are blocking or cultivating that trust.

Let's look at an example with trust building around telling the truth.

Let’s imagine an example in which one person dares to share the truth of painful feelings and unmet needs, and the other person reacts with their own pain and unmet needs by defending or dismissing what they hear and countering with complaints. The conversation quickly spirals down into a contest in suffering. Telling the truth in this kind of dynamic does not create trust.

If you are asking someone to tell the truth, ask of yourself, "What am I doing that makes it easy or difficult to express the truth?"  

Truth telling happens at many levels. If, for example, the mundane truth telling of present moment experiences is embraced, trust is built for more complex or vulnerable truths to come forward.

For instance, when someone you care about is expressing their truth about hating their job, you have the opportunity to respond with compassion rather than offering advice, making your own complaints, or telling them to be thankful they have a job. Responding to another’s sharing with your own agenda, advice, opinion, analysis or judgment, blocks the building of trust. Just a simple response such as, "Sounds like you were miserable today at work, huh?"  builds a safe space for sharing.

In an instance like this, it is also helpful to make very specific requests about what would create connection for you as you receive their sharing. For example, as your loved one shares about events from work, you might ask them to also share how they felt during those events. When you make these types of small and specific requests consistently and the other person responds willingly, trust that sharing builds connection is built over time. 

On the other hand, requests that sound like: "be more open,” “talk more about your internal world,” “be more considerate,” “be less reactive,” etc. usually aren’t helpful because they don't point to a specific and doable action in the present moment. Instead, ask yourself: "If connection and trust were being built right now, what would be happening? What exactly would I and/or the other person be saying or doing?" Imagining the scenarios in which your need for trust is already being fulfilled helps you to ask for what you want rather than what you don’t want.

Essentially, building trust involves a conscious negotiation in which each person takes responsibility for what they want by identifying their needs and making specific and doable requests that open a negotiation that reveals what’s possible in that particular relationship at that particular time.

Practice

Take a moment now to consider a close relationship in your life. What do you already trust? What you would like to build more trust around? Ask yourself if there are any ways in which you are blocking the building of that particular kind of trust. What would it look like if that trust were being built? What specific requests would you like to make of yourself and/or the other person?