Learning to Trust Again

Trust is a fundamental part of relationships. Trust refers to our views about how reliable, genuine, and honest we believe others are. People may hold widely different beliefs about how trustworthy others are, from “nobody can be trusted” to "everyone is trustworthy.” Experiences in previous relationships—from childhood caregivers to recent romantic partners and friends—can shape our views on trust. Unfortunately, extreme thinking about others’ trustworthiness can backfire when put to the test in real relationships. For example, if “nobody can be trusted,” then it can be nearly impossible to develop close relationships. However, if “everyone is trustworthy,” we may be more likely to find ourselves in unsafe relationships where we are more likely to be hurt.

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Changing Your Perspective

Instead of thinking of trust as either fully present or fully absent, it can be helpful to define the various ways you depend on people (or would want to depend on people) and then ask yourself whether different people in your life can be counted on in these ways. For example, trusting might look like reaching out to someone for support when you’ve had a hard day (and believing that they’ll be there for you). Or, it might look like sharing personal information with someone knowing they’ll keep it private. Trust could also manifest as believing they’ll pay back the money you lent them or assuming they’ll keep your kids safe if you asked them to babysit. Typically, this exercise shows that when you really think about it, most people in our lives can be trusted in at least some capacities. Across all the relationships in our lives, we can get our needs met ("I go to my brother when I need a ride to the airport, I go to my mom for babysitting, I go to my best friend for emotional support").

Reflecting on the trustworthiness of each person in our lives across different domains can reduce black-and-white thinking (i.e., “nobody can be trusted ever” versus “everybody can be trusted always”) and allow us to calibrate our trust behaviors in ways that lead to interpersonal outcomes that are in line with our values.

Changing Your Behaviors

If you have a history of relationships not meeting your needs, you may prioritize behaviors that make you feel safe in the short term. The short-term safety you feel when you engage in protective behaviors can be extremely powerful. When a behavior makes you feel safe or in control, even just for a little while, it is reinforced. In other words, when a behavior “works” (i.e., makes you feel safe for even a moment), you will want to do it again. Unfortunately, many behaviors that give us short-term relief in relationships have negative long-term consequences. It’s really hard to pursue your relationship values without stepping outside your comfort zone. Moreover, if you continue to use unhelpful behaviors, it is difficult to maintain stable relationships, which may reinforce problems with trust (and make protective behaviors even more likely).

By choosing to behave differently than you usually do in relationships, you will likely feel uncomfortable/exposed at first—but the payoff is in the long run. For example, imagine you feel anxious that your friends might be hanging out without you; you want to text them every five minutes until someone responds, but you resist the urge. In the short term, it might be nerve-wracking to simply wait to hear from them. In the long term, however, you have the chance to learn that your friends will eventually reach out to you (and you’ll know it is because they care about you, not because you nagged them). By stepping outside of your comfort zone over and over, you will begin to gain confidence in your relationships and get what you want/need, making you less likely to rely on the negative behaviors that can take you off course.

Sometimes trying out new behaviors in your relationships takes advanced planning. For example, you might set a goal to be honest with a new partner about your history of sexual abuse, rather than making an excuse to leave before getting intimate. Or, you might plan to have a tough conversation with an overbearing friend. You could even try making plans with friends even though you’ve been depressed and don’t really feel like it.

If the idea of facing these situations head-on makes you feel nervous, that makes sense. It can be scary to change your behaviors in relationships, especially when those behaviors helped you feel safe. However, let’s take a look at what you might gain. These "behavioral experiments" offer the chance to learn that you can actually count on other people to give you what you need and respect your limits.

Summary

The more you give people a chance (by changing your behaviors), the more you will learn to trust. And the more trusting you are, the less likely you are to engage in unhelpful relationship behaviors. These learning experiences will free you up to pursue your values in your romantic relationships, family relationships, and friendships.