How To Rebuild Trust With Your Wife

Broken Trust Stock Image

Mistakes happen in every relationship. Some mistakes are minor and cause little to no harm while other mistakes, even ones that seem small, can cause major fractures in your relationship and even end some marriages. There is good news though because with few exceptions trust can be rebuilt and restored in almost every relationship.

If you did something to damage or destroy trust or someone damaged or destroyed your trust then it must be restored if you want a shot at rebuilding the relationship. How you go about rebuilding trust requires a change in perception. Trust always comes with assumptions and expectations and we can always find excuses not to trust a person again.

“How can I trust her when she is always doing this or that?”

“Well if she doesn’t trust me why should I trust her?”

“I see no effort on their part to rebuild trust”

For most of us, we look at trust as a two-way street and we refuse to trust a person until we see signs that they are trusting us. We have this perception that trust must be equal to be fair. What happens though is that once you stop trusting the other person then the other person stops trusting you and will make that the excuse. In other words, once trust has knocked out of wack for one person it will probably never go back to a healthy trust balance again because you are waiting for the other person to make an effort and they are waiting for you to make an effort to restore trust. It’s a catch 22 if you will.

We as humans seem to have this idea in our heads that life and everything in it needs to be fair or tilted slightly in our favor and we will only do things based on what we perceive as fair to us. Once we feel that we are not being treated fairly then our internal firefighter is triggered and we tend to react poorly and do stupid things.

“It’s not fair that she is always on her phone”

“It’s not fair I am always doing the housework”

“It’s not fair she cheated on me and how can I…”

Why does everything have to be fair for us to trust another person or to begin to rebuild a relationship? The answer to this question is buried deep down inside of you and likely started long before you met your partner and you were a small child. This is the same child that shows up whenever you feel emotionally stressed or feel life is not treating you fair and I like to call this child your firefighter. Whenever you find yourself in a situation where you feel you may get burned your firefighter comes to the rescue to protect you as you bounce between freeze, fight or flight modes. Your firefighter will always be with you but you need to work on controlling it and recognizing that it is there because of suppressed hurt. You must do the emotional work to and get a clear understanding of where it is coming from for you. Once you have done this then you can begin to look at trust again and how to start trusting those that you feel have damaged the trust between you both.

Trust is not just one-sided though as it has many faces and covers many different areas. To rebuild a relationship you must look at the 4 different areas that rely on trust and repair them in the following order:

• Communication trust. Before you can work on any other area you must rebuild communication trust first. Communication is essential in an intimate relationship and without it, the relationship has no hope.
• Commitment trust. Simply put you better make sure your works align with your actions. Do what you say you are going to do or don’t say it at all. Men please heed my advice and stop talking so much as well. Just shut up. Often men will over promise and under deliver and women judge men based on our actions and not our words. If your words and actions align then trust is slowly rebuilt.
• Masculine trust. A man has to learn to trust his wife unconditionally regardless of what she says or how she acts. You can only control one person and that person is you. You also can’t control what is happening to you but you can control how you react to it. Work on those areas and get honest with yourself. Until you can demonstrate, through your actions, that you fully and completely trust your wife her trust in you will never be fully restored. Yes, I know this doesn’t seem fair but learn to lead by example no matter how difficult it may seem.
• Reliability trust. The problem that caused the trust between you and your wife to breakdown or evaporate is that you have been doing what you thought your wife wants or needs throughout your marriage. However, you were not fulfilling her needs because you were not reliable and have not been working on your marriage as long as she has been. Reliability trust can only be restored by hearing, seeing, and understanding what the needs of the marriage are and then fulfilling those needs. When the needs of the relationship are met the relationship can flourish and affairs are also avoided.

While restoring trust in your marriage may seem like a daunting or impossible task you need to realize it is not impossible to do but usually requires you to check your ego at the door and start doing some serious work on yourself. Be the change you want to see in your marriage.