How to Trust After You Have Been Hurt

Trust issues in a relationship aren’t uncommon. After all, whether it was in your current relationship or in a past relationship, who hasn’t been hurt at some point? I’m sorry to say that part of being human is to be hurt at some point in your life. The point though isn’t to use your past pain as a reason to build a shell around your heart, but rather as a way to learn to be vulnerable and trust again despite the fact you might get hurt. Here are a few tips that you can use to help rebuild trust in your relationship. First of all, have an honest talk about the problem. If you were hurt by your partner, have a conversation with them about how that made you feel. The first part of healing is to be open and express your feelings. Trust issues tend to revolve around secrecy and withheld information. Opening up is a way to reverse this pattern. It can help if your partner apologizes to you, but this should come from them and it shouldn’t feel as if they are being forced to do so. Second, it can also help if you are willing to drop the role of a victim. I understand that having the trust broken by something such as an affair can really do a number on you, but if you really want to heal you need to be willing to let go of the hurt. Don’t be afraid to fully express your emotions. This is healthy and it will keep you from bottling them up and harboring resentment. By expressing your feelings you are helping yourself let go of the feelings of betrayal you might be feeling. Third, start practicing transparency in your relationship. Both you and your partner need to begin being completely transparent in everything you do. Note that even if your partner violated your trust, you need to be transparent too. This is something that both of you need to do together, and not something that you force on your partner as a form of punishment or humiliation. Fourth, realize that rebuilding trust will take time. This isn’t something that can come overnight. You can break trust in an instant, but it takes real time and devotion to rebuild the trust. Continue to practice transparency in your relationship and slowly the trust will start to come back. It will initially be small things, but with continued work it will start to encompass larger and larger things until you and your partner can fully trust each other again. Again, trust is something that takes consistent effort and work to rebuild. If you want to restore the trust in your relationship, you will need to be honest with your feelings, express your emotions and let go of the pain, practice transparency in your relationship, and have the patience to continue working on your relationship until the trust begins to come back on its own. Trusting is something that you will have to constantly work at, but it does become easier with time.