4 proven ways to built trust in a relationship.

Love is not always equalled to trust. As a result, we don’t always trust the person even if we are madly in love with them. This can be a possible reason for many misunderstanding and conflicts. Trust in a relationship is something which can be built and strengthen as you grow in the relationship.

A healthy relationship is also a trusting relationship

Paul J Zak, professor of psychology and Neuroeconomics Studies, described neuroscience of trust. Neuroscience shows that recognition has the largest effect on trust when it occurs from an unexpected way, in a tangible way. Here recognition means to acknowledge the actions and statements of your partner in order to built trust in a relationship. You don’t have to agree with your partner’s action or statement to acknowledge. You can disagree with your partner and at the same time can acknowledge their feelings.

As we go along this article, you will find trust can be developed in different situations. I will not discuss betrayal in a relationship as a part of this article as betrayal is not something absence of trust and I am going to cover it in another article. Out of the many situations and ways, I am going to discuss four ways to build trust in any relationship which works well in real life.

1. Try to connect with your partner

According to Dr John Gottman, Trust in a relationship is built in very tiny small moments. These small moments are a series of small moments and not just a single moment. For example, due to some reason, your partner is sad or maybe not feeling well and you are not aware of it. You have just arrived home and you noticed your partners sadness. As you might be tired you can either simply ignore it or you step ahead and ask “Is everything alright?”. These are the small moments where you need to connect with your partner. By connecting, you are actually building a strong foundation of trust in a relationship.

Although the above-mentioned way looks simple, in every healthy relationship, it plays a very important role to strengthen the bonds between the partners. To connect with your partner literally means, don’t just pay attention during joyful situations but also during day to day task where your partner indeed needs you. Just be there!

2. Respect your partner

How you treat each other? How you make feel to each other? These are absolute direct forms of respect you express towards your partner.

Since childhood, we all are wired to analyse how our parents treat us? How our friends and family members treat us? This is because we are wired to focus on the actions of others. As a kid, we never liked to be humiliated in front of others even by our parents. The same set of thoughts grow as we also grow. Maya Angelou beautifully said in her quote that we usually don’t forget how people treated us.

Andrea Bonior, Clinical Psychologist express her views on respect, to underrate your partner or making them feel less-than or contempt comments, can damage our emotions for a longer period. Basic level of respect is an absolute prerequisite in any form of relationship. And if you are in an emotionally intimate relationship it becomes more important to maintain the basic level of respect.

Remember, trust in a relationship grows even if we could just maintain a good subtle level of basic respect. Its a process of learning and understanding each others area of respect. Your self-awareness level also helps you to enhance the understanding of each other.

Unfortunately, we take close and intimate relations for granted that sometimes we fail to understand the importance of respect for each other. It is equally important to understand and learn expressive ways to convey your respect towards your loved ones.

3. Turning towards your partner helps to grow trust in a relationship

Many times we land in a zone where to avoid a conflict becomes nearly impossible. But what matters the most is what we do after conflict gets over. Zach Brittle wrote in his book The Relationship Alphabet about turning towards your partner after a conflict.

What Zach explains in his book, to understand turning towards your partner you first have to understand what positive connections are there between you two which can be verbal or non-verbal. These positive connections can be laughter(what makes your partner laugh at), what are the core areas where your partner needs your support, be attentive to your partner. These are some of the positive connections which can really help you to turn towards your partner after a conflict or problem.

In other words, after conflict situation gives you an opportunity to strengthen your bonds and enhances the trust in the relationship.

4. Do what you say and say what you can do

Words are very powerful and our actions justify our words more than any other explanation. Since our childhood, we have been learning to establish a connection between words and actions taken accordingly. You and your partner are no exception to this basic human instinct by which we develop the sense of trust in any relationship.

To strengthen the trust in your relationship, first, you should focus on what you are saying to your partner is something which you can easily do. Second, don’t say such things which are really difficult to keep up with. Also, don’t say anything which might lead to higher unrealistic expectations. By doing the first thing you are adjusting and setting the limits to the expectations which are important and can also be easily doable.

While talking about expectations, make sure they are close to reality and also easily achievable. This has a tremendous result to build a strong foundation of trust. By doing this we learn whatever we are saying, we can do the same, as a result, every time we earn a pint of trust of each other.

In conclusion, all the above-mentioned ways might be helpful in some way to take the initiative for your relationship. After all, a healthy relationship is a combination of many of your values which you both should do for each other.