Consistency is the key to Trust

By: Jonathan Pishner

Anytime you talk about issues within a love relationship, the the topic of trust is likely to come up. Often something has happened that causes the need rebuild or regain trust between love partners. Maybe something really big happened that damaged trust within the relationship. Maybe a lot of small actions over time has made it hard for one partner to trust another.

I often get asked very complicated questions, and “How can I get my partner to trust me again” sounds like it should be one of them.

Surprisingly, it’s not.

The fact is that the most important aspect of trust is reasonably simple. Don’t mistake that for being the same as easy, because trust takes a lot of time and effort. And since it takes so much time and effort, we can be grateful that rebuilding it is simple.

First, what is trust? For today, let’s define “Trust” as: having positive expectations of someone, and believing that those expectations are likely to be fulfilled.

Most of us are lucky enough that we can trust our car. The last time we went out to the car, we expected it to start, and for most of you, it did. We expected this because that’s what has happened the last 500 times we started the car. The same with the bridge you passed over on the way to work. You trusted that it would hold up a bunch of cars that passed over it, just like every other time, and it did today as well.

When it comes to people, we develop trust in the same way. What happens consistently is what we come to believe will happen every time. When we believe that are partner will treat us kindly, or gently, or compassionately, we call that “trust”. When we believe that they will be deceitful, mean, or otherwise unkind, we call that “mistrust”.

If there is a problem with trust, especially one that develops over time in a relationship, then that probably means there has been a problem with consistency in one or more positive behaviors. Yes, there are exceptions to this, but since it doesn’t significantly change your action steps, we won’t explore those today.

So here is your simple, one step guide to building or rebuilding trust: Consistency.

If you want your partner to trust that you will do what you say you will, but you only do so half of the time, that’s not enough consistency for them to trust you.

If you want your partner to trust the words you say, but a quarter of the time you lie to them, even “white lies”, that’s not enough consistency for them you trust your words.

I deliberately picked those two examples, because they are two areas of trust that come up often, and because most people don’t realize how terribly inconsistent they are with their words and actions.

For example, who here has had this interaction:

Your partner: “What’s wrong, are you upset?”

You, clearly upset: “No, I’m fine.” (first lie)

Your partner: “Are you sure? Did I do something wrong?”

You, still clearly upset: “No, everything’s fine.” (second lie)

How many of these interactions do you think you can have before your partner understands that they can’t trust your words, at least as it relates to your emotions? Well actually, they DO trust, they just trust that you’ll lie about them, which is not at all the direction we want to go.

Now, that’s not an attack. Many people have a lot of automatic habits that cause them not to realize that they’re failing to build trust through consistency. That’s why I’ve simplified the formula as much as possible, so that you can start to examine the areas where you contribute to a partner’s difficulty in trusting you.

But do you remember the part where I said it’s simple, but not easy? Well….. if you’ve been inconsistent for 10 years, you’re going to have a LOT of catching up to do. You’ll put in months of consistency before most partners will even start to notice, let alone trust it. Once they notice it, they will still take a while before trust starts to build. So if it takes a while, let me encourage you not to give up too quickly.

Now let’s take this idea and make it actionable. Remember, trust is just a positive expectation of your partner, and believing that expectation is likely to be fulfilled.

How to use consistency to build or rebuild trust:

Pick the behavior that you want to encourage your partner to believe that you will do, always.
Figure out what they probably need to see (or not see) in order to believe that is what will happen. Don’t overthink, this is often way more simple than you realize.
Do the behavior, without fail.

Again, it is simple, but it usually is not easy.

Let’s use our other example from above to show how easy this is to screw up if you’re not careful.

Your partner: “Can you please pick up bread on your way home tonight?”

You, a busy person: “Sure!”

Your partner 9 hours later: “Did you get the bread like I asked?”

You, who didn’t set a reminder: “No, my day was so busy, there was too much going on, I’ll get it tomorrow.”

This happens all the time of course, but it is absolutely a mistake and a problem if you want to build trust. The mistakes here are often one of the following;

– Not prioritizing it enough to write down, set reminder, etc.;

– Thoughtlessly agreeing before thinking about whether you had time to actually do the thing;

– And worst, many people won’t own the mistake, and instead will make excuses and blame everyone but themselves.

Even if you make the first two mistakes, if you want to build trust, you do the least damage if you just own the mistake and apologize. If you blame everything and everyone else, you’ll convince your partner to trust that you never view anything as your fault.

Again, not the direction you want to go.

If things have gone wrong with trust in your relationship, use the formula above. If there is a chance of reviving trust in the relationship, using this will give you a pretty good shot at making big gains to rebuilding trust. This works best with trust issues caused within the relationship though, if someone enters the relationship with pre-existing trust issues, you’ll need to use this formula, but outside therapy assistance might also be necessary.

One of the most important things to remember, if you accept this advice, is that trust won’t develop overnight. If you’ve spent years being inconsistent, or being consistently negative or destructive, it’s going to take a lot of time to turn things around. Don’t give up and go back to inconsistency too early.

If you forget literally every other part of this article, please remember one word, and you’ll be able to reconstruct it from that one word: consistency.

Consistency is the key to trust.

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