375 - Building a Foundation of Trust
What is trust?
Trust, which is the main topic being discussed in this episode, is difficult to define, because it often means different things to different people. Traditionally, it’s fairly mono-normative, because it usually has to do with staying faithful to someone. When reaching out to our listeners, we collected a few different perspectives on what trust can mean:
“Trust is all about what makes me feel secure in my partner relationships (and family and friend relationships).”
“Trust means knowing that I always have enough information to make an informed decision about my life or our relationship.”
“Trust requires me to feel like I'm being considered when making decisions that would tend to impact me.”
“Trust means a sense of safety.”
“Trust means that my partner knows what is important to me in a relationship.”
“Trust means vulnerability in sharing (and working to heal) things that could affect our partnership — it also means that he can trust ME to be a safe recipient of his vulnerability.”
“Trust also means reliability, that if someone says they will create an agreement, or show up in a certain way, that they follow through on that.”
“Trust is having a reasonable idea of what someone will do, and thus being able to align your actions to theirs.”
“I need to trust that a partner will tell me their truth. Especially if it is awful or painful.”
Creating and maintaining trust
From our patrons:
“Trust is established through a combination of words and actions. If someone does something often enough, you can trust them to do it again in the future.”
“Maintained by doing regular RADARS and having open honesty.”
“Sharing what I need to feel secure in the relationship.”
“Sharing what love language/signs of connection I need to feel this security in reality.”
“I look for nurturing - have we created a space between us where we can be honest about our feelings? Or a space where we know we can navigate how to drink and still ensure consent? Or a space where we can have heated debates and still respect the other person at the end?”
“Owning and sharing personal shortcomings with one another.”
“Creating trust happens when my partner shares something important to them or who they are and I can listen, try to understand, and accept the vulnerability.”
As for the science, the Gottmans mention “Sliding Door” interaction opportunities a lot — turning TOWARDS your partner as opposed to turning away from them. If, over time, you fail to take your partner’s bids and work to understand them in a moment of need, trust will erode. One of their graduate students also came up with the acronym ATTUNE to describe how to foster healthy trust:
Awareness of your partner’s emotion;
Turning toward the emotion;
Tolerance of two different viewpoints;
trying to Understand your partner;
Non-defensive responses to your partner;
and responding with Empathy.
Regaining trust
Dr. Magdalena Battles’ COME FORTH method for regaining broken trust in a relationship:
For the offender: COME
C: Come Clean (Be honest and tell your partner what happened).
O: Open yourself emotionally (Show remorse, Ask for forgiveness, do some internal introspection).
M: Make meaningful conversations (Discuss fears and why the breach of trust happened in the first place. Try to figure out and relay the root cause of the issue).
E: Engage in full transparency (BE HONEST, relay information that may have been previously unknown or hidden).
For the victim: FORTH
F: Forgive (Might need to happen when you have physiologically and emotionally regulated. Try to approach the other person with empathy).
O: Open conversations (Use “I feel” statements, try not to blame, invite your partner to have safe and open conversations with you).
R: Request what you need (Discuss what you need in order to heal the relationship and try to set some reasonable goals/expectations).
T: Talk about the betrayal to a professional or confidant (Don’t keep your feelings bottled up, but probably talk to someone else before unloading a lot of intense emotions on your partner).
H: Heal yourself and the relationship (This will take time depending on the offense).
Some of our listeners had input as well about how to regain trust that has been previously lost:
“Acknowledge the pain that it caused and the consequences of the other person’s trauma.”
“When a breach of trust occurs it requires some grace and space to allow trust to re-blossom. Both folks have to be willing to work on it.”
“I think the first step to repairing a breach of trust is to admit that it happened and hear the feelings around it, before jumping into solutions.”
“Part of trust is asking people to tell me what's going on with them and not what they think I want to hear.”
“Trust is something that I have to choose over and over again.“
“If a breach of trust happens, I need to understand why it happened and what it means to them, what led up to it and what their feelings are after.”
“I need to see that they don't want it to happen again. So, renegotiations, changing agreements, scripts, expectations are one thing that might happen.”
Creating, maintaining, and regaining trust are difficult, but the more we understand about our interactions and how they affect our perceptions of people, the better. What does trust mean to you in your relationships?
Transcript
This document may contain small transcription errors. If you find one please let us know at info@multiamory.com and we will fix it ASAP.
Jase: On this episode of the Multiamory Podcast. We are talking about building and maintaining trust in our relationships. What does it mean to trust your partner and how do you establish that trust, and then if that trust is breached, what can you do to make sure that it's reestablished? We're going to talk about all of that and more on today's episode.
Emily: Yet again, I asked our absolutely wonderful Patreons who are just a wealth of knowledge, I so appreciate it just some questions about trust because trust is a big fricking thing. It's a big topic.
Dedeker: It really is.
Emily: Truly large.
Dedeker: Yes, last time we did an episode about building trust was 155 back in January of 2018.
Emily: Wow. Five years ago.
Dedeker: Do you feel full of trust since then?
Emily: That's an interesting and complicated question. Maybe for my partners, partner, and friends, but may be less for the World at Large.
Dedeker: Oh, I never started with any trust of the World at Large.
And definitely not for our government and stuff that but yes. Things like that but yes, trust is just, it is difficult to pinpoint exactly what I wanted to discuss and distill down within this episode. For the purposes of this episode, I wanted to answer or try to answer three different questions. Jase talked about those in the intro, but essentially asking the question first, what does trust mean to you, or what does it mean in general?
Then second, how do you and your partners create and maintain trust throughout the course of your relationships? Then third, if you feel that you have had a breach of trust in your relationship, how did you go about reestablishing trust with that partner? These are the questions that I posed to our Patreons and they add some really great responses. For the two of you, and maybe I can do some soul searching here as well. Can we talk about some of these?
Jase: I think that this one goes back to something that I actually used to talk about a fair amount, years and years ago in the earlier days of the show, and haven't in a while, which is this concept of congruence which effectively means, well just that you line-up that the things that you say you feel line-up with how you act and how you come across that the things you say that you'll do, that you do those things just basically that there's this sense of you're a safe person, because I know at least to a certain extent what to expect from you.
That doesn't mean I know what you're going to do or what you're going to think about any given thing, but just that it lines up. It's like if you said you'd this thing, I don't find out later you're hating that thing or that you say you're not worried about something, but then you act really angry about it or something like that.
For me, it's about, I think that just lining up and being able to believe that something you say is true and not just, "I'm going to do what I say I'm going to do," but also that's accurate, that that's an accurate reflection of what you're actually feeling or experiencing something that. That's why I would take it a little bit deeper than just the normal answer of, you're going to do what you say you do.
Dedeker: Yes. No, that makes a lot of sense. I think for me in recent years, it's really come to be attached to basically just, when you make decisions, when my partner is making decisions, do you still consider me in those decisions? Even if I'm not in the room with you, let's say. Basically, do you still have my best interest in mind when you're going about your day-to-day life?
That I think doesn't necessarily mean, oh, you always put me first or you consider my needs first and all things, of course, I think it's important for my partners to consider their own needs first and then think about everything else connected to them but I suppose this idea that, that I don't have to be constantly advocating for myself or reminding you to take care of me or to consider me that I trust that there's this certain amount of room in your brain and in your mind, that's still keeping the relationship safe, I suppose.
Jase: Throughout that whole thing in my head is just playing that song, Tim McGraw. It's an old Taylor swift song, I think, but with the chorus is when you think Tim McGraw, I hope you think of me. It's just, that's like, I just hope that you're thinking of me whenever you're considering whether or not--
Dedeker: It's not like a breakup song though or is it not?
Jase: I don't know if it's a breakup song or not, it has a little bit of a melancholy aspect to it, but anyway. Yes, just that, I hope you think of me during these other situations, such as listening to Tim McGraw.
Dedeker: Such as when my partner goes on a date with Tim McGraw, I hope that he's still at least thinking of me.
Jase: Yes, yes, exactly.
Dedeker: At least a little bit.
Emily: Because I love Tim McGraw so much.
Dedeker: I know Tim McGraw can be very bewitching and very distracting and I just want to make sure they still make some good decisions.
Emily: There you go. Yes. No, I love those answers, I think yes this idea that A, you're going to do what you say you're going to do and you will act in a way that is intrinsic to your values and your belief system as well, and that you also have me and mind in terms of knowing that what you're doing is going to be hopefully aligned in some way with my needs and wants as well. I like that idea. Both of what you said, and then the creation of all of that is the next step.
Dedeker: Yes. How do you and your partners create and maintain trust throughout the course of your relationships? I don't know. I think for me, this reminds me going back to our episode, we did with John Howard, the more than words episode where I know his whole thing is about needing to feel like connected before we can communicate. I do feel like I'm the person where, I need your words first, honestly. I need to feel like you are communicating honestly, vulnerably in a direct and forthright way, I suppose.
I suppose that's a little bit of the hoop that I want people to jump through before I can trust them is I want to feel, I don't know, I want to feel you're forthright and that you're able to communicate and you're able to be vulnerable. I think that's the foundation for me, beginning in a relationship. Then I suppose throughout time, it's just, then I guess congruence comes into it then, do you do the things that you say that you're going to do? Do you move to the values that you say that you have?
Jase: I also think trust is interesting in terms of how it develops over a relationship where there might be certain areas where I have a lot of trust with a partner based on my experience with them and other areas where I don't, and that not having trust in certain areas, at least for me, isn't always a deal breaker.
It might change the way that I approach that relationship or change the degree to which I'm willing to be entangled in that relationship or just how seriously I'm going to take the things that person says. I think back to a time when a friend and I, we were dating two different women who were friends with each other, frenemies with each other really.
Dedeker: Oh boy.
Jase: Both of us in talking to the person that we were dating would get certain stories about their lives or about things that happened. Then when he and I were hanging out and would share, "Oh yes, we were talking about this. I heard this, it was interesting." We would find that their stories don't line up with each other, that somebody was lying often always, actually. Pretty much every single time there was some piece of the stories that was like, "That's not what I heard from this other person who's their friend who said that about where they came from," all sorts of little details.
It was this weird thing of like, "Huh. Well, okay. I can still enjoy this relationship, but that does change the way that I might entangle with this person or how much trust I'd be willing to put in them," but it was still a fantastic relationship and I'm still in touch with her today and it's great but I also don't put a lot of trust into any of the stories that she's ever told me.
Emily: I think when you're in a non-monogamous relationship, I like that
idea that your level of trust can be different based on the partnership that you're in. It may look different from one partner to the other, and that's okay. It may change your level of entwinement or not with that person. That is very interesting. The last question, the breach of trust in your relationship, if that happens, how do you go about reestablishing trust?
I find that trust sometimes gets breached when expectations or doing something like, for instance, trying on non-monogamy and trying it for years and then all of a sudden getting very upset about it, after the fact. That can break trust, for instance, in saying, "Okay, No, I never wanted this, or whatever."
In trying to do something to make your partner feel good it, essentially, backfires because it's not something that you really want. I think trust is a two-way street and you have to be honest and trustworthy yourself. Make sure that you are in keeping with the things that you want and the things that you believe in and not make it not known to your partner that actually you want something that is different than what the two of you are doing.
Jase: It reminds me of something, again, I think we talked about a long time ago on the podcast. That many years ago I had a therapist who really liked the concept of safe or unsafe people, rather than nice people, or things like that. This is based on a book called Safe People, but I actually liked her interpretation of it better than when I actually read the book.
One of the things that she would talk about was this idea that a safe person, which effectively equals a trustworthy person, I think, or at least to a certain extent, it's a congruent person, is that they're not always nice but that it's honest and you know where you stand. As opposed to that sometimes, like, "Oh, I'm being nice." In being nice, like you said, Emily, I've ended up being dishonest and not fostering trust with this person.
Emily: Totally.
Jase: That's something that's really stuck with me all these years later. I'm not always great at doing it because I like being nice and having people feel good, but it is an important thing to keep in mind because I do think that's really valuable to establish that congruence and honesty and trust and safety over just being nice all the time.
Dedeker: We're going to spend this episode attempting to answer these three questions, not just based on our own opinions, but based on research and also based on what our Patreon community had to say as well. Let's start with that first question. What is trust? If we look at the traditional, fairly modern normative lens, trust usually just means staying faithful or that your partner's not going to cheat on you.
Emily: Yes, a lot of people on Earth have said that, for sure, when you type in, "What is trust?" It comes up with faithful, essentially. Then there are also other definitions that dive more into the things that the three of us said at the beginning of the episode.
Jase: Gosh, I don't want to go on a whole tangent about this. It really frustrates me that that is the answer because I think, in reality, in terms of people's actual experience of having good or not good relationships based on trust, I think that the faithfulness of it is really a very small part of this much bigger thing, which is hopefully what we'll actually be talking about in this episode. Is that's more of a small little symptom of something much bigger, but that we get so focused on that because that's the modern normative idea.
That's the only thing that matters. That's the one most important faithfulness or promise or whatever, I don't know. Anyway. In looking at this, just how big a deal trust is, was super interesting. In a 2011 article in Greater Good magazine, Dr. John Gottman wrote that, here's the quote, "On Psych Info, the database that psychologists use to do literature review, there were 96,000 references to trust. It turns out that when social psychologists ask people in relationships, what is the most desirable quality you're looking for in a partner when you're dating, trustworthiness was number one."
Not being sexy or attractive. It's trust. That's really interesting to me that it's such a big deal and yet, as we've experienced it's a little hard to pin down and define. Sometimes people try to define it and they miss the mark. It is a little more nuanced than that, which is what we get to get into today.
Emily: People want to have it, that's for sure, 96,000 and, counting times that was in 2011, so it's probably like exponentially bigger now. A lot of times trust is quite specific to the individual. It is hard to find this all-encompassing definition. I wanted to ask our Patreons what they thought about this, and so here's some of the things that they had to say. They said things like, "Trust is all about what makes me feel secure in my partner relationships and family and friend relationships."
Also, "Trust means knowing that I always have enough information to make an informed decision about my life or our relationship." I love that one. I think that's really, really interesting, and a very specific distinction. Just simply that you have enough information. "Trust requires me to feel like I'm being considered when making decisions that would tend to impact me."
.
Emily: Dedeker had a point about that. Yes, exactly. Also, "Trust means a sense of safety," which is what Jase said.
Jase: Kind of the safe people thing. Interesting.
Dedeker: More than we got from our Patreons, "Trust means that my partner knows what is important to me in a relationship." I think that makes sense. "Trust means vulnerability and sharing and working to heal things that could affect our partnership. It also means that he can trust me to be a safe recipient of his vulnerability."
I think I touched on that one also with the communication piece of I can trust that someone's going to be able to communicate vulnerably. "Trust also means reliability. That if someone says they'll create an agreement or show up in a certain way that they follow through on that." The congruence, the consistency piece.
Another one here. "Trust is having a reasonable idea of what someone will do and thus being able to align your actions to theirs." Again, I think with the consistency, maybe predictability. This last one, "I need to trust that a partner will tell me their truth, especially if it is awful or painful." Again, driving home that sense of even if it's not nice to hear you want to be able to know that you're still going to let me hear it.
Jase: I think, to go back to the one you said a couple ago about trust meeting reliability, that if someone creates an agreement that they'll show up in a certain way, that they'll follow through on that. I think another interesting dimension to add to that is, because we're bad predictors of what we will do in the future as people, just as human beings we're not great at it. We're okay but we're not great at always predicting how we're going to behave in a future event, especially if we haven't experienced it before. Well, some studies actually say that we're even worse if we have experienced it before.
Emily: Interesting.
Jase: Either way we're bad at it. I would say part of this, too, is not just that you will do your best to show up in the way that you said that you would but also if you don't, that you acknowledge that and own up to that quickly, and then try to change things instead of just being like, "Oh, yes. Oh, shoot. I'll hide that." Or, "Oh, I'll just do it better next time," but not actually making any changes to make sure that thing is different next time.
I would kind of add that dimension too. I just think it's unfair to say it's just about always doing what you say you're going to do. It's like, "Oh, well, you said 10 years ago that you'll love me forever and now you're breaking up with me? Which one's the honest one?" To just fake it or to break up and be honest. Anyway, something to add there.
Emily: We'll get into some of that more when we're talking about reestablishing trust. I like that sentiment, for sure.
Jase: The second question that we were talking about before is, how do you create and maintain trust? Besides just what it is, how do it, how doing trust? Again, to go back to the Gottman's, as you talked about John Gottman before talking about how prevalent trust is in sociology research, the Gottman's talk a lot about this concept of turning towards your partner as opposed to turning away from them.
We've talked about this before as bids, accepting bids, or turning towards your partner. They also talked about these interactions as "sliding door opportunities" and how over time if you fail to take those bids, or turn toward your partner, in moments of need, that, that trust will erode. I think what's interesting about this is that it's not even based on this trust eroding because you're not following through or you're being dishonest but just because you're missing opportunities to turn toward your partner and connect to them when they've wanted you to. Which I think ties back to several different people said, including Dedeker, that part of it's not only thinking that
my partner will think of me when they're making decisions, but also that I believe that they understand how those things would have impacted me or how I would feel about those things that there's that reciprocal part.
Dedeker: A graduate student of Dr. John Gottman, Mr. Dan Yoshimoto, actually created a fun little acronym ATTUNE to represent essentially all the building blocks for building trust in a relationship. That stands for, A, awareness of your partner's emotion, T, turning toward the emotion. The next T is tolerance of two different viewpoints. We have talked about this on the show before.
The idea that there's these multiple competing narratives, and we have to build the muscle around that, being okay in our relationships as opposed to, "I need to dominate the narrative or my partner always dominates the narrative." Moving on to U is understanding your partner. N is for non-defensive responses to your partner, and then E, empathy, colon, responding with. That was my interpretation.
Emily: That's really amazing.
Dedeker: It's not the best acronym, let's be fair, but it does make a lot of sense. It does hit all the points that you can see these recurring themes with the awareness of having that space in your brain that's aware of how something may impact your partner maybe is impacting your partner, and then not being afraid of those feelings. Actually turning towards them being okay with hearing your partner's viewpoint on it even if it's different from your feelings or your take on the situation and then making an effort to understand, be empathetic, and to not be defensive in response to that, which makes a lot of sense. I know Jessica Fern also talks a lot about attunement in Polysecure.
Jase: Yes, I think something that's really interesting about this acronym is that no part of this said-
Emily: Trust.
Jase: -doing what you say you're going to do, or not lying, or being honest, or something like that, that my interpretation of that at least is that this is about these are the building blocks even underneath that. That those things might come out of this lack of acceptance of each other's feelings or lack of ability to understand that or lack of responding empathetically or being non-defensive. That's just something interesting to look at that in this particular model, building trust doesn't even have anything to do with the typical like, "Oh, this is trustworthy, or not trustworthy."
Dedeker: That makes a lot of sense. You mentioned the safe, unsafe thing and normally, I take issue with those two categories of people because I think in reality our partners don't always feel super safe. It's like sometimes people step on our toes, or they make a choice that's a little bit selfish, not even realizing that it was going to be selfish or things like that.
I think it's incorrect to give this suggestion that, "h, your partner is going to feel safe all the time." However, it does seem like what actually makes them safe is when there is a falling out or there is a breach or there is a misunderstanding that your partner can do all these things, that your partner is motivated to at least understand and see your emotion and the impact on you and acknowledge it, instead of just completely ignoring it or disregarding it or doing their own thing anyway.
Emily: Yes, you're never going to 100% across the board like never have a breach of trust in a relationship. It may be small but I think overall, we've talked about having those really good interactions versus the not good interactions and that overall, if you're having many more positive interactions versus the negative ones, that's something that makes a person feel safer or more trustworthy.
Dedeker: We had a Patreon of ours who hit on a really similar sentiment so I'm going to read the quote from them. "I am solo poly. I tend to have partners with a similar ethos, yet, I'm often thinking of my partners and want them to do likewise. If I can't see that minimal effort and see many examples to the contrary that impact me negatively, my trust is appears over time until there's nothing left."
Jase: Yes. I also think this is worth pointing out that in some of the definitions earlier talked about that this isn't just about romantic partners either, that this level of trust of "I want this person to be thinking of me and taking me into account when they make decisions" applies to all sorts of people, right? It applies to our siblings, our parents or our friends, or even our bosses or our coworkers.
It's like, "Do I trust that you had me in mind a little bit?" I think sometimes when people latch on to something like solo polyamory or relationship anarchy, they can go this route of like, "Oh, I don't have to think about what anyone else feels because that's their own business." We're human beings and that's not how we work. That's not how that works.
Emily: When I was looking online, and asking this question, how do you create and maintain trust? There were so many articles out there that really discussed trust and creating it and maintaining it is essentially showing your partner that you're going to sacrifice for them. You're going to sacrifice doing the things that you want to do for the sake of the relationship and that you're choosing not to be selfish. Also, I saw something that I really did not like, that a way to do this, to figure out if your partner is trustworthy is to test your partner to see if they relate. They use the word test to see if they're really committed to you and the relationship.
Dedeker: What kind of test, is it growth?
Emily: No, just to do, put things in place to see if they are going to sacrifice for you instead of being selfish and doing something that they want to do.
Dedeker: Like what? Like the marshmallow test for your 45-year-old partner?
Emily: Yes. Gosh, essentially just doing things like playing hard to get and seeing if they're interested and invested in the relationship, stuff like that, which just grinds my gears in a way that I find not to be really helpful or good relationship advice at all. Even though this was in Psychology Today, I'm like, okay.
These ideas of testing or even saying that your partner is going to be sacrificial in some way, or do something, sacrificing themselves or what they want for the relationship, it just rubs me the wrong way, especially in a non-monogamous context. I'm curious to hear what you two think about that and if you can do that in a way that is at all not gross and not negative, I don't know.
Jase: Yes, it brings up for me very much that old-school idea of, "Oh, I'm going to get my partner to prove that they're invested in me by demanding that they give up something that's important to them.
Dedeker: Yes, ultimatums.
Jase: Like their friendships or some hobby of theirs, or their guitar collection or whatever," like that very kind of tired old-school super manipulative model that's generally talked to women about how to get a man to show his devotion to you or whatever. I think it's a lot of bullshit. However, if you take the concept though, and remove it from that baggage, that idea of, "I'm taking you into account when I make a decision," you could frame that as a little bit of a sacrifice or not being selfish.
Like the other day, I saved the last licorice jelly bean so the Dedeker could have it. Sure, I sacrificed having that jelly bean, but that's on a whole different scale from some arbitrary, you need to never do music again, or some ridiculous large sacrifice for no good reason. I get it, but I agree I don't like the wording because-
Emily: The wording is like--
Jase: -it encourages us to think in that old shitty way.
Emily: I do hear what you're saying. I asked Josh like, "Please sacrifice the last Lacorice or the last Topo Chico so that I can have it."
Dedeker: I did appreciate that jelly bean.
Jase: That's good. We also looked at an article from 2019, by Lauren Campbell and Sarah Stanton, that looked at past research on trust, and discussed various things like attachment theory. One of the things that they talked about in this paper was how people who had had relationships in the past where their partners were trustworthy were more likely to be more trusting of their future partners and vice versa. Basically, that having more trusting partners led to a more secure attachment in future relationships, or rather more trustworthy partners.
That if they had lots of breaches of trust in their relationships, they would tend to have a more avoidant or anxious attachment in future relationships. It's one of those things where it's an interesting observation but also not surprising. It's like, "Yes, okay, that makes sense. I can see that right I've been burned a lot of times, so it's harder for me to trust people." I think that intuitively makes sense to us.
Emily: Additionally, they looked at this research component that they called dyadic trust, which in my mind just is essentially it takes two to tango. They looked at things like diagnostic situations and the couple's perceptions of what happened. They just looked and calibrated the degree to which partners believe each other to be dependable, as well as their faith in the future stability of the relationship, so essentially, if people had higher
dyadic trust, then it indicated that a partner will behave in a pro-relationship manner in the future.
Then if you have medium levels, then it essentially creates more uncertainty and then lower levels is far more uncertainty or this belief that a partner will not be behave in a pro relationship manner in the future. It is kind of that internal perception coupled with what has happened to you in the past and what is happening to you in the relationship in the present as trust is going on. There's a lot of things in terms of what trust creates and how it exists in your mind, and a lot of it can be based on past things that have happened to you. Also, essentially what is occurring in your relationship at any given moment.
Dedeker: Let's check in on what our Patreons had to say about specifically creating and maintaining trust over time in a relationship. This first one says trust is established through a combination of words and actions. If someone does something often enough, you can trust them to do it again in the future. Another person said that trust was maintained by doing regular radars and having open honesty. A lot of people mentioned using a radar or a check-in as a way to maintain trust and honesty. Thank y'all for that. Another person said sharing what I need to feel secure in the relationship. Someone also said--
Jase: That's interesting that aspect of it's not just about doing the things but about sharing what's meaningful to me, what matters to me makes sense because that does help build that trust because then you can more accurately--
Emily: That's that vulnerability again.
Jase: Right. You can more accurately take that into account when making decisions, but if you don't have the honest information, you're not going to be able to do that as much.
Emily: Totally.
Dedeker: Another person said, "It's sharing what love language or signs of connection. I need to feel this security in reality. Which that totally makes sense. This idea of here's how we actually operationalize the things that I need. This is how it looks when I'm in a trusting relationship or these are the kind of behaviors that I look for in a trusting relationship."
This next one, "I look for nurturing. Have we created a space between us where we can be honest about our feelings or a space where we know we can navigate how to drink and still ensure consent or a space where we can have heated debates and still respect the other person at the end, et cetera." I like the specificity with that one. This next one. "Owning and sharing personal shortcomings with one another." Now that's fascinating. Talk about being vulnerable and also really demonstrating a strong sense of self-awareness to another person.
Emily: Well, I think our Patreons have a lot of self-awareness so well done everyone out there. Yes.
Dedeker: Well done, well done to you. This last one, "Creating trust happens when my partner shares something important to them or who they are, and I can listen, try to understand and accept the vulnerability."
Emily: Beautiful.
Jase: I love it. It's so fascinating to me, how much these line up with that ATTUNE acronym from before. That's none of it really mentioned just not breaking promises or stuff. It's like the fundamentals before you even get there is what actually builds the trust. This is really-- I never would've guessed that that's how this section would turn out but that seems to be the predominant thing that I'm taking away, at least that it's-
Emily: Yes. I love that.
Jase: -more about these building blocks and connection than it is just about X, Y, and Z action based on X, Y, and Z words. We want to go on to talk about what do we do though when something happens that breaches this trust. If you're in a relationship long enough on small or large scales, that's going to happen but first before we get to that, we're going to take a quick break to talk about the sponsors who help us to bring this show to you every week for free. It really helps us a lot.
If you take a while to listen to it. If anything seems interesting, we got some cool deals for you or something. Go check them out because that very directly goes to help support this show. We're back. All right, let's talk about how do we get trust back if it's lost? First of all, just what do we mean by this? What are some examples of breaking trust in a relationship?
These can be big and they can be small. Some examples might be things like discussing intimate details of our relationship to someone else that I'm not comfortable with you sharing those with them. I didn't know that you were going to do that. You didn't check with me first. It could be something like we've mentioned just doing something different than what you said you were going to do.
You said you were going to pick the kids up after school and you didn't, or you said you were going to put the dishes away before I got up this morning and you didn't do that right again, big or small not taking accountability for your actions. That kind of that defensiveness, making excuses, rather than just owning up to not having done something, bumping up against someone's boundaries over and over again.
This is an interesting one because we've talked before many times about how boundaries are in place for you to protect yourself but if someone's constantly kind of almost testing that, pushing up against it, knowing that that's a boundary for you, that's not going to instill you with a lot of trust for that person. It's going to damage that trust. Not fulfilling relationship agreements. Again, not doing something you say you're going to do. In this case it's often not, not doing something you said you were not going to do could go either way, right?
Dedeker: Goodness.
Jase: Right. Doing something you said you were not going to do is what the simpler way to say that sentence, on either side, and not telling the truth. Maybe fibbing a little bit to try to save someone's feelings or maybe being a little bit less honest or just outright hiding something from someone entirely because you don't want to have that conversation like often happens with cheating. When it's like the problem often is more the hiding it than even the doing it, although both are breaches of trust.
Emily: Let's look at a little study on trust. This is an actual study as opposed to this melding together of studies that made its way into that 2019 article. This is a 2013 Northwestern University and Redeemer University College study called trust in biased memory of transgressions in romantic relationships. That's interesting too biased memory of transgressions because we all have internal biases. I think their point and what we said earlier as well, is that a lot of our bias comes from what happened to us in the past.
Jase: Sure, yes.
Emily: What even may have happened in the past, in that relationship leading into how you perceive a transgression to be. This is just a little bit about the study across four longitudinal studies. They examine the association of trust with memories of transgressions that occurred in established dating relationships and in fledgling romantic relationships.
They did four different studies and in all studies, participants reported on transgressions soon after their occurrence, providing initial reports of their early views of the transgressions. Subsequently, they were called the transgressions and completed memory criterion measures of their recollections of the transgressions. That's-
Jase: Okay. Hold on. Can we pause and say that in normal words because that was a lot of techno bubbly sciency words?
Emily: In layman's terms, essentially what that means is in some of the studies, they literally had people take a diary around with them for two weeks. Then immediately after their partner did something that they felt was a breach of trust, they had them write it down immediately. They were wrote down all of the different things that had happened over a two-week period. We were all laughing because these were college students as they so often are. Dedeker was like, "Yes, I could have filled a whole diary in two weeks too."
Dedeker: I could have. Boy, howdy.
Emily: Yes, and then after the study was concluded or at the end of the study, they had these people think back to those transgressions and they essentially looked at whether or not their memory of it matched what they had written down when the actual transgression occurred. They're looking at, did it change over time? Did it become worse in your mind or less worse, things like that. Then they studied that basically based on what your cognitive bias is towards trust in general.
Jase: Yes. The other studies were all similar using different ways of measuring it, but the same kind of idea of seeing how they felt about it right away, and then checking back in some amount of time later. Anywhere from two weeks to, I think six months was the longest. Then looking back and seeing, yes, did your memory become worse or better like you said? Which is really, really interesting way to approach this study.
Dedeker: This is some of the first research to actually systematically examine how trust plays a role in biasing our memories. What they found was that people who are highly trusting tend to remember transgressions in a way that benefits the relationship, as in they remembered their partner's transgressions as less severe than they originally reported them, when they initially wrote them down in the journal right after it happened. But then people who are not very trusting, people who are low on trust demonstrated
the opposite, that they remembered their partner's transgressions as being more severe than how they originally reported that.
Emily: That's very interesting.
Dedeker: Yes. Super fascinating. I have a quote here from Laura B. Luci, who's also the assistant professor of psychology at Redeemer University College, summed it up this way. "If you talk to people who really trust their partner, now they forget some of the negative things their partner did in the past. If they don't trust their partner much, they remember their partner doing negative things that the partner never actually did. They tend to misremember." That's scary.
Emily: It is a little scary.
Jase: With a lot of these, they mention at the end of most studies, this is mentioned if just, there's need for more research on this. I think this one would be a really interesting one to look at doing this kind of a study and then trying different sorts of interventions to help build trust in a relationship, and then doing this again and seeing if you are able to measure any improvement in that.
Because right, this is kind of based on-- because it was over a relatively small period of time, it's kind of based on this assumption for the study that this person has some fixed level of trustingness or not trustingness. It'd be interesting to see how that might change over different relationships or after doing different things to build trust.
Emily: In nonmonogamy, it may be different from one partner to the other potentially. There's so many different ways that a study like this could go.
Jase: That'd be interesting too, to even do it with multiple different friends or multiple partners at the same time and see how that might vary. Lots of interesting stuff. All you researchers out there have that one for free, give us a little shout-out in the notes somewhere, but that's cool. One thing that we looked at was, this is an article from lifehack.org by someone with one of the coolest names I've seen in a while, which is Dr. Magdalena Battles.
Which is just cool. I don't know if she says it as battles, but it might be but less, but I don't know, but Dr. Magdalene Battles, has another acronym. This is a very heavy acronym episode.
Emily: We love that here on Multiamory.
Jase: This is a framework for how you can work on rebuilding trust after some kind of a breach and the acronym is come forth. What's fun about this is that the come part, C-O-M-E is for the offender, the person who did the breach of trust. Then fourth is the acronym for the person whose trust was betrayed in some way. Starting with the come for the offender C is come clean. Be honest and tell your partner what happened so kind of like we mentioned before, not trying to hide it.
The O is open yourself emotionally. This goes back to stuff we talked about in the past with how to do, good apologies, how to give good apologies and that's show remorse, ask for forgiveness, do some internal introspection that kind of stuff. Open yourself emotionally to accept the fact that you messed up. M, make meaningful conversations.
This is discuss fears. Maybe why the breach of trust happened in the first place. I worry a little bit that that gets into making excuses, but I guess try to avoid leaning too heavily on just making excuses for yourself, but to try to figure out and relay the root cause of the issue. I'm assuming to then help set things in place so that it won't happen again.
Then the E of come is engage in full transparency. Be honest relay information that may have been previously unknown or hidden. Maybe kind of amping up your level of kind of radical honesty after this to really show I want you to know everything and I want it to make it extra clear that I'm not hiding something from you because I did before.
Emily: I think it is interesting in looking at that like relaying information that may have been previously unknown or hidden. Again, not to say that I'm going to blame my partner because a breach of trust happened. If there is an underlying issue, like, "Hey, in the past, this specific issue has gotten a lot of anger and whatever, when we discuss it. I know that a breach of trust happened on my end, but I was very fearful about talking about it with you. Is there a way that we can come together and speak about that more freely in the future," for instance?
Jase: That's a hard conversation to have, but I think that is really important for that honesty to be available.
Emily: Absolutely. The second part of this acronym is the fourth part and it is for the victim, so F is for forgive. This forgiveness might need to happen when you have physiologically and emotionally regulated. You can try to approach the person with empathy when you are forgiving. Try to be understanding. That's going to be helpful for both yourself and for them. O is for open conversation. With this, you can use things like, I feel statements like we said, try not to blame, and then also invite your partner to have safe and open conversations with you.
R is request what you need so discuss what you need in order to heal the relationship. Then also try to set some reasonable goals and expectations for the future. T is talk about the betrayal to a professional or a confidant. This is important, I think because especially when you are trying to get back to a place of emotional regulation and physiological regulation, sometimes that's going to be impossible to do to your part with your partner. You may want to do that with somebody else first so that you can get yourself to a better emotional place.
That is a little bit more neutral when you're speaking to your partner about it. That might be best with a therapist that might be best with a friend, someone that you really trust definitely go there potentially. Then finally H is heal yourself and the relationship. That's sometimes easier said than done, but if you want to continue the relationship, this may take a lot of time, depending on the offense or it may be something that happens pretty quickly.
Dedeker: Lastly, we're going to end things out by sharing what our Patreons have to say specifically about this, about how to get back trust if it's lost. We got a lot of fantastic suggestions, including, acknowledge the pain that it caused and the consequences of the other person's trauma. The next one, when a breach of trust occurs, it requires some grace and space to allow trust to re-blossom. Both folks have to be willing to work on it.
I think that's a really great point that it's a little bit of a two way street of both needing to step forward. If you're the person who is the offender who breached the trust, as well as being able to receive that on the other end. This person said, "Trust is a road that is constantly being built." Like an infinite Jenga Game? Jenga game's kind of built upwards and gets more wobbly as you build it. If there's some version of Jenga that evolves--
Emily: You'd take out a piece and you have to put it somewhere else, I don't know.
Jase: Right, or maybe if you're sort of screwing together the pieces as you go, you're making it more solid instead of less solid.
Dedeker: I like this one. I think the first step to repairing a breach of trust is to admit that it happened and here the feelings around it before jumping into solutions. Yes, definitely. I can't skip over that understanding and empathizing portion. Next part of trust is asking people to tell me what's going on with them and not what they think I want to hear. Definitely.
Jase: Again, that whole being honest is more important than being nice all the time.
Emily: Somebody also said trust is something that I have to choose over and over again. I think that goes back to the road. That's constantly being built. Someone said, if a breach of trust happens, I need to understand why it happened and what it means to them, what led up to it, and what the feelings are after also.
Jase: That kind of goes back to the come forth thing, right? On both sides of kind of opening up, being honest and also hearing and receiving that from each other.
Emily: Totally. I need to see that they don't want it to happen again. Renegotiations changing agreements, scripts expectations are one thing that might happen. That's interesting that things may need to be readjusted because clearly, it may not have worked the first time around.
Jase: I think this one's huge, that I think so often what we like the narrative that we see in films and reading books and that we have all done many times is that whole like I screwed up, what are you going to do about it? I'll just do better next time.
Emily: No, that's not good enough.
Jase: Maybe that will work maybe, but not likely because it's just kind of saying like, I'm just going to do the same thing and hope it's different and that's not great. Putting something in place, it could be something small. It could just be like, "Well, let's not make that promise or that agreement anymore," and instead, find some other way to get our needs met or it could be changing circumstances around it or any number of other things. I do think that one's key that trust isn't just this, like you just power through and that's how you're trustworthy. It's like, no. There's also, how do you make promises you can keep or have agreements that
do work for you and how do you put yourself in situations so you can actually follow through on those?
Emily: Yes. Somebody also said, in the case of a breach of trust happening with a partner who has a traumatic past experience is neurodivergent, or as any type of mental illness, I need to know that their behavior isn't aligned with their values, but it was the best they could do in that situation. I need to know that they've talked about it as soon as they could, and then also see the willingness to grow.
That's really interesting and specific, but I think a good distinction because sometimes, maybe it is just the best that they could do in the moment and it wasn't necessarily that they meant to do that, or it came across in a way that they didn't expect but just that people know that there's an alignment of values that is moving in a positive direction and two people coming back together as opposed to continually growing apart.
Jase: It is an interesting question, which goes back to something we've talked about way back in the past, but this question of, they said that their behavior didn't align with their values. Well, maybe they actually just have different values than you and that's also a valid difference. Again, maybe means that relationship isn't going to work but hiding that or just trying to be nice or not make waves by hiding, the fact that your values are different, or trying to change those is going to make that trust harder to maintain. Just something to think about there, too.
Another person said, another part is their actions. I need to see them actually trying to do the things they said they'd do. I need to see work on the issues that led to the breach of trust, I need to see them be open and honest and actually see the trust I place in them is justified. Another person, "At the same time, I need to also act accordingly. In many cases, I have somehow added to that breach happening," which we've mentioned a little bit earlier, "and so I need to be willing or able to work on that too. Otherwise, it'll just happen again."
That honesty needs to come from both sides. One person says, "I need to ask myself are our values lining up? Like I was saying. Can we both work with how things are right now? Do either of us need to sacrifice anything for this to work or to make space for growth? Another one, "Be as explicit as possible in order to make sure no one assumes something incorrectly, and trust gets breached again." That's a great point that we haven't even talked about in this episode is that sometimes that breach of trust wasn't because someone made a mistake in doing the thing, but they--
Emily: Just they weren’t explicit.
Jase: Yes, they had a different understanding of what that agreement was or what was expected of them. That's a big one. The last one here, is about having verbal reassurance statements like, "I'm here for you, I'm not going anywhere." I think those things if you have that good foundation under it, those things can be really meaningful and can help to foster that connection and affection and trust with each other.
Emily: Well, I don't know if we answered the question what trust is, but we tried to--
Dedeker: We cobbled together a pastiche of something, maybe something resembling an answer.
Jase: Like a pointillism painting. You got to look at it from far enough back and you'll see the picture.
Emily: I got to say a lot of the things that resonated with me the most were what our Patreons had to say. They were , just self looking inward at oneself and realizing that part of the time sometimes they're a part of the problem, and also need to do some inner work and stuff like that. Then also, that trust comes from those fundamental building blocks, like Jase was saying throughout the episode, as opposed to just being like, don't not do the thing that you said you were going to do or something like that..