Trust Is Built Long Before It's Ever Tested |
Small moments of follow through shape emotional safety over time.
Consistency helps partners feel secure and reduce mental load and resentment.
Trust grows through accountability, repair, and keeping everyday promises.
If I were to ask a couple in my office (or even a friend) what trust means, I would usually get some version of the same answer. No cheating, no lying, no secrets, and keeping whatever agreements they've made. And they're not wrong. If people agree to be monogamous and someone has a physical affair, trust has been broken. There's no gray area there.
Why the Traditional View of Trust May Be Incomplete
But the more I've worked with couples, the more I've found myself pushing back on this definition. I think we've become so focused on how trust gets broken that we've stopped paying attention to how it's actually built. The irony is that by the time trust is tested by something like an affair or a major lie, it's often been quietly built, or eroded, for years. I sometimes wonder if we've misunderstood trust altogether. We talk about it like it's an emotion, but I think it's actually a prediction. Every interaction teaches us a little more about what we can expect from the people we love, and, over time, our brains become really good at forecasting whether someone will follow through. This is why trust feels so intuitive. We are rarely thinking about all the evidence we've collected, but we are responding to the prediction our brain has already made.
As a result, many couples end up sitting in my office confused. Nobody cheated, nobody lied, yet something feels off between them, and no one can quite explain why. I use a simple example in session that has nothing to do with affairs or dishonesty. It has to do........