Sorry’s Not Good Enough: How To Repair Trust in a Relationship

How to Repair Trust in a Relationship

If you’re here, you’re likely asking how can I repair trust in my relationship? Trust: It’s the glue of secure attachment that holds a marriage together. If it’s broken, everything changes. How do you repair trust in your relationship once it’s been damaged?

As an experienced couples counselor and affair recovery therapist, I know that if you’ve been through an experience that has seriously harmed your trust, like infidelity or lying… “sorry” just isn’t good enough. Dismissing fears as being “in the past” only makes it worse. Rushing back into trust or demanding to be trusted again only creates more conflict. What do you do when trust is broken in a relationship? How do you repair trust in your relationship?

Trust, Attachment, and Emotional Safety

To understand how to repair trust in a relationship, you have to understand attachment. When you are attached to someone (like your partner) and you’re betrayed by that person, the trauma is profound. This trauma is harmful to you on an emotional and physiological level, and it completely changes the emotional climate of your relationship.

In relationships where one partner has been betrayed, the emotional safety is shattered. Until the couple goes through a repair process, the person who is reeling from betrayal will be on-edge, anxious that they will be hurt again. This anxiety is being produced in a part of the brain that words can’t touch. It literally does not matter how many times you say you’re sorry, or how badly the hurt partner wants to just “get over it.” The trauma and the fear is there, and it’s not going anywhere until trust is repaired.

Unfortunately, most couples aren’t sure how to do that.

When Trust Is Broken in a Relationship

When trust is broken in a relationship, things change. The climate of the relationship is fundamentally altered. Things can’t go back to “normal,” even if you both really want them to. Many couples, in the aftermath of infidelity or betrayal, only argue and blame. While they may both desperately want the relationship to work, they may both be doing things that make it nearly impossible to repair trust in a relationship, like minimizing the damage, getting defensive, or assuming that the person who’s been wronged should “get over it.”

All of these imply that there may be a genuine lack of awareness about how trust is repaired. What you don’t understand, you can’t fix.

How to Fix a Relationship After Trust is Broken

How do you repair trust in your relationship? That’s the question we’re tackling today on the Love, Happiness and Success Podcast.

Listen, and you’ll learn what trust really is, and genuinely understand the process of healing. 

You’ll also learn the worst mistake you can make if you’re trying to repair the trust in your marriage. I’ll also teach you the five action-steps you must take to mend trust for real.

All the best,

Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby