Building and Maintaining Trust

Trust is vital to all sustainable relationships. We choose to trust others to further stabilize our relationship connections. If we don’t feel we can trust someone, we also won’t necessarily feel as if we are connected to them on a personal level.

Most of the time trust is built and maintained:

• Through our words

• By our actions

• Over time

Our words matter. What we speak can be the truth or it can be a lie. In order to build trust within a relationship, truth must be told consistently. Spoken truth is something we can face, deception (lack of truth) keeps us in the dark. Truth is something we can eventually reconcile as it continues to be reality. We may not always like “the truth”, but in reality having truth told to us builds “trust”.

Our actions sometimes speak even louder than our words. If our actions are contrary to our words, we do not present ourselves as someone who is trustworthy. A lie is an intentional action that is misleading. Our actions are the proof that lead others to believe or not believe that “what we say is what we do”.

To trust someone, maintain established trust, is to be able to believe in someone’s words and actions. Sometimes we trust with little reason or clear understanding but most of the time we trust because of history. History of someone being truthful is established as we are able to view or experience instances where someone follows through with what they said they would do over time.

Trust takes time to build, but can be also be broken in an instant. Broken trust is in part a broken commitment. Trust is something we can and will build and rebuild many times in any long term relationship where both parties in the relationship are committed to making the relationship last.

It’s not just what you feel in the moment that matters. It’s what you know to be true at all times that sustains a relationship better.