After your heart has been wounded, trust can be a very difficult thing to allow yourself to do. It somehow seems
easier to hold yourself back from really opening again to another person. The truth is that you can be in a relationship with someone for years but not truly trust them – not be open to them. Sadly enough, there is still a part of you that holds back from completely opening your heart even to a loved one.
The best advice that can be given about learning to trust again is to begin looking at all of your relationships from new eyes and consider how you are trusting or not trusting in them. Then decide to take one step forward to enhancing trust between yourself and the other person. Below are a few tips that may help.
- Heal the issues that are left over from past relationships. When you enter into a new relationship, you are starting fresh and you leave all of the baggage behind. Sometimes, the healing process takes longer but if you are aware of your patterns in past relationships, you can learn to consciously change how you react
in similar situations with others in your life. - Do not assume to know what the other person is thinking. If you do not know, ask. Find out what is going on inside the other person and try not to meaning to what you see without getting the clarification that is necessary.
- Change the self-talk that goes on in your head that creates “stories” about every situation. These stories usually have no basis of reality and tend to simply create mistrust and keep suspicion foremost in your mind.
- Speak your truth and allow the other person to speak theirs without getting defensive. This is probably one of the most important things you can do to foster trust in your relationship. If you are certain that both parties are free to express feeling without fear of being judged, your relationship will become closer and more connected.
The foundation of any relationship is emotional safety and trust. This means that you feel emotionally safe enough to be who you really are and be able to express yourself freely. Most people want to place the responsibility for trust in a relationship on someone else. They may base their trust on how someone acts towards them. Remember that safety and trust in a relationship does not always start with someone else – it starts with you and how willing you are to open up and allow the other in.