Losing trust also destroys your love for your partner, so ask yourself what your relationship means to you before trying to rebuild, because if it’s bad in other ways, then maybe it’s not worth the effort.
With this in mind, consider ending your relationship if you’ve only just started dating and your partner’s already strayed. Or you’re being neglected or abused, and it’s getting worse, because you’ll only be able to rebuild trust if the relationship’s worth it.
Is it really possible to get your relationship back from the brink? Yes it is, but you’ll actually be building a new one. Because the old one’s gone forever. It will take a lot of hard work, but you could well end up with new skills and a better relationship than before.
Progress will be hard with accusations every two minutes, so try to get past the blame game as soon as possible because there’s usually no simple answer to how you ended up where you are.
Instead, focus on how to make things better in future. Because you’ll only restore trust, affection and commitment by improving every aspect of your marriage.
Like one or both of you has probably stopped paying attention to the other. Conversations have become to-do lists, and issues stay unresolved. So make time to talk. Get to know one another again. Be consistently supportive, respectful and affectionate of one another. Share your feelings again, and restart your sex life, because if intimacy’s missing in your marriage, then the risk that it will end goes way up.
Ask yourself why communication is poor. Some couples start leading parallel lives, others become judgemental and nitpicking, so no one says anything in case they get their head bitten off. Don’t ever be hard on your partner. Instead, be the one they always want to come home to.
Rebuilding trust takes time, so if your partner’s saying ‘you should be over this by now,’ or is still trying to justify what happened, or minimising your feelings, then you’re not back on track yet.
Re-establish your partner’s dependability by seeing them deal with situations where they could go astray, but instead they do the right thing. Like coming home at the time they promised, or taking part meaningfully in couples’ therapy with you.
Once that’s happening, it’s time for a leap of faith. That means deciding to believe that your partner’s good behaviour will continue into the future. Then you can let go of your anger and suspicions, and begin to move on.
Gradually, the bad things that happened will fade out of your everyday thoughts. You’ll never forget any of it, and now you’re aware of how easily things can go wrong. But you’re also confident about the future, because you know how to fix them.
