How You Can Rebuild Trust in Any Relationship

Rebuilding trust and finding faith in other people can be incredibly hard, especially if you’ve ever been hurt before. If someone betrays your trust — even once — it can have detrimental effects, not only on your relationship with that person, but also on your ability to trust others in future relationships. Finding ways to get past your trust issues and strengthen your relationships — in general or with the person who’s hurt you — is not always an easy task.

Can you repair broken trust?

Regaining someone’s trust takes time and consideration, but it’s possible if both people are willing to hold each other accountable and work on their relationship together. According to psychologist Ramone Ford, PhD, you can rebuild trust and strengthen your relationships by taking a long, hard look at what’s happened and working toward making real changes that afford a second chance.

Rebuilding trust when you’re hurting

When someone breaks your trust, it can feel devastating, confusing and, at times, even paralyzing. Betrayal can force you to re-examine the nature of your relationships and whether it’s worth maintaining.

If you’re looking to rebuild your trust in someone who’s hurt you, here are some ways you can begin to do that.

Have empathy for yourself

When someone’s hurt you, it’s easy to brush it off, end the relationship and move on to the next one — and that’s true if you have trust issues with friends or coworkers, too. But if you choose to maintain the relationship and you’re looking to heal those bonds, make sure you’re kind to yourself for having made that decision.

“If you’ve suffered an emotional injury and you choose to stay and work on the relationship, having empathy for yourself is important because that takes a lot of work,” recognizes Dr. Ford. “It’s OK to want to work on a relationship and work on the problems that exist.”

Communicate your needs and expectations

That said, you can’t let what hurt you slide in the future, or you’ll find yourself caught up in a cycle of abuse. “When you’re hurt or taken for granted, you have to have patience, but you also have to voice your needs that you have certain expectations moving forward in the relationship,” explains Dr. Ford.

Revisit your boundaries

Sometimes, you have to start from scratch. That means, you’ll need to take a look at setting up new healthy boundaries that make you feel safe, loved and supported in this new phase you’re in right now.

Sometimes, boundaries need to be tightened or new rules need to be put in place, but the idea is that you have to acknowledge that something has changed and then act on those changes.

“If you don’t have any guidelines for these things, it could occur again — and that’s not to blame the person who’s been offended,” notes Dr. Ford. “Reestablishing your goals is healthy if you’re going to recommit to these relationships. You can redefine what matters to you and redefine those boundaries together.”

Practice forgiveness and self-care

Remember, rebuilding trust takes time. It may take weeks, months or even years for your relationship with trust to feel completely “normal” again. Along the way, it’s important to be flexible and recognize that mistakes will happen. Practice forgiveness, even when small things come up, and even with yourself. You don’t want resentment to build up.

“You have to develop some self-care regimen where you can pour into yourself because you can’t pour from an empty cup or really give a whole lot if you’re not taking care of yourself,” says Dr. Ford. “There’s no blueprint for how to work through this, but forgiveness and self-care is an important part of the equation.”

Practicing mindfulness, meditation and using positive affirmations go a long way when you’re trying to forgive others and bolster your own self-esteem.

“You have to do daily positive rebuilding because after something occurs, sometimes, your self-esteem takes a hit,” he adds.

Rebuilding trust when you’ve hurt someone

If you’ve betrayed someone’s trust, chances are, you’ll need to put in some effort to rebuild that relationship. Rebuilding trust takes time and reassurance that the events from the past won’t happen again in the future.

If you’re trying to regain someone’s trust, here are some helpful tips.

Consider the reason for your actions

“If you have limited or no insight into what you did and you have blind spots, then it’s hard to take ownership for your actions,” explains Dr. Ford. “Therapy can help you find your blind spots because it helps you reflect objectively on your patterns of behavior and how it affects other people you care about. It can also help you develop compassion.”

Take responsibility

Making real change starts with acknowledging where and why things went wrong — but then, you have to take action to turn things around. “You have to be willing to make some changes,” emphasizes Dr. Ford. “Over time, even if you were wrong, going to therapy is healthy because it helps you see what your part was in any situation, but it also teaches you to be open to offering sincere apologies.”

Listen to what is expected of you

A lot of the time, figuring out what changes can save a relationship starts with asking the person you’ve hurt what you can do differently, what they need to feel better and how you can both work on your relationship so that it’s stronger. As you continue to show up for them and the relationship you have, pay attention to their expectations and trust in the process.

“When there is a breach of trust, the person who’s done the offending sometimes thinks the person they hurt will never get past this, but they have to realize it takes time to grow trust and every person is different,” shares Dr. Ford. “You can’t dictate how someone chooses to move forward.”

Be honest about your accountability

“You have to be honest with yourself. Even though you were the one who offended them, are you able to follow this through as best you can? Because it’s real work,” Dr. Ford says.

“When we talk about the grass being greener on the other side, the reality is the grass is greener where you choose to water it, fertilize it and take care of it. If you don’t know you can follow through with that, be honest with the other person so you’re not hurting them a second time.”

How long does it take to rebuild trust?

How long it takes to get back to “normal” depends on the individual person who’s been hurt — and sometimes, it may not ever go back to being the exact way that it was. But if you genuinely mean to turn things around, and the person who’s hurting genuinely desires to maintain the relationship for the better, anyone can save a relationship from falling apart when trust has been thrown out the window.

“The more you’ve been hurt or feel that you’ve been wronged, it takes a lot longer than someone who’s been hurt for the first time,” explains Dr. Ford. “You can’t just put a time limit on it.”