How To Regain Trust In A Relationship After Losing It

Trust is hard to build and easy to lose. Here, you will learn how to build trust, and regain it after losing it.

Regaining trust
How to regain trust after losing it.

Trust is an important quality required for every successful relationship, be it romantic relationships, business, or other social relationships. It is hard to get but easier to lose. And if you have bruised the trust of someone dear to you, it can be difficult trying to get it back.

You can break trust with someone you have a relationship with when you lie, cheat, deceive, betray, or hurt them by doing things they hate. But if the deed is already done, I am here to show you a practical way to make them trust you again.

But first, let’s see how trust is built in the first place. That can throw some light on how it is rebuilt after losing it.

  1. Lying to them or about them
  2. Cheating, especially when you are in a relationship
  3. Deception – Pretending to be someone else for fear or favour
  4. Betrayal in the form of selling out their most private and vulnerable information
  5. Hurting them by doing things they don’t like

How is Trust Developed?

“Trust takes years to build, seconds to break and forever to repair”. The process of building trust goes through a series of four stages until it is fully formed.

  1. The beginning stage: This is the compromise stage (Typically within the first few weeks). Someone you just met for the first time gradually begins to give you a level of trust that you did not do anything significant to earn. They just want to trust you as a human being but they will only stake small things they can afford to lose if you betray their trust.
  2. The middle stage: This is when you are getting more familiar with each other (Within a few months to years). Now everybody is coming out of their shells to be who they are, and whether they want to continue building trust or not. This is the stage where most people betray and break the trust of their friends and family.
  3. Penultimate stage: This stage takes around one to three years to develop. The trust is stronger than that of the middle stage but is not fully formed. The person still withholds some aspects of their life from you even though they entrusts you with more valuable things than in the middle stage. Breaking trust in this stage is significantly more traumatic and more difficult to repair.
  4. The ultimate stage: This is the last stage of trust in this classification. It is the stage when someone trusts you with almost their entire life. It shows that you have proven yourself times and times again during the penultimate stage, and they have come to see that you are indeed trustworthy.

Trust can be broken at any stage irrespective of how strong it has become. In fact, the higher the stage at which someone’s trust is broken, the harder it will be to regain it.

How To Regain Trust After Losing It

Regaining trust after losing it is not an easy thing. That is why it is important to protect someone’s trust for you as much as you can. Acts of betrayal, disloyalty, deceit, cheating, and dishonesty, can make someone lose trust in you.

But if the deed is already done, and you want to salvage the relationship, here are some steps to regain trust after losing it, whether via disloyalty, cheating, deceit, etc.

1. Tender an apology and make amends

The first thing you should do when you break someone’s trust is to apologize to them and make amends. It shows you are remorseful of your act and you are disappointed in yourself for breaking their trust.

However, tendering an apology does not mean the person will automatically forgive you and move on from where you stopped. You broke their trust and it is hard to regain trust once it is broken.

If they accept your apologies quickly, make amends and do not abuse their decision to forgive you. Breaking someone’s trust many times will make them never trust you again.

2. Acknowledge the effect of time

You don’t expect them to restore their trust in you immediately. You need to give them time to heal from the disappointment you gave to them.

Make amends, act differently, and let them heal from the broken trust. Broken trust relationships can be restored if the offender knows that he/she cannot force the other person to accept their apologies and restore the trust they have lost. To regain trust, leverage the power of time can heal and restore a broken trust.

3. Accept the consequences and wait for another chance

It is very absurd to find people who feel so entitled to being forgiven after they have thrown away the most valuable gift anyone can give them, their trust. You cannot break someone’s trust and expect them to gloss over it.

the person whose trust you have betrayed might hate you, avoid you, or stop confiding in you. If you truly want to regain their trust, you must accept whatever consequences they give to you and hope they will give you another chance to prove yourself.

4. Understand the individual’s trust mindset

Aside from the stages of trust discussed above, another important concept to understand about trust is the “trust mindset”. It is a major factor affecting how fast you can regain trust after losing someone’s trust.

According to Harvard Business Review, the trust mindset refers to how easily an individual is willing to move on after their trust has been broken. In an experiment conducted by HBR, two groups of individuals were found – those with a fixed trust mindset and those with a growth trust mindset.

Individuals with a fixed mindset cling to their initial perception of someone’s trustworthiness or otherwise. It only takes them a few minutes of contact to know if they can trust you or not. Once you break their trust at that initial contact, it will be difficult to convince them otherwise eventually.

In contrast, people with a growth mindset easily update their information about someone. They can easily modify their initial perceptions based on your new actions and behaviour. However, when you consistently break their trust, they become fixed on never trusting you again.

While individuals having either trust mindset can lose trust for anyone, people with a growth mindset would easily accept apologies and update their perception about you faster than those with a fixed mindset.

5. Live with it, and learn from it

Trust can be very hard to regain after losing it. You can do all you can and still not get back someone’s trust again. You can only do so much.

After doing your best to regain someone’s trust to no avail, learn to accept it and live with it. Learn your lessons from that experience too, so that you will see the importance of keeping someone’s trust in you.

Trust is a fragile commodity. Handle it with care at all times. It is a currency that can open great unimaginable doors for you when you uphold it. Hence, you should not be found handling it carelessly as if breaking it does not matter.

Dealing with Mistrust

Mistrust refers to suspicious behaviour or lack of confidence in someone. It is one’s inability to put confidence in someone else. There may be two types of mistrust – warranted and unwarranted mistrust.

1. Warranted Mistrust

Warranted mistrust is a lack of confidence in someone because of their actions or inactions. In other words, it is because of what they have done to the person in question.

Several behaviours and actions can break someone’s trust in you. The mistrust someone has when one does something that can break someone’s trust is what we describe as warranted mistrust.

Warranted mistrust is common in business relationships, romantic relationships, politics and international relations and so many other interpersonal relationships.

1. Unwarranted Mistrust

Unwarranted mistrust is the type of mistrust someone has for you even before you have done anything to warrant it. It could be based on their past experiences and fear of repeating the same mistake of trusting anyone again.

It is normal to withhold your trust for anyone until they can be trusted but for trust to develop, you must be open enough to give them a level of trust they can start with. From there, if they prove themselves worthy, they can gradually work their way into your trust book.

Unwarranted trust can be unhealthy in some relationships, including business, and romantic relationships. And when you see someone who does not trust you by default, maintain your boundaries.

Don’t try to appear trustworthy before them because trustworthy people do not try so hard to show their trustworthiness, they simply make it a part of who they are whether you believe them or not.

Conclusion

Trust is a valuable currency you must not toy carelessly with. Build trust with people you share things with, either for business or personal life. This is because, once trust is broken, it can be quite hard to regain it.

It requires a great deal of maturity to attempt to regain someone’s trust after breaking it. To regain trust after losing it, the above tips can help.

If someone doesn’t trust you by default (unwarranted mistrust), you don’t need to stress yourself trying to prove a point. Just be yourself, be trustworthy always, and avoid anything that will make you lose someone’s trust in you.

FAQs on Regaining Trust After Losing It

When someone you love and trust does something to shatter the foundations of your relationship, the resulting trauma can be severe but you can heal from the pain with time. You might even come back stronger as you rebuild your sense of self and gain tools for developing healthier relationships.

I am a medical doctor, a seasoned writer and passionate blogger. Thanks to many years of trials, failure, and near successes. I am the founder of Knowseeker and our content are geared towards enlightening and making you a better and happier audience.

1 thought on “How To Regain Trust In A Relationship After Losing It”

  1. I don’t even know how I ended up here, but I thought this post was good. I don’t know who you are but certainly you’re going to a famous blogger if you aren’t already 😉 Cheers!

    Reply

Leave a Comment