So, what do you do if you have trust issues in your relationship?
How do you deal with that? Hi, Cody Butler here, marriage coach, and founder of Better Marriage. And what do you do if you have trust issues in your relationship? That you can’t trust your partner? How do you move forward with that? I want to share with you just a few things that might help you through that today.
The first thing, which is always the case in every situation, is to start looking at where you can act on yourself. Too often, we look at the other person and say, “We need to work on this person. This person has a problem. This person has an issue. This person is not trustworthy.” When the reality is, we all fall into that category to some extent.
So, a lot of times, we make these issues binary. It’s like this person is trustworthy or not trustworthy. It’s black or white. This person is honest or dishonest. It’s just black and white. We turn it into that binary X or O decision when the reality is these things are not binary at all. They’re on a continuum.
It’s not a case of, “Is this person trustworthy or not trustworthy?” The real question is, “How trustworthy is this person?” It’s not a case of, “Are you honest or dishonest?” It’s a case of, “How honest are you within your marriage?” And that’s what we need to understand because when we move this away from a binary XO black-white decision of trustworthy or not trustworthy, and we can start to see that we have trustworthy issues within ourselves as well. It’s not a case of, “Am I trustworthy to my wife?” It’s a question of, “How trustworthy?”
There are times when I tell her that I’m going to be home at four o’clock, and I don’t get home till 4:30 or 5 o’clock. There are times I tell her when I’m going to pick something up at the shops, and I don’t. There are times when I tell her I’m going to call or send her a text message, and I don’t do it.
And how do I view myself in a binary situation? I view myself as being a trustworthy person because I haven’t broken any of the big rules, right? I haven’t cheated on her. I haven’t done some of the bigger things that we consider to be trustworthy or not trustworthy. But the reality is, I’ve done a lot of stuff that makes me untrustworthy.
And if I’m viewing myself on a binary scale, then I’m going to say I’m trustworthy, and I’m not going to look at myself and how I can improve myself in the relationship. But if I move it to a continuum where I ask myself the question, not “Am I trustworthy?” but the question becomes, “How trustworthy am I?” Then that gives me a lot of scope for growth.
That gives me a lot of room to improve. And I can start to see the hypocrisy to some extent in what I’m doing. Instead of saying, “This person is not trustworthy, and they need to work on their behavior for our marriage,” I can start to look at myself and how I can improve.
I can say when I reach the pinnacle of trustworthiness, when I can say that I am a trustworthy person, and I can then bring this to a binary decision where it’s like I am categorically trustworthy in every single situation, or I am not trustworthy at all. Once I reach that, then I have the right to go to the other person and address their trustworthy issues with them, right?
Because my question would be, what gives you or me the right to go to somebody and say, “You’re not trustworthy, and it’s damaging our relationship,” when I’m not trustworthy myself?
So, the thing is, we always want to look before going to the other person and making them the problem, making their behavior the fault, whatever it is that we’re unhappy with in them. Take a deep look inside yourself and go, “Are there any areas of my life that these traits that I’m not liking over here are showing up?
And can I work on myself and deal with the trustworthiness that I show or don’t show?” And when that has reached a state of perfection, then I can go to this person.
Because it’s a lot better, you’re going to get a lot better results by leading from the front. People are going to model your behavior more than they’re going to follow your commands and your words. Telling somebody that they’re not trustworthy and telling them the problems that that causes isn’t going to change anything at all.
The much better thing to do is to dig deep and define the challenges and issues within yourself and start leading from the front. If you want to be a true leader, you have to lead your relationship, you have to lead your marriage.
And a true leader is willing to take the first arrow. The true leader is willing to advance into combat and take the first bullet. A true leader can’t be up on the hill saying, “I’m going to be up on this hill, soldiers, because if anything happens to me, you’re going to be screwed, and I’m not going to be able to direct this battle.” Those soldiers are not going to follow that leader.
If you want to be followed and if you want to be influential and you want your partner to follow you into combat with you, then you have to be prepared to take the first arrow. You have to be prepared to take the first bullet, and you have to lead from the front. Instead of looking over to them and saying, “You need to change,” start looking forward, advancing into battle, and saying, “Follow me, man. I’m going to show you the way forward here.”
So, that’s it from me. What are your thoughts on this? What are your ideas on how you can deal with trust issues within a marriage? Let me know what you think and let me know what you think about my ideas as well, whether you like them or whether you don’t.
And if you want some more training on this stuff, we’ve got a free workshop on how to get more communication, how to have more sex, and how to reduce and eliminate fighting within your marriage. It’s 100% free.
So, that’s it from me. Bless you, and we’ll talk to you next time.
