The Sacred in Relationships
Exploring Trust and Trustworthiness
This week we are going to focus on one of the basic building blocks of a relationship Trust. Dr. John Gottman states that from the 50 years of research he has done with couples, “Trust is the foundation of love.” Trust might be a basic building block but has a long-term and long-reaching impact across the lifespan of a relationship. I work with couples who experienced a broken trust and have never fully recovered or healed from the experience. So, I am going to focus on really breaking down what is trust in a relationship and why this is so important.
Dr. John Gottman, in the spirit of who he is, has researched and created a measurement for trust. As with any other topic, you can’t really work with it unless you can define and understand it. The definition given by Dr. John Gottman for Trust is the belief your partner will have your back and they are fully in and committed to the relationship. Easily, this tracks for me and makes sense. I am going to really struggle to be vulnerable, caring for, and fully committing to a relationship if I am worried about my partner leaving at any time or betraying me in some way by not being there for me. So, let’s explore what makes someone worthy of trust, i.e. trustworthy, the definition Dr. Gottman uses for this is a partner’s willingness to sacrifice for the relationship putting the partnership first even if that means at times placing their own needs second. These 2 definitions can seem very close together, so I am going to make some distinctions here. New relationships are high in trust because you are putting the relationship first and you truly believe this person is drawn to you, sees your strengths, and will support you. However, they are not high in being trustworthy because they have not been able to show action around actually making sacrifices and putting the relationship's needs first. So, the first time they are given a choice to support you and the relationship over work, friends, or other family or they really hear your side and validate you in a conflict they are creating trustworthiness and building trust. These events happening over an extended period of time continue to build their trustworthiness score and strengthen the relationship.
In the book What Makes Love Last by Gottman and Silver, you can find this quote on page 14, “When couples are trustworthy they send each other the message that they and the partnership are unique and irreplaceable. During couples’ counseling I call this “creating the sacred” because “sacred” and “sacrifice” have the same root—both words originated in early religious practices that involved sacrifice as a form of worship. In a long-term, committed relationship, sacrifice entails both people agreeing to give the romance priority over other goals and dreams.”
I love this quote and the idea of creating the sacred. A sacred space where the relationship and its dreams are honored above all else. This does not mean personal goals and dreams are lost or sacrificed, it means we have space in our relationship to honor the relationship also and it has first priority however that works in tandem with personal dreams and goals.
Trust and trustworthiness start to break down during times of betraying the sacred. One partner starts to sacrifice time for work, and another person or family becomes the priority. Once this starts, we step into a very dangerous realm of comparison. Just as the famous quote says comparison is the thief of joy it is also a thief of the sacred trust in relationships. We might start by saying well my friends get my jokes more, I really want to build a savings account that is more important at this stage in my life, I enjoy building my career and it is more productive than time at home watching television, When I am with my buddies they don’t nag me, and so on. As you can see the trust and trustworthiness scores will start to diminish and the “we” of the sacred becomes the ”I” without consideration for how this is impacting the relationship just how one partner is being impacted. This path leads to partners walking parallel through life without any real emotional connection and often results in the end of the relationship.
Maintaining the sacred over time is crucial and if that has broken down we need to come back to the sacred. The first step in that direction is to rebuild fondness and admiration and bring the comparison back in balance so your partner is winning. Once you recapture why your partner is unique, why you chose them, and what makes your relationship better than all others you will move back into trustworthiness because why would you want to spend time and energy anywhere else? So, we need to rebuild fondness and admiration for our partner and remember our love story. I have put together a 7-week challenge for maintaining/rebuilding fondness and admiration in your relationship. I am going to commit to the challenge, and I hope all of you do too. I know moving backward in a relationship, healing past wounds, and rebuilding trust is difficult but this is at least a stepping-off point.
Week 1: Theme of thought: remembering why you chose them:
Each day write down one reason why you fell in love with your partner.
Week 2: Theme of Thought: How am I focusing on changing the I to a WE:
Spend the week focused on the We’s instead of the I’s. Write down daily the things you have in common, beliefs and values you both share and mutual goals you support each other around.
Week 3: Theme of Thought: Remembering the magic of the love story.
Spend the week writing down daily the beautiful moments in your love story then and now.
Week 4: Theme of Thought: Loving the culture of our relationship
Write down daily what are the things in our relationship that I am proud of and enjoy.
Week 5: Theme of Thought: What makes this person the perfect partner for my journey?
Spend every day writing down one reason why your partner is the one you chose and continue to choose to be your partner in life.
Week 6: Theme of Thought: Looking for things to appreciate.
Write a love letter each day to your partner and you can choose to share them or not.
Week 7: Theme of Thought: Continuing to build connections and prioritize the relationship.
Make a plan to go on a romantic activity together in…
One week
One month
3 months
6 months
1 year
Good luck and remember we are all in this together and making the best of every day we have in our relationship.
Penney Rockhill, LCPC
Reference:
Gottman PhD, John; Nan Silver. What Makes Love Last?: How to Build Trust and Avoid Betrayal (p. 14). Simon & Schuster. Kindle Edition.