The Importance of Trust

It is often said that trust is one of the most important aspects of a healthy relationship. Partners who cannot trust each other almost always end up fighting and either breaking up or, perhaps worse, sticking together and making each other miserable for the rest of their lives. Indeed, t rust is a vital part of a good relationship, but it's also difficult to create and all too easy to destroy. A trusting partnership involves effective communication, patience, and above all else mutual respect.

The first step in trusting your partner requires you to be open with him or her about issues relevant to your relationship, and for him or her to return the favor. It's impossible for a couple to trust each other if one refuses to tell the other where he goes for two hours after work, for example, or what the other was doing that one weekend when she seemed to just disappear and her phone wasn't on. These and other questions will naturally occur to you and your partner in the course of your relationship, and for the sake of its success, you both need to be honest with each other and respect the other's need to know.

However, be careful not to cross any boundaries. Effective communication doesn't mean that you and your partner have to share everything. Even while in an intimate relationship, people still have their private places, habits, and thoughts, and it is equally important that you respect your partner's privacy and vice versa. Otherwise, your relationship can take on a suffocating feeling, and your partner may feel that you are being overly suspicious or controlling of his or her actions. It's not totally clear-cut, however: many questions lie on the borderline between acceptable and unacceptable, and it's necessary to establish where that border lies for you and your partner before your relationship gets too serious. A man may not appreciate his girlfriend asking him about the woman he was speaking with at the bar earlier if that question takes a suspicious tone, and likewise, a woman would probably not appreciate a similar question about the male friend she was talking to on the phone. Such questions sound perfectly natural and innocent in one context but can start a fight in another.

Respect is the second requirement for building trust. If you truly respect your partner, and your partner respects you equally, then you will much more easily be able to have a trusting and loving relationship. After a while, many things can start to go unsaid; a couple who really know each other might not have to ask each other a lot of questions like the ones above, because they know and trust each other. However, to reach that point, you and your partner will probably have to start out getting to know each other's habits and feelings by talking, and by doing so respectfully. A disrespectful question, a put-down, or even a disparaging look can go a long way towards wrecking months of work. The respect of privacy and personal boundaries is also vital. A man rummaging through his girlfriend's address book to find a close male friend's name, or a woman browsing her boyfriend's cell to find "suspicious" calls, cannot expect to have a productive or healthy relationship. In the end, if you can't respect your partner, or he or she can't respect you, then your partnership will not work. If you have a suspicion that you feel is serious and legitimate, do him or her the favor of being straightforward about it.

Every couple is different, and every one of us has our own level of desired privacy, our own way of communicating with others, and our own expectations of what a good relationship should involve. However, there are some qualities that are common to every healthy and strong intimate partnership, and trust is among the most important of them. Follow these guidelines, and you'll hopefully be able to weather the inevitable stormy parts of your relationship and come out all the stronger and happier for it.