We all know that cheating and lying will violate trust in a relationship. But there are also a couple of other critters guaranteed to erode trust over time: Blame and Judgment.
Mastering these two beasts was one of the most important relationship lessons I ever learned. In the interest of saving you heartache, regret and sorrow, and for the sake of improving and deepening your relationships, I want to share that lesson with you.
This is my story
For years, I’ve been committed to carrying no balances on my credit cards. I have excellent credit, which is critical to me and my sense of well-being. I was about to move in with my fiancé, so we had the all-important money conversation. He admitted that he was carrying some significant (to me) balances on his cards. I shared my views about credit card debt, and asked for his agreement to pay off his balances before we married, so we could start with a clean slate. And I asked if he would be willing to keep his balances paid off each month. He agreed and he followed through with his promise. And we married.
Fast forward a year or so. I thought it important to make some plans for retirement, although it was still some ways off for both of us. I was wanting to pull some records together so we could assess where we were financially. Somehow my sweetie was not getting around to gathering his information. (At this point, some of you will notice that I am the one initiating these conversations – and that’s another blog topic, so stay tuned.) One day he came into my office, looking quite ashen. His hands were shaking. I was alarmed, thinking someone had died. When I asked what was the matter, his reply was “I have to talk to you. There’s something I haven’t been honest with you about.”
Promises and lies
I knew immediately what he was about to say: that in spite of his best intentions, he had incurred credit card debt that was getting away from him. I took several deep breaths and focused on my breathing, and feeling the ground beneath my feet (the same ground that had dropped out from under me a moment ago), and asked some basic questions to get an idea of the extent of the problem. Do I need to tell you how absolutely furious I was? How could he have broken his promise to me? And worse, how could he have LIED to me? I had TRUSTED him!
I couldn’t even look at him, so I left the house for a long walk. And as I walked, I reflected: how did I know what he was going to say even before he said it? Did I actually know on some level what was transpiring in his money world? Which led me to this critical question – the one I invite you to reflect on when there’s a breakdown in your relationship: In what ways may I have contributed to this violation of trust?
Did I help break the promise?
Now, before we get wrapped around the proverbial axle here, this honest question of myself in no way absolved my partner of his responsibility for breaking his promise and lying about it. He was still accountable for that.
But here’s that slippery place–it would have been so easy for me to blame and judge him for this. Financial responsibility is one of my “must haves.” A potential deal-breaker. But my question to myself had me see a few important things:
1) I had asked my partner to make an unreasonable promise to me. Why unreasonable? Because I knew from his history that it was a promise he didn’t know how to keep. He’d been inept at managing his money before we were married, so why would I expect he’d suddenly become competent, just because we both wanted it to be so?
And, 2) I could have insisted earlier that we sit down and become more transparent about our financial situations, especially because it was clear that I’d suspected that things were not quite as they seemed. (Otherwise, how could I have already known what he was going to tell me?)
Regaining trust to regain intimacy
Hmmm, that gave me a bit of perspective. I was still angry, and he still had some repairing of trust to do, but I did have to own my own accountability here. Seeing that allowed me to make some powerful moves.
So, here’s the upshot. When I got home I told him I was still very angry and he still had to regain my trust in money matters. But I also told him how I saw my contribution to the breakdown. Then I focused on what we could learn from the situation – that we could make new, reasonable agreements that included learning financial competence, and increasing transparency. But most of all, we could use this issue as a learning lab for rebuilding trust and deepening it through conversation, learning, new commitments and action aligned with our commitments.
Our relationship turned a corner that day. Not only have we rebuilt trust, but we have deepened our intimacy by orders of magnitude. My partner will tell you that he trusts me more than anyone, because he knows that no matter what happens, he won’t be blamed or judged; but instead we will attend to our feelings and potential solutions to the issue at hand. Blaming and judging won’t solve the problem – it will just push us away from each other. And I also trust him more than anyone I’ve been partnered with before because he’s now so much more open, available, honest and authentic with me. Not to mention that we are also following through with our new commitments.
Trust heals breaks
Trust: it’s truly the glue that holds a love relationship together. The issue is less about breaking trust. That happens in relationships despite our best intentions. Instead, it’s how you go about restoring it once it’s broken that is so critical.
Here’s to building, restoring and maintaining trust for the sake of keeping your love alive and healthy!
