Trust Building: Focusing on Your Needs and Not Your Partner’s

Trust building  in relationships is very tricky to do especially when something wrong has been done in the relationship by either of the partners. When this happens,  what do you do to earn trust back and make it stronger than before?

Do not be afraid to let your needs be known. This is especially true in situations where one person in the relationship feels the other backing or pulling away from him. Most of the  time, in cases like this, the person who doesn’t feel like his partner is paying attention to him or the marriage goes on an all out crusade to win his partner back.

He does everything he can, everything he thinks his partner wants from him, providing her every need, all in the hopes that she will come back to him. But what usually happens is that she starts to feel smothered by all the attention, or even resentful that he is only doing this now that she doesn’t want to have anything to do with him, and his efforts to try to win her back backfires. It doesn’t work. Because his motive, whether consciously done or not, of meeting her every need in the hopes that she will return the favor and meet his, doesn’t work. At the end of the day, this kind of tactic is still manipulation. And manipulation is not how you go about in trust building.

The thing is, she avoids or prevents herself from confronting him about this because he is being so nice and caring. And all this avoiding and pretending destroys the trust in the relationship.

So rather than focusing all the attention on your partner, focus on you instead and assess what your needs are that you want your partner to meet. This is one of the ways you can start re-developing the trust you lost in your marriage. Let your needs be known clearly and directly, but always be open to hear out your partner’s needs as well. Be self-centered, but not selfish.

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