Trusting someone when you carry anxiety is one of the hardest things a nervous system is ever asked to do. And I want to be honest with you about why that is, because it’s not a character flaw. It’s actually your body doing its job, just based on old information.
Here’s what I see in my work, over and over again. Anxiety doesn’t live in your head. It lives in your body. It’s your nervous system saying, “The last time I trusted, the ground shifted under me.” And so now, every time trust is required, your body braces. It’s not being irrational. It learned that lesson well.
What I’ve found, both in my own life and in the room with couples, is that the question isn’t really “should I trust this person.” The more honest question is: can I learn to stay present with the discomfort of not knowing how this is going to turn out?
There’s something I say to couples all the time. Can you be with what is, with breath? Not certainty. Not guarantees. Just breath, and presence, and the willingness to let things unfold without running.
There’s also something important here about the difference between trust and reassurance. A lot of anxious people, and I say this with enormous compassion, go looking for reassurance. They ask their partner, over and over, “Are you there? Am I enough for you?” And the partner keeps answering. But the anxious person never fully hears it, because reassurance from outside cannot reach the place where the wound actually lives.
Real trust gets built from the inside out. It starts with you being able to witness your own fear without being swallowed by it. When you can sit with your anxiety, name it, and not demand that your partner make it stop, something begins to shift. Your partner stops becoming responsible for managing your nervous system. And that’s actually when they can show up more genuinely, because they’re not performing reassurance anymore. They’re just being present.
That shift, when two people can both feel their fear and stay in the room together without one person collapsing and the other person scrambling to fix it, that’s where something real gets built. That’s the proof of work of love. The actual showing up, through the discomfort, together.
One more thing. If your anxiety has a long history behind it, if there was a time in your life when trust really did get punished, when the ground really did shift, please be patient with yourself. Your nervous system isn’t broken. It’s waiting for evidence. And that evidence gets built slowly, in small moments, not in grand declarations.
That’s where I would start.
Where Does Your Relationship Stand?
Which pattern is running your relationship?
Take the free three minute quiz and meet the creature behind the cycle you keep getting stuck in.
Take the free Empathi Wisdom Score assessment. In 5 minutes, get a personalized snapshot of your relationship patterns and what to do about them.
Figs is a licensed marriage and family therapist with 16+ years of experience working with couples. He’s the co-founder of Empathi, host of the “Come Here to Me” podcast, and author of an upcoming book on relationships and the systems that shape how we love.
Read more: How to Rebuild Trust After Lying: What Actually Works
Explore More Topics
Keep Reading
Every couple has a pattern they cannot see. Find yours.
In love, each of you is a Relentless or a Reluctant, which makes you one of three kinds of couple: Relentless and Reluctant, two Relentless, or two Reluctant. The free quiz reveals your creatures and the cycle they fall into together. About three minutes.
No signup needed to start.
The Relentless
The Reluctant
