Look, I want to gently push back on the framing of your question, because I hear this a lot. People come in and they want to know, “What do I say? How do I communicate better so they trust me again?” And I get why. It feels like there should be a script. A list. Something you can hold onto.
But here’s what I’ve seen after 16 years of sitting with couples in real pain: rebuilding trust is not primarily a communication problem. It’s an experience problem.
When trust has been broken, what the hurt person needs is not better sentences from you. They need a living, breathing moment where they feel, in their bones, that you actually get the depth of what happened. Not that you understand it intellectually. That you feel the weight of it. That you are not trying to rush past it to get back to feeling okay about yourself.
And that is the hardest thing I ask people to do.
Because here is what I see the person who did the hurting do, almost every single time. They say sorry. They change their behavior. They work hard to show they are trustworthy. And then after a while they start asking, quietly or not so quietly, “When is this going to be over? I have been trying so hard. Why don’t you trust me yet?”
And that question, as understandable as it is, tells your partner everything they are afraid of. It tells them you are still trying to get back to comfortable. You are still managing this toward an ending. You are not actually sitting in the reality of what they are living with every single day.
What actually moves the needle, what I have watched transform couples who were completely shattered, is when the person who caused the hurt can stop running from how bad it feels to have done this, and actually be in it. Fully. Not as a strategy. In their bones.
Something like, “I understand if you never fully trust me again. I am not going to rush you. If you see something years from now that triggers this for you, I want you to bring it to me. I will be here for that part of you every single time.”
When the hurt person hears that and feels that it is real, something shifts. Because what they have been afraid of is that you do not actually care how much they are hurting. That you love the relationship more than you love them. When they see you sitting in the discomfort without trying to escape it, that is proof of the work of love.
And on the practical side? Yes, consistency of behavior matters. Transparency matters. If your partner needs to look at your phone, let them. Not because you owe it to them as a rule, but because you understand what is actually happening in that moment. They are not being controlling. They are terrified. And your defensive reaction to that request is not about the phone either. It is about you feeling like you are still in trouble, still not forgiven.
When you can both see the system you are in together, when you can look at each other and say, “We are both scared and we are scaring each other,” something loosens. That is where real communication actually lives. Not in the words. In the willingness to be honest about what is happening underneath the words.
So if I were sitting across from you right now, I would ask you this: Are you trying to communicate better, or are you willing to actually feel what needs to be felt? Because one of those rebuilds trust. The other just manages it for a while.
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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: Communication Exercises for Couples (That Actually Work)
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