Okay, so you’re sitting with this question of trust after divorce. And I want to say something that might feel a little sideways at first: trust isn’t really the first thing you need to work on. Not yet.
Here’s what I mean. What we know from the work is that when someone has been really hurt, there’s a wall builder that shows up. And that wall builder is not the enemy. That wall builder is actually doing their job really well. They are saying, “I got hurt before. I am not going to let that happen again.” And the instinct, yours and everyone else’s, is to try to rush past that wall builder, to get to the open, trusting, vulnerable version of yourself as fast as possible. Like there’s something wrong with the wall.
You perform openness because feeling the truth feels like annihilation.
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But I would say to you: not yet. Not yet.
Before you can trust again, you need to actually meet and validate the part of you that built the wall. What happened to that part of you? What did they survive? Because if you try to force trust before you’ve genuinely honored your own protective instincts, you’re not building real trust. You’re just performing openness, which is exhausting and usually doesn’t hold.
I see this all the time in my office. People come in six months post-divorce saying they’re “ready to trust again” because they went on three dates and didn’t have a panic attack. But when we dig deeper, they’re white-knuckling their way through vulnerability, forcing themselves to share personal stuff because they think that’s what healing looks like.
Real healing looks different. It looks like sitting with your wall builder and asking: “What do you actually need to feel safe here?” Not what you think you should need. What you actually need.
You perform openness because feeling the truth feels like annihilation.
Do you know you can get personalized answers to all your questions from the same wisdom that wrote this article, right now?
Ask anything about your own situation and get an answer immediately. Keep asking, think it through, work out what to do next.
No credit card required. Your first 10 messages are free.
Ask Figlet about your protective shell.
Maybe you need to date someone for six months before you introduce them to your kids. Maybe you need separate bank accounts forever. Maybe you need someone who can talk about hard things without shutting down or exploding. These aren’t trust issues, they’re wisdom.
The path back to trust runs through understanding yourself first. And then, when someone new comes into the picture, the question isn’t “can I trust them?” The question is: “Is this person someone I can do that three-legged race with?” Someone where you can both acknowledge you’re hurting, both be a little scared, and still choose to move toward each other rather than away?
That’s what real trust is built on. Not certainty. Not guarantees. It’s built on two people deciding the relationship is worth protecting, together.
You’ll get there. But be gentle with your wall builder first. They’ve been keeping you safe, and they deserve some recognition for that before you ask them to step aside.
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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: How to Rebuild Trust After Lying: What Actually Works
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