Ok, so you have been cheated on or deceived by your spouse; some reconciliation has taken place prefaced with forgiveness, and rebuilding trust is now the priority. What will the tone of your conversations need to be for you to make a success of rebuilding trust in the relationship?
Are you always going to be projecting a tone of “You have wronged me before so I have to be careful.” Or what about, “You forever owe me, I have forgiven you so you better not screw up again.” Or worse, “I am superior to you morally, from henceforth I will look down at you.” Always indulging the superiority complex.
Do not think for one minute in going there if you are really into rebuilding trust in you relationship.
Rebuilding Trust From The Shaky Foundation of Mistrust
If you find yourself in a relationship where you have been cheated on, decided to forgive and move on hopefully to a better relationship, then do just that. Do nothing to hearken to the hurt caused or the hurt felt.
Do not strengthen the foundation of mistrust created. You do this at your own peril and at the peril of rebuilding trust in the relationship.
You cannot rebuild trust from the shaky foundation of mistrust caused by infidelity or deception by strengthening that same foundation. The foundation of mistrust has to go.
Rebuilding Trust? – Be Sure To Address These First
Conversational tone is extremely important in how you communicate. Your conversational tone should not serve the purpose of putting the mistrust into focus in your relationship in any way whatsoever. If you find yourself doing this, then you are not rebuilding trust. You are perpetrating mistrust.
There are in fact steps you should take before you even start talking about rebuilding trust in the relationship.
* Be sure forgiveness has taken place before you are in fact ready to move on. This involves a heart-felt and completely honest discussion of the whole issue involved; the total repentance and acceptance of responsibility for the action and the resultant hurt; and the total acceptance by the guilty party of the responsibility to fix the problem.
* The guilty party must not only accept responsibility for his or her actions, but must demonstrate that they understand the consequences of their action both on themselves in particular, on the other party and on the relationship.
Once the above are addressed sufficiently, then that is the foundation from which to move forward to rebuild trust. It serves no useful purpose to dwell on that which has caused so much trauma, but the importance of laying a solid foundation from which trust can be rebuilt cannot be underestimated.
An Effective Conversational Tone for Rebuilding Trust
Once this solid foundation is established, this should be reinforced with a conversational tone that says you are both equal partners in rebuilding the relationship. Some simple approaches that could prove useful are:
* I am really grateful that we are still together, I have learned so much from your generous attitude.
* I have never been hurt as much as this has hurt me but I still believe in you.
* You taking full responsibility have made all the difference, and I don’t want this to be what you did wrong, I want this to be about what we must do right.
The importance of having the right conversational tone when rebuilding trust cannot be overemphasized given the mix of emotions involved. What we feel tend to come across in our tone when conversing at this level so it is important that all feelings of hurt and ill-will be dealt with before attempting to rebuild trust.
There is in fact an honest way to communicate your feelings so that even in hurt your relationship is being enhanced. Rebuilding trust in your relationship is hard enough, but having the right conversational tone can only make the task that much more meaningful.
