Latest / Internal Insights / Can You Really Trust Someone Again After They've Hurt You?
Transcript
- Ted Thao: Hey, I'm Ted Thao This is Internal Insights. I'm a licensed professional counselor, which means I spend most of my weeks listening closely to people work through the hardest parts of being alive. This podcast is where I take what I'm hearing without any names or identifying details and open it up into a conversation for anyone willing to think a little harder about themselves and the world around them. Have you ever caught yourself checking your partner's phone? Not because you actually think something's wrong, but just because the thought crossed your mind and you couldn't shake it? Trust gets talked about like this big dramatic thing. Something you either have or you don't. But honestly, it's a lot more boring than that. In the best way, it's built in tiny, unremarkable moments. Someone says they'll call you back, and they do. Someone says they're running late and they text you instead of leaving you wondering. None of that is exciting, but stack enough of those small moments on top of each other and you get something solid. Here's a way to think about it. Imagine trust as a jar of coins. Every time someone follows through on something small, a little consistency, a little honesty, they drop a coin in. Every time they don't, a coin comes out. Big betrayals empty the whole jar at once, sure. But most relationships aren't done by one huge event. They're worn down slowly, by a bunch of tiny withdrawals nobody noticed at the time. Which also means the reverse is true. You can rebuild the jar the same slow way it got built the first time. One coin at a time. A lot of people think trust is about never messing up. It's not. Nobody is that consistent. And honestly, a relationship where nobody slips isn't more trustworthy. It's just less tested. What actually builds trust is what happens after the mess up. Does the person own it? Do they change something? Even a small something. Or do they get defensive and make you feel silly for noticing? That r moment right after a mistake tells you more than a hundred moments of nothing that went wrong. So I get asked this, how do I trust someone again after they've hurt me? Even though we're actually trying to make it work? Thing is, you don't have to flip a switch and decide to trust someone fully again. That's not really how it works. And honestly, expecting that of yourself just sets you up to feel like you're failing as something impossible. Trusting after a hurt gets rebuilt in layers. And it's okay to be slow. What matters more than how fast you get there is whether you're seeing something real. Repeated effort on the other side, not grand gestures, just steady, unglamorous follow through over time. And it matters whether you're allowed to bring up your doubts without the other person shutting down or making you feel like bad guy for still having them. If both of those things are present, the effort and the openness, trust tends to come back on its own timeline. You don't have to force it. You just have to keep noticing whether the coins are going back into the jar. And if you're the one who caused the hurt, patient matters here too. Wanting to be trusted again quickly is understandable, but pushing someone to hurry up and get over it usually backfires. Give it the time it actually needs. So maybe this week, instead of asking yourself, do I trust this person? Try asking yourself something smaller. Did they follow through on the little thing today? That question is a lot easier to answer, and honestly, it's much better of a measure than where do things actually stand. That's where I'll leave it for today. You don't have to agree with everything I said, but I'd invite you to sit with it a little longer before you move on to whatever is next. I'm Ted Thao this has been Internal Insights. And if you want to learn more about my work, you can find me at internal insights therapy dot com. Take care, and I'll talk to you next time.