82: Why Being Faithful Doesn’t Buy Trust in Your Relationship

Welcome back to Make More Love. I'm your host, Ellen Dorian. This show looks at the connection between relationships and business ownership, especially for men who want straight talk, useful frameworks, and practical ways to solve relationship problems. If this is your first time here, hit follow or subscribe so you don't miss anything. Now let's get into it. You know, everywhere I look lately, I keep hearing about this thing, the Trust Deficit. People don't trust politicians, for instance, or the government, or the left or the right, or the media, or corporations, or employers, or big pharma, or the healthcare system, or the banks. More and more, we don't trust the people who are supposed to be giving us accurate information, protecting our interests, and making responsible decisions on our behalf. And whether you agree with every example or not, the larger point is hard to ignore. As a society, we are running low on trust. In fact, I'd argue that we're losing our capacity to trust anyone at all, even the people who are closest to us. Many business owner marriages are operating at a trust deficit. The couple's confidence in each other has eroded to the point where they're questioning each other's motives and judgment, honesty, and even safety. And that confuses the hell out of a lot of business owners. They can't imagine why their partner thinks of them as untrustworthy. They feel like they're doing everything they're supposed to do to create the life that they've promised, and they've done nothing to deserve the shade that's being thrown their way. And generally, that's because they think of trust only in terms of the fatal four: betrayal, secrets, lies, and affairs. They figure as long as they steer clear of those, they're good. But this is where you might wanna take another look. Because trust is also vulnerable to the ordinary daily stuff that happens without much thought. And I say without much thought because if you really thought about any of this, you probably wouldn't do it. So stuff like, did you not do something you said you would do? Did you forget something that was important to your partner? Did you show up late for the millionth time, or did you not notice something your partner did for you? You know, did you claim that you were never told about something when really you were distracted or on your phone when your partner was talking? Look, relationships are resilient. They have to be 'cause they're gonna have to last for decades. So they can absorb some broken promises and forgetfulness and distractions or ball-dropping up to a point. But when those lapses stack up, the repeated letdowns create a trust deficit, that is the accumulated gap between what a partner needs in order to feel safe, connected, informed, and secure, and what the relationship is consistently providing. You send the message to your partner that they cannot trust that what matters to them matters to you. And another thing we should talk about is apologies. Because too often we rely on apologies. It's that whole "beg for forgiveness instead of asking for permission" kind of thinking. But apologizing without changing your behavior or without actually sincerely meaning it just compounds the problem. Because now you've trained your partner not to trust your apologies either. And that really sucks. And there's another layer here that's especially important for business owners, and it happens when you keep your business too separate from your relationship. There's a lot of ways this can go wrong, but the worst one is If your spouse finds out after the fact that you've made business decisions or taken financial risks that affect them but they weren't consulted about it That's financial infidelity, and that's its own topic, and I'm gonna have to cover that in a future episode. So these things pile up, and before you realize it, you've overdrawn the trust you banked by being faithful and honest in all the big stuff. Trust is a hot button issue in almost every relationship. Who hasn't either said or heard something like this in a heated exchange with your partner? "Look, either you trust me or you don't. Which is it?" And that question is always, always loaded because as Mona Lisa Vito says in My Cousin Vinny, "That's a bullshit question. No one can answer that question. It's a trick question." That question exactly illustrates the problem, which is that we tend to think of trust as binary when it's really not. So I'm gonna walk you through the seven domains of trust. I've broken trust down into these seven categories, hopefully to make it easier to understand where trust deficits come from, and more importantly, to give you a starting point for building trust into your own relationship at a higher level, no matter where you're starting. So here's how I've categorized them. There's safety, security, caring, integrity, fidelity, reliability, and repair. Everyone's gonna have their own priorities here, but I've tried to put them into an order that supports a spectrum of individual to shared interests. I'm gonna go through them one by one. The first domain is safety, and it's the most fundamental one. It means that you can trust that you will not be physically harmed or threatened, and you won't be deprived of your basic needs in the relationship. Like I said, it's fundamental, and I'm gonna stop here for a second and say this. If anything I'm saying brings up feelings of physical intimidation or threats, coercion, or fear for your safety, let's not mess around. A podcast is not gonna be enough help. Please reach out to the National Domestic Violence Hotline. You deserve support from people trained specifically in safety planning and abuse prevention. I'm gonna put the link with the contact information for them in the show notes so you can reach out to them directly. I'm gonna move on to another aspect of safety which isn't about physical danger, but still affects your stability. I'm talking about the roof over your head. You need to know that your stability is not casually being put at risk. That said, I've known quite a few people who've lost everything, including the roof over their head, and still stayed together and rebuilt. In season one of Make More Love, I interviewed Justin Wiseman, and he talked about exactly that kind of situation and how they got out of it. You can listen to episode 14 and 15 to hear all about it, and it's a really good interview. So I'll put those links in the show notes, too, and I recommend that you check that out. All right. Now, let's move on to the second domain of trust, which is security. This is about transparency around money and financial risk. And it's not surprising that couples get tripped up over it, because a lot of how we handle money comes from how our family of origin related to money. Was it a source of stress in your family growing up? If so, it's likely still a source of stress for you. Who controlled how much of it was spent, saved, and invested? Was money Hidden, whether that meant buried in jars in the backyard, or was there a bank account that only one partner knew about? Most couples do talk about money to some extent when they're dating seriously. They may pick up differences in money philosophy, but until they're living together, it seems intrusive to ask too much about it. It's a little bit unsexy to talk about money. And in that phase of the relationship where there's so much infatuation and fascination and curiosity and dopamine rewards, rarely will they end the relationship over financial differences. Then when they move in and start to build a life together, suddenly those differences become a high-conflict issue. That's why it's so important to be intentional about financial transparency, especially in five key areas: Earnings, spending, savings, debt, and taxes. And that's true whether your finances are fully intertwined or not. And if you are a business owner, there's an added element. Your spouse needs to know the fundamental finances of the business, even if they're not involved in the day-to-day operations. Because even if they're not a legal partner in the business, they're a silent partner whether anyone likes it or not. Look, your spouse chose you and the relationship. They did not choose to be kept in the dark about their financial reality. Their quality of life is tied to what happens in your business, so they deserve clear visibility into the risks associated with it Moving on, the third domain of trust is caring. This is about emotional well-being. Your partner needs to know that they can express their reality without having to defend their right to have it. That doesn't mean that you always have to agree or even that you always understand what's going on, and you can be tired or defensive, or maybe you remember things differently, but you should not respond in a way that leaves your partner feeling dismissed or overruled or gaslit. If that happens enough times, they'll stop trusting you with their feelings, and good luck trying to get any kind of affection or respect from them if you put them in that situation. The fourth domain of trust is integrity. This really boils down to one thing. Are you honest with your partner when it's not easy to be honest? That means telling the truth even when you know it's gonna hurt, and Not being selective about what you share. Not waiting for them to ask you about something you know they should know. Not avoiding the conversation because you know they're gonna be mad. Not splitting hairs, and Not trying to get off on a technicality. There's obviously a lot more to integrity than just this, but I don't feel like I need to get into too much explanation here. You know what integrity is, and you know how important it is to a trusting relationship, right? So I think that's enough said on that topic. The fifth domain of trust is fidelity. This is the one most people think of first when we talk about trust in relationships. It's the question of whether your partner can trust you to honor the sexual, romantic, and emotional agreements of the relationship. That includes cheating obviously, but it also includes boundaries and secrecy, flirtations online behavior, and emotional affairs. And yes, fidelity matters a lot, but it cannot compensate for trust failures everywhere else. I've seen a lot of people who cheat. In my work, in my life, when I was dating. It's always awful to find out that the guy you had a great first date with is actually married. So I'm not minimizing sexual betrayal. But when I look at all the other domains of trust that hold a relationship together, I'm not convinced that sexual fidelity is always the most important one. It's one important domain, but it's not the whole trust profile, and you are welcome to disagree with me on that if you would like. It's just based on what I've observed in life. The sixth domain of trust is reliability. This one boils down to this: will you do what you say you're gonna do? Will you show up on time and prepared for whatever the circumstances dictate? Can your partner count on you even in the shittiest of situations? nobody's perfect, but when you break promises, forget things show up late regularly, and need to be reminded repeatedly about things you've agreed to handle, this domain of trust is gonna take a hit, and over time, your partner's gonna lose confidence that your word means anything is actually gonna happen. Reliability is not about being perfect, but it does mean that your partner needs to be able to count on you. The seventh domain is repair. Repair is the confidence that you have in your partner that when something goes pear-shaped, neither one of you is headed for the door. You're not gonna disappear. You're not gonna escalate, punish, or pretend nothing happened. We all know that we're gonna get into some serious disagreements over the years in a relationship. Things are gonna break down from time to time. Communication will be ineffective. Your partner will let you down, and you'll let them down, too. That's just how life works. But one of the worst things you can do is to bolt at the first sign of trouble, whether that's withdrawing emotionally or physically walking out the door. Even if the disappearance is temporary, that action is very damaging. Because the underlying question of repair is When things get hard, are you still gonna be here? Nobody has a perfect relationship, and no relationship is conflict-free, but being able to trust each other to come back together, take accountability, and work the problem is key. And every time you do that, you make the relationship a little bit stronger Now, I wanna share a story to help you see how this plays out in real life One of my clients once told me that she chose her husband largely because she knew he would never cheat on her. And for her, that mattered deeply because her father had a major history of philandering. But fairly early in her marriage, she realized something. While it was true that she could trust her husband not to cheat on her, she did not experience him as broadly trustworthy. There were major deficits in other areas. There were safety issues because he was reckless and acted impulsively in ways that put the family at physical risk. they were both keeping a lot of secrets from each other around money. There were integrity issues because both of them learned to lie or cover up anything that would lead to any kind of an argument And when they were really tested, because they both had serious illnesses within a short time of each other, they found they really couldn't rely on each other to have their back or pick up what needed to be handled for the household and the family. It was honestly one of the worst trust deficits I've ever seen in a relationship. They maintained the appearance of a marriage, but the actual connection was very weak because trust was weak in so many places. And that's the point I wanna make here. You can be sexually faithful and still have a serious trust problem when you're failing at honesty, reliability, repair, financial transparency, and emotional care. So those are the seven domains of trust. They form a practical link between compatible values, explicit agreements, and a shared vision for the future. They support common purpose, which is one of the three core drivers of the passionate partnership model that I use with my clients. So if your relationship is feeling short on trust, you now have a better way to identify where it's breaking down and a better chance of repairing the right things. Now, here's something for you to think about. Which domain of trust is strongest in your relationship right now, and how do you know? Which one is weakest, and why do you think it is weak? Which one, if repaired, would change the whole tone of your relationship? And what's one step you could take to start repairing that one? If you're struggling with any of this, you can always reach out for some brainstorming help. Just set up a Relationship Reset Call with me, and we can work through this together. The call is quick and free and private, and it's designed to give you a single tangible next step that you can take to sort out any relationship problem. Just go to relationship reset call dot com and set up a time. The link is in the show notes. In the next episode, we're gonna take this one step further. We all have a natural trust style that comes with its own patterns, and I'm gonna lay those out for you. I call them the seven trust archetypes. They're gonna help you identify your natural trust tendencies, where you already show up as trustworthy, and where you need to build skills that may not come as naturally to you. After that, I'm gonna show you how to start building a more balanced trust profile that makes your relationship more resilient, more passionate, and more connected. All right. I hope today's episode got you thinking, but there's really only so much we can do in an open forum like this. If you wanna look at your specific situation, go to relationshipresetcall.com and book a time to talk with me. It's free, it's quick and it's private. We'll figure out the next best move for you and get you on track. And if you know someone who's struggling in their relationship, please pass this episode along. I've also included links to additional resources in the show notes so you can keep building on your relationship skills. I believe you had good reasons for choosing your partner. My mission is to help you reconnect with those reasons and discover new ways to Make More Love with your wife and in your life. I'm Ellen Dorian, and that's what I've got for you today.