A note from Shaunti: I’ve invited my friend Jill Savage, a speaker, author, marriage coach and podcaster, to guest blog this week on the topic of broken trust. From my research, I know this is an essential topic that requires specialized knowledge and counsel. Jill and her husband Mark are very open about the steps they took to rebuild trust after an affair. If your marriage, or any relationship that matters to you, has faced broken trust, today’s blog is a must-read.
But a blog isn’t enough. So on Thursday November 2 we are also offering a free webinar with more detailed “how-to” help. Please register and/or pass this along to someone who might need it.
Your teenager says they are at one location, and you find out they are somewhere else.
Your friend has broken your confidence by sharing something about you to someone else.
Your mom or dad consistently miss important celebrations in your life.
Your spouse has been hiding financial expenditures from you.
What do all these scenarios have in common? Broken trust.
Broken trust happens when someone doesn’t follow through on what they said they would do or when their words don’t match their actions.
Nearly every relationship experiences broken trust in some way—big or small—because we’re imperfect people who do life with imperfect people. When we experience broken trust, however, most of us don’t know how to handle it well.
Sometimes we’re the one who breaks the trust and sometimes we’re the one whose trust is broken. Either way, it’s important to understand what happens in a relationship when trust is broken and how trust can be restored in that relationship.
My husband Mark and I know this reality well. Thirteen years ago, Mark went through the darkest season of his life, lost his way, had an affair, and left. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever gone through.
I knew that my husband was lost. I knew this wasn’t the man I married. I believed that if he would return to his God, he would return to his family, so I answered God’s call for me to love him during that dark season. Sometimes that love was undeserved kindness and sometimes it was boundaries. (If you’re in those circumstances I did a free webinar about standing for your marriage and loving someone who’s hard to love that you can watch here.)
It took a year, but he eventually made the U-turn I had been believing for. It then took us a year and a half to heal our marriage and restore the trust. In our healing journey, I discovered Mark wasn’t the only one who’d broken trust in our marriage. There were ways I had broken Mark’s trust over our then 28-year marriage as well. I’d been critical. I’d parented my husband. We both had to rebuild trust with each other. Today we call ourselves Mark and Jill 2.0 and broken trust is in the rearview mirror of our now 40-year marriage. Our life’s work is now centered around helping other couples rebuild trust and experience a 2.0 marriage.
To that end, we are thrilled to partner with Shaunti for a free webinar, “How We Built a Better Marriage After Broken Trust” next Thursday, Nov. 2. We hope you’ll join us. Trust can be regained. Your marriage can move from hurtful to hopeful!
Whether trust needs to be restored in a marriage, a parent/child relationship, at work, or in a friendship, there’s only one way to rebuild trust and it’s not what people usually think. Here are three things that don’t rebuild trust and the one thing that does:
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