Building Trust: Trust is Built in all the Small Moments
The following videos by Dr. John Gottman & Dr. Brene Brown illustrate how trust is built in a variety of small ways:
Dr. Gottman outlines basic trust-building strategies with the ATTUNE acronym:
Awareness - recognizing emotion in your partner
Turning toward - turning toward the emotion, your partner, and accepting “bids for connection”
Tolerance - accepting that in each situation you and your partner may hold different points of view, and that each one carries equal weight and is worth hearing
Understanding - trying to see and understand your partner’s perspective
Non-defensive responding - responding with understanding and empathy rather than seeing your partner’s emotion as an accusation
Empathy - expressing compassion and feeling with your partner in their emotion
EMPATHY
1. Perspective Taking, or putting yourself in someone else’s shoes.
2. Staying out of judgement and listening.
3. Recognizing emotion in another person that you have maybe felt before.
4. Communicating that you can recognize that emotion.
Accepting Bids for Connection:
What do they Look Like?
Remember: Turning away from your partner again and again over time can have worse consequences than even turning against your partner.
How Trust Builds Intimacy
What is Intimacy?
While there are a wide-range of potential and somewhat ambiguous meanings for intimacy, marital intimacy can be defined as: a special connection to, a closeness with, and a mutual dependency on one’s spouse (in a variety of different facets that can include emotional, spiritual, intellectual, and physical), that fosters a deep sense of togetherness.
Building moments of trust in turn builds intimacy because trust fosters a sense of togetherness and deep connection. Both trust and intimacy foster the idea of “we’re in this together.” Because trust and intimacy share one vital ingredient; in order to build trust and in turn intimacy, we must be willing to be vulnerable.
The “Secret ” to both Intimacy and Trust: VULNERABILITY
Why Vulnerability?
What is it about vulnerability that makes it so essential to these important principles? Well, vulnerability is the courage to risk emotional exposure, the very foundation of trust and intimacy.
Though opportunities for intimacy may decrease during periods of separation, following these practices by choosing to be vulnerable, turning toward your partner, and accepting bids for connection, can allow you and your spouse to foster intimacy even during separation.