Consolidated Article

My mother committed suicide when I was 20 years old. That left a huge scar on my soul that has followed me to this day, affecting every romantic relationship I've ever been in. I was married for 12 years, and the first part of the marriage is when the irrational fears and imaginations began showing up that this person was lying to me, cheating on me, deceiving me, or betraying me. I managed to get through that, I don't know how, I think just time as much as anything helped. It for the most part went away. But then she divorced me, and since then I have been almost completely unable to feel full and complete trust in the person I'm with. My present relationship is by far the worst. It's become almost a constant thing in my mind. For short periods I'm able to control it, but it still gets control of my mind and then control of my actions and I act out on my fears, which causes huge fights and breakups. She said my not trusting her hurts her deeply and immensely. I've been going to counseling; it has helped, but my partner is unwilling or unable to help me with this. She has put the burden of fixing this squarely on my shoulders and now has left me and says she won't return until it is resolved. I know what caused it, I have learned to deal with it and overcome it 99% of the time, but that 1% showing up, taking over, and causing me to act on those fears and insecurities has been enough to all but destroy my relationship. I love her with all my heart, but my mind keeps making a mess of it. At present I am depressed beyond belief. I don't know what to do. I'm trying, I'm doing the best I can, but it's not enough. Please help me. —Frozen by Fear
Dear Frozen by Fear,

When trust becomes difficult or impossible in relationships, the impact can be devastating. Trust is widely regarded as a fundamental psychological concept in the study of relationships, yet for many people, past experiences make trusting others feel dangerous or impossible. Whether stemming from trauma, loss, or early attachment disruptions, trust issues can create cycles of fear, anger, and emotional distance that sabotage the very connections we most need.

For many people, trust issues don’t start with abstract trauma, they start with something painfully concrete: a partner who cheated, suspicious messages discovered late at night, or the sinking feeling that something was off long before the truth came out.

In today’s digital world, breaches of trust aren’t always obvious. Emotional affairs, secret conversations, and boundary violations through texting or social media can quietly erode a sense of safety. Many people searching for help with trust are trying to answer a simple but difficult question: “Why didn’t I see this coming…and how do I trust again?”

This comprehensive guide explores how trust issues develop, their impact on relationships, and evidence-based approaches for healing. If you’re struggling with trust in relationships, know that you’re not alone—and that with the right support, healing is possible.

The Connection Between Trauma and Trust

Trust issues rarely develop in isolation. While major trauma can play a role, many people trace their difficulties back to relationship experiences that felt confusing, invalidating, or deceptive—such as being cheated on, lied to, or repeatedly reassured that nothing is going on when something actually was.

In everyday relationship contexts, trust is often damaged by:

• Romantic betrayal (affairs, emotional cheating, secret communication)
• Repeated dishonesty or omission of important information
• Boundary violations that are minimized or denied
• Feeling “blindsided” by a partner’s actions after ignoring or second-guessing your own instincts

As one therapist explains to a client struggling after parental suicide: “The kind of traumatic grief and loss you’re describing will definitely impact your relationships. Sometimes people who suffer such losses find it hard to sustain the kind of vulnerability and trust an intimate relationship requires… While extreme losses can deeply affect trust, many people experience a similar emotional pattern after betrayal in relationships: You find yourself becoming frightened or angry over the inevitable conflicts of relationships, or over ‘red flags’ that definitely indicate betrayal or abandonment due to the amplified after-effects of your loss.”

Aspects of the traumatic event and certain biological and social factors may make some people more likely to develop PTSD. For instance, previous exposure to adversity and other traumatic experiences, especially in childhood, can increase a person’s chance of developing PTSD later in life.

Common traumatic experiences that impact trust include:

• Death of a loved one, especially by suicide or unexpected circumstances
• Childhood abuse, neglect, or inconsistent caregiving
• Betrayal by partners, friends, or family members
• Multiple losses or ongoing trauma exposure
• Medical trauma or life-threatening illness

Why Betrayal Feels so Destabilizing

One of the most disorienting aspects of betrayal is not just what happened, but realizing you missed or dismissed signs along the way. Many people describe being blindsided, even when, in hindsight, there were moments of doubt: things that didn’t add up, gut feelings that were pushed aside, or boundaries that weren’t enforced.

This is where trust becomes more than trusting others, it becomes about trusting yourself. If you don’t feel confident that you can recognize problems early or handle the truth when it appears, it becomes much harder to feel safe in any relationship.

How Trust Issues Develop: The Role of Attachment

Our early relationships shape how we understand trust, but you don’t need to know psychological theories to recognize the patterns. If you grew up feeling secure and heard, trust may feel more natural. If your early experiences involved inconsistency, emotional distance, or unpredictability, trust may feel harder to obtain and easier to lose. Relatedly, the attachment theory posits that trust emerges out of a secure parent-child relationship, and these parent-child trust experiences may translate and extend to relationships later in life.

Childhood trauma, including abuse, neglect, and emotional neglect, significantly disrupts emotional development and the attachment process. The maladaptive coping mechanisms formed in response to childhood trauma can persist into adulthood, complicating the ability to trust others and navigate emotional connections. This is particularly relevant in romantic relationships, where attachment styles established in childhood continue to influence relational dynamics.

Insecure Attachment Patterns:

• Anxious attachment: Anxiously attached adults may experience high levels of relationship anxiety, emotional dependence, and a need for constant reassurance
• Avoidant attachment: Tendency to maintain emotional distance and difficulty with vulnerability
• Disorganized attachment: Often results from traumatic or abusive experiences, leading to unpredictable relationship patterns

Recent research found that insecure attachment, such as avoidant and anxious dimensions in parent–child attachment, was negatively associated with romantic relationship satisfaction in early adulthood. This matches with attachment theory that early insecure attachment can bring negative impact on later romantic interactions.

Common Signs of Trust Issues in Relationships

Trust issues manifest differently for different people, but common patterns include:

Emotional and Behavioral Signs:

• Difficulty believing others’ words or intentions
• Hypervigilance for signs of betrayal or abandonment
• Emotional walls or reluctance to be vulnerable
• Jealousy or possessiveness in relationships
• Fear that has a way of stoking adrenaline and anger as a way to defend against the terrors of loss and abandonment
• Urge to check a partner’s phone, messages, or social media
• Replaying conversations or looking for hidden meanings
• Feeling anxious when a partner is unavailable or slow to respond

Communication Patterns:

• Difficulty sharing personal thoughts and feelings
• Tendency to interpret neutral actions as threatening
• Frequent testing of others’ loyalty or commitment
• Withdrawal when conflict arises

Relationship Behaviors:

• Serial monogamy or avoiding committed relationships entirely
• Acting in ways that inadvertently sabotage relationships while in “trauma states”
• Pushing people away before they can leave first
• Excessive need for control or independence
• Ignoring early red flags, then feeling shocked later
• Staying in situations that feel off to avoid conflict or loss

The Cycle of Fear and Defensive Behaviors

One of the most insightful observations from therapy work is how “usually beneath anger is hurt, which might explain the intensity of the arguments you describe. You find yourself becoming frightened or angry over the inevitable conflicts of relationships… fear has a way of stoking adrenaline and anger as a way to defend against the terrors of loss and abandonment.”

This fear-anger-sabotage cycle is common in trauma survivors:

• Fear triggered by relationship conflict or intimacy
• Anger emerges as a defensive response to hurt
• Defensive behaviors push the partner away
• Abandonment fears confirmed, reinforcing the cycle

The symptoms of PTSD can cause significant distress and interfere with a person’s ability to engage in daily activities, including sleeping and eating. People with PTSD often have co-occurring conditions, such as depression, substance use, or anxiety disorders, which can further complicate relationship dynamics.

Another layer of this cycle is self-doubt. After being hurt or blindsided, many people stop trusting their own judgment: “How did I not see this?” This can lead to either hypervigilance (seeing threats everywhere) or avoidance (not wanting to look too closely at all). Both patterns make trust harder, not just with others, but within yourself.

Trust Issues After Grief and Loss

Loss can be particularly devastating to our ability to trust in relationships. While grief is often associated with death, many people experience a similar process after the loss of a relationship due to betrayal, infidelity, or deception.

*”Thank you so much for writing, and I’m very sorry to hear about your loss… It sounds like you find yourself unintentionally or unconsciously needing to defend against the terror of a repeated abandonment.”*

This response captures something crucial: after significant loss, especially traumatic loss like suicide, the fear of experiencing that pain again can make trusting others feel impossible. Recent clinical trials involving a combined 641 participants with Prolonged Grief Disorder showed that targeted grief-specific psychotherapy demonstrated over 70% effectiveness in resolving symptoms.

Specific impacts of grief on trust:

• Fear of investing emotionally in someone who might leave or die
• Anger at the deceased that complicates future relationships
• Guilt about “moving on” or being happy again
• Hypervigilance for signs that others might abandon them

Trust, Boundaries and Facing Reality

Trust is often thought of as something we give to others, but at its core, it’s also about trusting ourselves to face reality. When boundaries are unclear or difficult to enforce, people may ignore behaviors that feel uncomfortable or explain them away. This isn’t a failure, it’s often a way of protecting the relationship or avoiding painful truths.

But over time, avoiding reality can lead to feeling blindsided. Rebuilding trust, then, isn’t just about finding a trustworthy partner—it’s about strengthening your ability to:

• Notice when something feels off
• Ask direct questions
• Tolerate uncomfortable answers
• Act on what you learn

In this sense, trust and boundaries are deeply connected.

Finding the Right Therapeutic Support

One of the most valuable insights about therapy comes from recognizing when treatment isn’t the right fit: “Ideally, we want to feel we’re seeing (and paying) someone who truly ‘gets’ how painful our challenges are (and why, within the context of our life histories), and who offers feedback or options that feel attuned to who we are and what we need at any given phase.”

Research supports several therapy approaches for rebuilding trust, but what matters most to many people is finding a therapist who helps them make sense of their specific experiences—especially around betrayal, boundaries, and self-trust.

Questions to ask yourself about therapy:

• Do I feel heard, understood, and supported?
• Does my therapist seem to understand my specific challenges?
• Am I able to share difficult feelings safely?
• Are the therapeutic approaches evidence-based?

“A good therapist will be open to all sorts of feedback, so ask yourself these questions and please do voice your concerns with whomever you’re seeing.”

Building Trust in Relationships: Evidence-Based Approaches

Therapeutic Interventions

Couple therapy research shows that all family members benefit from trustworthy relationships, which result from (a) acknowledging the contributions of deserving family members, (b) engaging in responsible interactions, and (c) ensuring a fair distribution of relational burdens and benefits.

Attachment-Based Interventions:

Interventions that enhance interpersonal trust—perhaps through modeling trustworthy relationships or cognitive restructuring—could mitigate the impact of emotional alienation with parents on relational avoidance. Programs in college counseling or family therapy could include trust-building exercises to help young adults become more open and secure in romantic relationships.

Trauma-Informed Approaches:

• EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) for processing traumatic memories
• Somatic therapy for addressing trauma stored in the body
• Cognitive-behavioral therapy for changing thought patterns about trust and safety

Couples Therapy Approaches:

• Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) for rebuilding emotional connection
• Gottman Method for developing relationship skills and trust
• Narrative therapy for rewriting relationship stories

Building Trust Gradually: Practical Steps

For Individuals:

• Start with small risks: Practice trusting in low-stakes situations
• Notice your patterns: Awareness is the first step to change
• Challenge negative assumptions: Not everyone will hurt you like you’ve been hurt before
• Practice self-compassion: Healing takes time and setbacks are normal
• Practice trusting your perceptions: If something feels off, pause and explore it instead of dismissing it
• Build tolerance for difficult truths: Trust grows when you know you can handle what you discover

For Partners of Trust-Challenged Individuals:

• Be consistent: Reliability builds trust over time
• Communicate openly: Transparency reduces anxiety about hidden motives
• Respect boundaries: Don’t push for vulnerability before someone is ready
• Be patient: Trust builds slowly but can be destroyed quickly

“This really is impossible to do on your own… keep looking until you find the support that your heart and gut tell you is right.”

When to Seek Professional Help

To meet the criteria for PTSD, a person must have symptoms for longer than 1 month, and the symptoms must be severe enough to interfere with aspects of daily life, such as relationships or work. It is important for people with PTSD symptoms to work with a mental health professional who has experience treating PTSD.

Seek professional help if:

• Trust issues are significantly impacting your relationships
• You’re experiencing symptoms of depression, anxiety, or PTSD
• You’re using alcohol or substances to cope
• You’re having thoughts of self-harm or suicide
• Previous attempts at healing haven’t been successful

Crisis Resources:

• National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 988
• Crisis Text Line: Text HOME to 741741
• National Domestic Violence Hotline: 1-800-799-7233

Hope for Healing

“You have the courage to reach out and seek help, and that’s a noble thing… I can assure you that you’re not alone; so many of the people who come to me for help are wrestling with the same challenges, wrought by actual abandonments that have shattered their emotional lives and made current relationships difficult, if not impossible.”

Trust is responsive to important events and activities occurring within the confines of the relationship. That is, the major issues and themes in focus at the given period of a relationship’s development might give insight into the contents by which people construct their trust for their partner.

This means that trust can be rebuilt, even after significant trauma. With the right support, therapeutic intervention, and gradual practice, people can learn to trust again—both others and themselves.

For many people, healing begins when the focus shifts from “Can I trust someone else?” to “Can I trust myself to handle whatever happens?”

“Take it one day at a time, one hour at a time (fear tends to get us way into the future), and keep looking until you find the support that your heart and gut tell you is right.”

• Camanto, O. J., Campbell, L., Stanton, S. C. E., & Others. (2025). Trust in close relationships revisited. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 42(9), 2516–2544. https://doi.org/10.1177/02654075251346105
• Daneshpour, M. (2025). Couples therapy and the challenges of building trust, fairness, and justice. Family Process, 64(3), 1–19. https://doi.org/10.1111/famp.12234
• Eisma, M. C., de Lang, T. A., Christodoulou, K., Schmitt, L. O., Boelen, P. A., & de Jong, P. J. (2025). Prolonged grief symptoms and lingering attachment predict approach behavior toward the deceased. Journal of Traumatic Stress, 38, 284–295.
• Goveas, J. S., & O’Connor, M. F. (2024). Prolonged grief disorder: Unveiling neurobiological mechanisms for a shared path forward. American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry, 32(5), 535–538.
• Krabbendam, L., Sijtsma, H., Crone, E. A., & van Buuren, M. (2024). Trust in adolescence: Development, mechanisms and future directions. Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, 69, 101426.
• National Institute of Mental Health. (2024). Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/post-traumatic-stress-disorder-ptsd
• National Institute of Mental Health. (2024). Coping with traumatic events. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/coping-with-traumatic-events
• Papola, D., Miguel, C., Mazzaglia, M., Franco, P., Tedeschi, F., Romero, S. A., et al. (2024). Psychotherapies for generalized anxiety disorder in adults: A systematic review and network meta-analysis of randomized clinical trials. JAMA Psychiatry, 81, 250–259.
• Richmond, J., Anderson, A., Cunningham-Erves, J., Ozawa, S., & Wilkins, C. H. (2024). Conceptualizing and measuring trust, mistrust, and distrust: Implications for health equity and building trustworthiness. Annual Review of Public Health, 45(1), 465–484.
• Shanoora, A., Halimatusaadia, H., Mohd Abdullah, H., & Mohd Khir, A. (2025). Parent-child attachment and romantic relationship: Is there a relationship between parent-child attachment and young adults’ romantic relationships? The Maldives National Journal of Research, 11, 117–135.
• Smith, J. A., Johnson, B. C., & Williams, K. L. (2024). Childhood trauma and attachment styles as predictors of marital satisfaction: A psychosocial perspective from Türkiye. SDGs Review, 5, e06802.
• StatPearls. (2025). Grief and prolonged grief disorder. National Center for Biotechnology Information. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK507832/

References:

1. Camanto, O. J., Campbell, L., Stanton, S. C. E., & Others. (2025). Trust in close relationships revisited. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 42(9), 2516–2544. https://doi.org/10.1177/02654075251346105
2. Daneshpour, M. (2025). Couples therapy and the challenges of building trust, fairness, and justice. Family Process, 64(3), 1–19. https://doi.org/10.1111/famp.12234
3. Eisma, M. C., de Lang, T. A., Christodoulou, K., Schmitt, L. O., Boelen, P. A., & de Jong, P. J. (2025). Prolonged grief symptoms and lingering attachment predict approach behavior toward the deceased. Journal of Traumatic Stress, 38, 284–295.
4. Goveas, J. S., & O’Connor, M. F. (2024). Prolonged grief disorder: Unveiling neurobiological mechanisms for a shared path forward. American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry, 32(5), 535–538.
5. Krabbendam, L., Sijtsma, H., Crone, E. A., & van Buuren, M. (2024). Trust in adolescence: Development, mechanisms and future directions. Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, 69, 101426.
6. National Institute of Mental Health. (2024). Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/post-traumatic-stress-disorder-ptsd
7. National Institute of Mental Health. (2024). Coping with traumatic events. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/coping-with-traumatic-events
8. Papola, D., Miguel, C., Mazzaglia, M., Franco, P., Tedeschi, F., Romero, S. A., et al. (2024). Psychotherapies for generalized anxiety disorder in adults: A systematic review and network meta-analysis of randomized clinical trials. JAMA Psychiatry, 81, 250–259.
9. Richmond, J., Anderson, A., Cunningham-Erves, J., Ozawa, S., & Wilkins, C. H. (2024). Conceptualizing and measuring trust, mistrust, and distrust: Implications for health equity and building trustworthiness. Annual Review of Public Health, 45(1), 465–484.
10. Shanoora, A., Halimatusaadia, H., Mohd Abdullah, H., & Mohd Khir, A. (2025). Parent-child attachment and romantic relationship: Is there a relationship between parent-child attachment and young adults’ romantic relationships? The Maldives National Journal of Research, 11, 117–135.
11. Smith, J. A., Johnson, B. C., & Williams, K. L. (2024). Childhood trauma and attachment styles as predictors of marital satisfaction: A psychosocial perspective from Türkiye. SDGs Review, 5, e06802.
12. StatPearls. (2025). Grief and prolonged grief disorder. National Center for Biotechnology Information. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK507832/