[00:00:00] Marie Vakakis: Most couples don’t lose trust in one big moment. It slowly happens over time. It can be through small things like shutting down during an argument, not following through on promises and commitments that you made, or dismissing and brushing off one another’s feelings and emotions. And the worst part is.

 

[00:00:29] Marie Vakakis: We often do it without even realising it, but once you know what to look for, you can start to rebuild it together. Trust isn’t just about big betrayals. And this goes for friendships, relationships, things with work colleagues. I mean, yes, a big betrayal. Wool definitely ruin trust, but there are a lot of other ways.

 

[00:00:50] Marie Vakakis: That trust can slowly erode and you might not even realise it’s happening. In my work as a couple’s therapist, I’ve seen relationships slowly chip away [00:01:00] at trust, and they don’t even realise it’s happening until one day they realise. I don’t even trust you anymore, and the other person’s left completely confused and thinks it’s come out of nowhere.

 

[00:01:11] Marie Vakakis: It’s the small habits of disconnection and repeated behaviors that leave one or both people feeling like they don’t matter and they’re not in important. And they feel less safe. Not always physically. It could be emotionally, psychologically, and they just don’t feel like they can talk to their partner without some sort of negative response, or maybe they don’t even wanna talk about things anymore.

 

[00:01:35] Marie Vakakis: There’s a whole range of things that I wanna talk about today that can help you rebuild. Trust. In this video, I’m going to break down some of the key elements that help us understand, trust and find ways to slowly rebuild that. If some of these are missing in your relationship, it can help you understand what’s really going on under the tension, the stress, or these little comments that you just don’t know where they’ve come [00:02:00] from or even how you even got here.

 

[00:02:02] Marie Vakakis: So stay tuned and hopefully you’ll walk away with a few things that can help you, real-world trust in your relationship. Trust is built in small moments, not just big events. And yes, those big events matter showing up to someone’s birthday party, their wedding, the birth of their child, whatever it is that’s important to them.

 

[00:02:18] Marie Vakakis: Showing up consistently to big, important events. Yes, that matters too, but I wanna talk about the day-to-day things that we can do that rebuild trust or that create trust. Some people might have it there already, and you might be listening to this and thinking, yep, tick, tick, tick. We’re good. We are fine.

 

[00:02:35] Marie Vakakis: You might find that there are some things that you think, oh, I had no idea about this and I wanna improve that, or change that. Or maybe this is what my friend or partner is saying and I wanna focus a bit more on relationship, uh, intimate relationship’s, couples, but there might be things that you think I can do this different.

 

[00:02:52] Marie Vakakis: And I had no idea, I didn’t have language for it. I use trust all the time. I remember, you know, as kids being told, [00:03:00] like, you know, you have to prove that we can trust you. And it was often around not lying or coming back. At the time you were saying, coming back, hanging out with the friends that you said you were gonna beat around sort of obeying rules and making sure that you were doing what you say you were gonna be doing.

 

[00:03:15] Marie Vakakis: As I grew up, I started to have a more sophisticated understanding of trust, and yet still, even when I first started my work as a family therapist and couples therapists, I still couldn’t quite conceptualise it. I did think a breach of trust usually meant something like an affair or that person was maybe flirting with someone.

 

[00:03:34] Marie Vakakis: So trust was usually around straying or infidelity or, or something like that. So often with, you know, someone of the opposite sex. That kind of thing. That’s how I kind of saw breaches of trust. And then through, I’m pretty sure it was through her podcast, through Brene Brown’s podcast, I came across her acronym for trust called braving, B-R-A-V-I-N-G, braving, and it changed how I [00:04:00] conceptualise trust, how I teach the couples I work with and the families I work with about trust.

 

[00:04:05] Marie Vakakis: I’d mention it a lot in my parenting course, connected teens and in my couples program. Relationship refresh. It seems that it’s, it’s changed how I work. It’s given me language to talk about trust in a way that I never could before. I’m gonna go through each of those layers or words with you right now.

 

[00:04:26] Marie Vakakis: The first one, B stands for boundaries and Boundaries is, can I say no and still feel safe In this relationship, boundaries are about being able to express your limits, your preferences, your needs, without fear of punishment or guilt or threat. Now, that doesn’t mean the other person has to do that, but the boundaries are understood.

 

[00:04:52] Marie Vakakis: It’s respected that you have boundaries, even if it’s not something that person can do, and talking about boundaries will open up a whole can of worms. [00:05:00] So I might leave that for another episode. If there’s something you wanna learn more about or you want me to talk about boundaries a little bit more, get in touch.

 

[00:05:06] Marie Vakakis: Ask me one of your questions and I’ll try and do a video about it. So for example, how we can get this, get this wrong with the boundaries. A healthy way is one partner says, I need time alone at home time, and instead of the other person saying, oh, well you never wanna spend time with me, you know, that’s using guilt.

 

[00:05:28] Marie Vakakis: They might say, that makes sense. How about I go see my friends and I really do want to see you? Can we spend some time together on the weekend? So boundaries allow you to ask for what you need, for what you want for your preference. And it is also something that you have to do. So if it’s that thing of I need some quiet time, and the other person’s like, well, I’ve got back to back Zoom meetings.

 

[00:05:51] Marie Vakakis: I’ve got an international call. There’s nothing I can do. I’ve got the home office set up. Then the other person might say, I still need some alone time, so [00:06:00] what I’m going to do is stay in the bedroom, or I’m going to go chill out at my sister’s house. She’s away for the weekend. I’m going to use her spare room.

 

[00:06:07] Marie Vakakis: So there might be a follow through action there. But the bit around trust is that you can mention your boundaries, you can talk about them, and there’s no guilt and blame and shaming for having those. The second letter is R, and this is for reliability. Now, you can’t be inconsistently reliable. That doesn’t work ’cause it’s inconsistent.

 

[00:06:29] Marie Vakakis: So reliability is about, do you follow through? Can I count on you emotionally and practically? Reliability means doing what you say you’re going to do, not just ones, but all the time. And that one’s a pretty simple one. It’s. Are you on time and you say you’re gonna be on time. Do you stick to commitments that you made?

 

[00:06:51] Marie Vakakis: If you say, I’ll be there to pick you up, are you there to pick me up? If you say you’re gonna cook dinner, are you gonna cook dinner? And again, it’s most of the time things get busy, life gets in [00:07:00] the way. We have things that happen where we are talking about consistently over time. So. We’ve got boundaries.

 

[00:07:07] Marie Vakakis: B. Reliability are the first two letters of our braving acronym. So an example of reliability is, or where this trust can be broken is, let’s say you’re gonna cook dinner. And not only did you not prepare something, but you come home late from work and you haven’t called or texted your partner. Now, if this is an isolated incident.

 

[00:07:28] Marie Vakakis: They might actually be worried about you and think, well, this is very unlike them. I’m hoping they’re okay. But when this happens repeatedly, it starts to send a message. I can’t rely on you, I can’t trust you. I can’t depend on you. So we can see that reliability is about saying what you’re going to do, doing it, and.

 

[00:07:46] Marie Vakakis: I see this go wrong in a number of ways where people want to please someone and they want to over commit, or they try to please someone by overcommitting and then they are less reliable. And even though they might have had the intentions to not let someone down, if they couldn’t [00:08:00] follow through on those things, and again, we’re talking about repeated acts, it erodes trust and actually can damage and ruin the relationship.

 

[00:08:08] Marie Vakakis: The next letter, A stands for accountability. And this one comes up. Well, they’re all important. They all come up often, but this is one of the antidotes to defensiveness. And in an episode coming up, I’m going to do one on the four horsemen. It’s one of the resources through Gottman therapy that I use with couples, and we have accountability as an antidote to defensiveness, and so accountability comes up in a few different ways, in different types of therapy, in different conversations.

 

[00:08:41] Marie Vakakis: So I’m kind of getting the hint that by now we should see this as a really foundational skill in building good quality, trusting relationships. Not just for intimate partner relationships, but with families, parents, children, all of it. I wanna tell you what this looks like. Can we own our staff? [00:09:00] Without deflecting blaming or minimising accountability is actually being able to say, you are right.

 

[00:09:07] Marie Vakakis: I messed up, or I messed up. Not saying I messed up. I’m so sorry. I won’t do it again. It’s just. I messed up. It’s without making excuses and without flipping it back to your partner. I was running late and I forgot to text. I’m sorry. That must have been really painful. Not You should have known. I had a meeting.

 

[00:09:29] Marie Vakakis: We have a shared Google calendar and starting to get defensive, so accountability, the ability to take responsibility for the things that you’ve done and own it. Is crucial for building trust. So an example here is, let’s say one partner forgot an anniversary and. Instead of saying, which would be a good response, I hurt you, and I’m sorry.

 

[00:09:52] Marie Vakakis: They might say something like, well, anniversaries don’t matter anyway. Now if we have repeated examples like that of the, it doesn’t matter [00:10:00] anyway, or, but you should have reminded me or, but all of these defensive tools and tactics, we’re going to move further away from a trusting relationship. So being able to be accountable is really important and owning the role of a part that you played in that.

 

[00:10:15] Marie Vakakis: Now this one is my favorite because I did not have language to describe this when I talked about trust. And this is V, so the VRAV, we’re up to V vault and it’s around keeping things private, not necessarily secrets, because sometimes, you know, it’s not about secret keeping, but it’s about do you keep private what I share or do I worry it’ll be used against me or told to others and.

 

[00:10:44] Marie Vakakis: The examples that come to mind for this is around gossiping and you know, kind of like my family has a Greek background. We talk about like the Hellenic phone line. So it’s around things getting told to someone that gets told to someone that gets told to someone that come back down to [00:11:00] you. And when you hear those things come back round to you, you start to feel like.

 

[00:11:05] Marie Vakakis: Oh, I don’t know who’s sharing things about me, or I shared that in confidence, or that’s been taken outta context. And so within a relationship, this can be. What you say to your partner about your friend’s partners. Because if I’ve come home and I’ve said, oh my God, you know Sue from work, her husband is such a so and so.

 

[00:11:25] Marie Vakakis: He’s done this and he’s done that, and oh my God, she told me about this thing that happened on the weekend and he was so embarrassed. If I’m sharing that with my partner, that’s a false sense of intimacy. That’s not gonna make my partner feel like they trust me, and we’re connecting over our shared gossiping about Sue and Sue’s husband.

 

[00:11:42] Marie Vakakis: They might start to think. Oh, what’s Marie telling Sue about me? And so this ability to be able to keep things confidential and, you know, especially when people are sharing the first draft of something, and that’s another, another phrase I got from [00:12:00] Brene Brown, you know that that brain dump and they’re sifting through their thoughts.

 

[00:12:03] Marie Vakakis: We don’t wanna be using that stuff against them and we don’t wanna be gossiping about it. It’s a full sense of intimacy and it just, it ruins trust. It really erodes trust. And so. Being very careful about this and if you are not sure what is okay to talk about what’s not okay to talk about, if you are really comfortable talking to your siblings or friends at work about your sex life and your partner’s, like absolutely not.

 

[00:12:28] Marie Vakakis: We cannot talk about this. I would never tell one of the guys about sex. You might need to have a conversation about what you’re comfortable sharing and what you’re not comfortable sharing, because this could be a really big, have a really big impact in your relationship. And I. Cause conflict and erode trust.

 

[00:12:47] Marie Vakakis: And then we have integrity. And this sometimes can sound a little bit like reliability, but integrity is more around your values. Do you act according to your values even when it’s hard? Integrity is doing the [00:13:00] right thing, even when it’s uncomfortable or inconvenient. So an example of this might be you’ve decided I wanna have a relationship where we don’t argue and say things that we later regret.

 

[00:13:12] Marie Vakakis: Again, it’s really hard to do, but that we’re going to talk about difficult things. And then something happens that is really difficult, really uncomfortable, and part of that integrity piece is actually being able to say, even though you know it’s going to be a difficult conversation, even though you know it might disappoint the other person, you choose to do it.

 

[00:13:32] Marie Vakakis: Anyway that you choose to move through the discomfort or get the support that you need to navigate those feelings of anxiety, and you have the tough conversation anyway, so that could be an example of sort of an interpersonal integrity. Another one could be around things like, I don’t know, maybe you’re really environmentally conscious and then you’re faced with this decision of we’ve agreed to maybe catch public transport and.

 

[00:13:56] Marie Vakakis: Reduce waste in a number of things, and then something comes up that is [00:14:00] maybe really wasteful or has a huge environmental impact, but it’s the easy option now, sitting in your integrity is actually being able to do the thing that you said you were going to do that aligns with your values, even when it’s hard and you might need to revisit your values and do a bit of an audit about those.

 

[00:14:17] Marie Vakakis: But this is the key foundational piece of integrity. And then we have non-judgment, and this one is. I see this erode so many relationships, and again, it happens slowly without even people realising. So non-judgment is, can I talk about my feelings or needs without being criticised? It’s the ability to show up in this messy, complex life as a human, and we’re not going to be judged for it, especially by our partner.

 

[00:14:50] Marie Vakakis: An example of this is, can I say I’m exhausted, I’m overwhelmed. I need help, and our partner support that. [00:15:00] Understand that. Empathise with it. I can see that you’ve worked really hard this week. It makes sense. You’re overwhelmed, or do they criticise? That’s no big deal. You shouldn’t worry about that. You’re overreacting.

 

[00:15:10] Marie Vakakis: All of that feels really judgy, especially when someone tries to fix it or offer unsolicited advice. It feels like they’re judging your capacity to do something or you know, we might interpret as they don’t think I can cope. They think I’m stupid. And so one thing I say all the time repeatedly to almost every single couple is.

 

[00:15:29] Marie Vakakis: Don’t try to fix it. Don’t try to fix it. Just listen, empathise, validate and empathising and validating does not mean you have to agree, does not mean that you might not have had it harder. It’s simply that you are showing your partner that you care, that you are listening, and that you can see that that makes sense to them.

 

[00:15:50] Marie Vakakis: And the last one is generosity. And this is not around giving gifts and throwing money at things. It’s around the generosity of a [00:16:00] positive assumption. It’s do we assume the best of each other, even when things feel off. So let’s say your partner forgets to reply to a text and giving them that generous assumption.

 

[00:16:12] Marie Vakakis: A bit of grace might be, I’m sure that we’re just busy. Rather than they don’t care about me, they’re being inconsiderate. I always text them and they never respond. So generosity is around giving that person the benefit of the doubt. If they forgot your birthday, it’s being able to say that’s really, that’s unlike them.

 

[00:16:31] Marie Vakakis: I know that I’m important to them. Something must be going on. Or that’s very unusual and giving them the benefit of the doubt and trying to think of possible things that could be happening that are generous in nature. Trust grows when we offer the benefit of the doubt, not accusations. So trust, you can see that there’s a lot of different elements to trust and components that we can look at, and it’s not built in just one big grand gesture.

 

[00:16:59] Marie Vakakis: It’s how we show [00:17:00] up consistently over time. And if you’ve recognised some of these in yourself, it’s not too late to start talking about it. You might even want to. Talk about this episode or look up a visual image of the braving acronym and talk that through with your partner or friend or family member.

 

[00:17:16] Marie Vakakis: This is even really great for parents and their children because often kids will say, I don’t trust you anymore, and the parents have no idea. It’s like, what? I do everything for you anyway. I’m not talking about parenting right now. We’re talking about couples. These elements will help give you some ways that you can start to or continue to build trust in your relationship.

 

[00:17:33] Marie Vakakis: So in my next video, I’m talking about red flags. The red flags in a relationship that we might choose to ignore, downplay or excuse. And so if you’re wondering whether or not you’re experiencing red flags and whether it’s something you want to work on or towards. Or walk away from This might be an episode that you don’t wanna miss.

 

[00:17:59] Marie Vakakis: Thank you for [00:18:00] listening to keep the conversation going. Head on over to Instagram or LinkedIn and follow me if you’d like to keep updated with episodes and other interesting things happening in mental health. Join my Weekly, this Complex Life newsletter where I’ll share tools, tips, and insights. There’s a link in the show notes.

 

[00:18:15] Marie Vakakis: Got a question you want answered, ship me an email or a dm. I’d love to hear from you and if you enjoy the show, I’d really appreciate it if you could leave a rating and a review. It helps other people find the podcast.