PRINCIPLE # 6

Build and Maintain Trust

“Shutting down’ is actually one of the worst relationship killers,” says Cheryl Burke, a licensed mental health therapist in Winter Park, Florida. “Many intimate relationships are destroyed by an inability to communicate. When one partner or both has developed a pattern of shutting down when they’re uncomfortable, it is because they do not trust the other person enough to share their thoughts and feelings. In fact, in many cases the person does not even know that it is a trust issue.”

In marriage trust is everything. For you to have a healthy relationship trust must be there. We build and maintain high trust levels by being open in our communication, being vulnerable and allowing our spouse into our hearts. The reason many times we fear being vulnerable is because of how we have tried being vulnerable in the past and we were hurt. But you can’t have a relationship without vulnerability, and the reason vulnerability is called vulnerability is that it requires risk.

According to author Patrick Lencioni, in his book The Advantage, for Leaders to begin the process of making their organizations and families healthier, is to begin with themselves and their team. A leader has to understand and embrace the concept of being vulnerable, which inspires trust on the leadership team. That trust is the foundation for teamwork, and marriage is indeed teamwork.

Are you willing to stick your neck out by bearing yourself to your spouse because you know that your spouse will care for you when you do? Are you caring enough to hold your spouse’s heart when they open themselves up to you? That is how you build trust, by willing to be vulnerable and by providing them with a safe environment where they too can be vulnerable with you.

Principe # 5

Realistic concept of love and healthy expectations of marriage

We all come into marriage with great expectations or with little or no expectations depending where one is coming from. For example if you have grown up seeing men cheating on their wives and probably your own Father used to cheat on your Mother, there is a tendency that you will enter marriage with little or no expectations that your husband will remain faithful to you. So you are always suspicious of him and are always waiting for that to happen. This is obviously an unhealthy expectation of marriage.

On the other hand many of us come into marriage with this great expectations of a happily ever after like we see in movies or read on those fairy tales. But what we don’t realize is that yes, those are just that fairy tales. In real life real things happen. We disagree, we go broke, the good feelings come and go not to mention our differences, from different backgrounds, and we have different personalities and communication styles. 

What Grace and I try to help couples realize during our premarital coaching program is to be realistic in their expectations. We help them enter marriage with a balanced view of marriage and a realistic concept of love. A realistic concept of love realizes that love is more than feelings; it’s a commitment, a decision to love. So when the good feelings go, relax, don’t panic, just remember that you made a commitment to each other and once you decide to love them then you fall in love with them once again.