One of the most frequently asked questions I hear is “My spouse doesn’t trust me, how do I regain his or her trust?”

Issues of trust touch all relationships in one way or another. We either have difficulty trusting others or are frustrated that someone won’t trust us.

Intimacy actually is opening yourself up and sharing some of the deeper parts of yourself with another; therefore, it always exposes some degree of vulnerability and involves an element of risk. As soon as you open up, you expose yourself to the possibility of being hurt. You’ve opened to being ridiculed or rejected, and you’ve chosen to lay down your normal protective barriers. Even the simple act of opening your heart and caring is risky. As soon as you care about someone, what happens with them and to them really matters. You become exposed to loss and disappointment.

Ultimately, trust has to do with feeling safe to be open and vulnerable with someone, trusting that they will respect, honor and care for you and your feelings. Trust occurs best when we feel completely safe. We are then able to relax, let our guard down, and just be ourselves without having to worry about being hurt or needing to be self-conscious in fear of being judged, ridiculed or rejected. It is in this open, honest, and exposed state that deep intimacy truly flourishes. Much like being with someone in a perfect garden—like the Garden of Eden—where the weather is ideal, there is no hint of danger, and you feel completely safe with and confident in the person you are with.

Even though the prospect of actually creating a relational Eden is a bit idealistic, this is the environment that we were created to exist in and is something we can deliberately strive towards even if we can’t perfectly pull it off. If we can commit ourselves to creating an umbrella of safety over our relationship we can create a shelter under which we can relax, and openly and intimately enjoy our lives together. Our relationship becomes a sanctuary, a safe harbor, a place we long to come home to.

Creating a relational sanctuary requires a mutual commitment to making the environment a safe place to be open, vulnerable, and free from self-consciousness and fear. This mutual commitment plants the seed from which trust grows. There are two key commitments that each person must maintain in order to create the umbrella of safety and begin to establish a foundation of trust. In order for this endeavor to work well, both people must consistently follow through and act out both commitments.

The first commitment involves how you treat others: Commit yourself to being trustworthy. Trustworthiness exists when a person always recognizes and respects the incredible infinite worth and value of another, and remembers that they are vulnerable and can be hurt. This is not to say that we can’t be playful, and sometimes even rowdy. But when we are given access to a person’s innermost self, we recognize it as a special privilege and remember that this is where they are vulnerable. We realize our potential to hurt them and we commit ourselves to doing everything in our power to avoid hurting, devaluing, disrespecting or dishonoring them. We commit ourselves to being trustworthy. We recognize that no one owes us trust. In fact, if we truly care about the other’s well-being we would do well not to even ask them to trust us. Rather we can simply focus on being as trustworthy as possible and humbly allow them to determine the extent to which they feel safe trusting us.

The second commitment involves how I treat myself. This is actually the key element: Require others to be trustworthy toward you. This commitment requires that you first recognize and respect your own incredible worth and value, your own vulnerability. As a result, you require anyone that you allow access into your inner sanctuary to proceed with honor and care. When someone gets distracted and forgets to treat you with honor, you respectfully inform them that access to your inner sanctuary is a special privilege that is granted by invitation only, that they will be asked to leave if they continue to behave poorly, and future access may be denied. They need to prove themselves worthy of your trust. You do not owe them your trust, it is earned and must be maintained and continually reestablished through respectful, honoring behavior.

It is important to understand that trust is never something that is earned once and for all. Trust is something that is warranted by consistent honor and care towards another. Trust can be betrayed in an instant. Becoming caught up in your own feelings while even momentarily forgetting about the ultimate well-being of the other is all it takes to be untrustworthy. Thus, focusing on being trustworthy towards the other is far more useful then focusing on getting the other to trust you. When you additionally make respect and honor of you a prerequisite to allowing someone access to your own vulnerable places you begin to trust yourself, and feel deeply cared for and self-confident. Therefore, even if the other person forgets to care about you, even for a moment, you know that you won’t forget!

When two people mutually commit themselves to being simultaneously trustworthy towards the other, and require the other to treat them with honor and respect, the relationship begins to feel extremely safe. Both will tend to relax and open up, creating greater opportunities for deep and satisfying intimacy. If you consistently act in a trustworthy manner others will be far more likely to choose to trust you. After all, isn’t feeling safe enough to relax, open up and just be yourself without the fear of being ridiculed or rejected the state that most of us want to live in. And isn’t the ideal relationship one where entering into the other’s presence feels like coming home into the safety of the garden.

Disaster strikes in any situation, whether it’s a horrific oil spill in the Gulf or the fact you just found out your spouse is having an affair.  We are all glued to the unfolding events in the Gulf, and this morning, I got to thinking how this disaster might be able to point couples to some helpful things to do for future disasters in their marriage. It may feel like a stretch, but hopefully, after reading this post you will understand how disasters, and recovering from them, are not necessarily radically different from each other.

Two of the more common criticisms of the Gulf oil spill disaster is that our Government took too long to react to the oil spill and too long to receive help from others in containing the oil spill.  I’m obviously not a politician or a political science guy, so I will not go into these issues as they relate to the oil spill.  But I will show you how these two flaws are also two of the biggest mistakes couples make when disaster hits their marriage.

Whether you just found out about an affair or suffered the unthinkable loss of a child, too many times couples do not react quick enough to the disaster or reach out for help.  When it comes to reacting quickly, I’m not talking about impulsively responding to a disaster.  Acting impulsively is usually not a good idea.  But often times depression will accompany a disaster, and so people can take longer than they need to if they allow the depression to take over their responsiveness. We can feel the negative emotions from a disaster, it is important not to dip into denial, but we must also remember to keep moving forward.  We keep moving forward by allowing ourselves to feel whatever it is we are feeling and also looking for opportunities of growth.

The other thing we must do in a marital disaster, is reach out for help. We do not have to go it alone. Others have been there, or at least, they can encourage us in our sorrow or confusion. Reaching out for help says to our spouse, “I want us to succeed, and I’m willing to listen to someone’s advice about what we should do about our problem.”

Reaching out for help takes courage and humility, which are two things that will come in handy in recovering from your own marital disaster.

One of our friends allowed us to follow them in their own Ferrari! Now that’s a great way to take your wife out to a steak place!

One of the greatest books written of all time is Gary Chapman’s “The Five Love Languages”. In this ground breaking book, Chapman helps us learn that our spouse (and of course overselves) have basically 5 love languages, or five unique ways that we experience love.  Quickly, the five love languages are:

1. Acts of service
2. Quality time
3. Gifts
4. Physical touch
5. Words of affirmation

I’m curious about which is your top love language.  So take the poll and let me know which of the 5 love languages is most important to you.

We are so excited about our first webinar coming June 30th, 2010! I will be doing a two-hour event on communication that will help you better resolve conflict using our method called LUV Talk.

The Washington Post “Faith” section recently posted this article on the pending Gore divorce:

I know, I know. Separation and divorce are supposed to be bad. Marriage is a sacrament to many, a promise and a moral commitment to God and each other. Certainly everyone I talked to was shocked that the Gores were letting go of that commitment. “How sad” was their initial reaction.

But there’s another way to look at it. The Gores have handled their decision to separate with dignity and grace. In doing so, they have given us all a great gift — an opportunity for a deeply important and mature conversation about the changing nature of marriage in a time when women have equal opportunities, when people are getting married later in life and when life expectancy is much longer.

Not only should we respect their decision, but in some ways we should rejoice in it.

I have known Al and Tipper Gore for almost as long as they have been married. There is no question they were very much in love. They were affectionate with each other, warm, teasing and respectful. I never heard a hint of any scandal.

They were together for 40 years, raised four kids, shared a lot of pain and a lot of joy, they have had an extraordinarily exciting life together and they should be proud of that. But people change, even those who are deeply committed to each other.

Remember, the Gores were 20 and 21 when they married. Today, the median age for marriage is 27 or 28. Most 20-year-olds don’t even know who they are and certainly not who they will become. The person you commit to at age 20 might not be the same person 20, 30, 40 years later. “Til death do us part” is a vestige of a time when life expectancy wasn’t much lower. Given the normal span of our lives these days, such a vow is totally unrealistic.

People change and grow in different directions. That’s seems to be what happened to the Gores.

(read the rest here)

What drivel! It is still amazing to me how our society is trying to force feed divorce right down our throats! It’s like no one is actually spending the time to read the overwhelming research (secular mostly and some Christian) of the negative effects of divorce on children, adults, and society. Entire counties here in Texas are going bankrupt because of divorce. Divorce cost the tax payers more than the Iraq war when measured over the same period of time!

There, I finally got that one off my chest. But maybe some of you agree with the Washington Post…so what say you?

We were driving 11 hours from Houston to Branson for our kids to attend the incredible Christian camp, Kanakuk. The drive had been easy, apparently too easy, as we exited I 540 to hit highway 71 toward Branson in Fayetteville, Arkansas. As I exited, our van suddenly skipped out of Drive and seemed to slip into Nuetral and the RPM’s roared out of control! I’m no where near a car expert, but I even knew something horrible had happened to the engine or transmission.

Our expectations were to hit Branson at around 6pm, barbecue with my family, and then have a couple of days in Branson to play before going to Kamp. These plans were instantly changed as we sat in a parking lot trying to get a hold of a transmission repair guy. Now I want (need) to be honest at this point, so with full disclosure, my attitude stunk big time! I snapped at my wife, my children, and some poor woman driving in front of me completely clueless to why I was honking at her to get moving through the light before the van died again.

The question is, why did I get upset and snap at my family and a random female driver? Because reality and my expectations were too far a part. Is it bad to have expectations? No, not necessarily. But how are we to handle ourselves when our expectations are not met? That is the key to a healthy relationship.

It is unrealistic to think our expectations are always going to be met, because they will not. Instead of blowing up at my family and a random female driver, I could have done the following:

* Taken a time-out
This is easily the best thing we can do when our expectations are not met. We need time to gather ourselves and to begin the process of choosing the best reaction possible. If you do not take the time to think about your reactions, your reactions will most likely be hurtful and immature (i.e. honking at a random female driver). A time-out gives you perspective and also gives time for the Holy Spirit to give you guidance in how you could respond.

* Adjusted my expectations on the fly
The moment I realized that my expectations were not going to be met, I could have begun the process of adjusting my expectations. I could have realized that getting to Branson on Friday was no longer possible, so how could I make the best out of the current situation. Asking yourself the question, “How can I make the best out of this situation?” is a great way to adjust expectations.

* Prayed
I know, prayer always seems to be the answer, but guess what, it always is the answer! I think the evil one wants us to feel like mentioning prayer is trivial, but it is not, and should always be utilized when things get out-of-hand. I could have cried out to God in my moment of need and let the Holy Spirit do the job the Holy Spirit does, to influence and guide me through the fog of unmet expectations.

A-list celebrity couple J-lo and Marc Anthony are renewing their vows for the second time in their 6 year marriage. This got me thinking about the whole renewing your vows thing, and I think it’s a good thing if you mean it. In other words, if you’re doing it because your spouse said to do it, then maybe not.

But if you’re doing it because you want the world to know of your love and commitment to each other, then awesome! Making powerful statements of commitment will significantly increase your joy and hope in the marriage. Joy and hope are two emotions people want in their marriage. Not the only two, but two big ones on anyone’s list.

Let us know if you’ve ever renewed your vows. I’m curious about how many of our readers have renewed their vows. Also, drop us a comment and share your experiences with each other renewing your vows. It may inspire someone to do it themselves.