The One Key Element That Can Build Your Relationships

Learning to trust. It’s so basic to our psychological health that the renowned psychologist Erik Erikson proposed the need to feel a sense of trust as the first hurdle in our psychological journey through life.  From infancy onward, we continue to look for, and need, relationships in which we feel we will be cared for, able to express our true selves, and safe.
How do we learn to establish this basic sense of trust in our close relationships? According to SUNY Buffalo psychologist Sandra Murray and her colleagues (2011), trust takes two forms.  Reflective trust is the form that operates at the level of your conscious awareness, and refers to the expectations you have about how much your partner is committed to, and cares, about you.  This is the relatively easy form of trust for you to understand and articulate. It’s the unconscious form of trust, called impulsive trust, which may be more of a challenge.  By definition, you’re not likely to be aware of the automatic ways you evaluate your partner.  If your partner turns out to be trustworthy in reality, then you won’t get hurt.  However, if your unconscious trust in your partner blinds you to a partner who isn’t worthy of your trust, the outcome could be disastrous.