Hey Riffers,
Last week, we discussed the challenges of having one relationship that involved two very different brains. For those of you who are interested in hearing more of my conversation with the author, Cindy Ariel, who wrote Autism and The Two of Us, you can access that podcast episode here.
Paid subscribers, scroll down to enter for a chance to win a copy of this book!
And now, on to today’s topic: Trust Falls.
Trust is not a thing with feathers
According to Emily Dickinson, “Hope is the thing with feathers.” According to social scientists, trust is the onion with many layers.
Here’s another way to think about it: Trust is a thing that works well when everyone agrees on what trust entails. When it comes to a trust fall, we want that agreement before anyone does the falling. If the agreement isn’t clear or else breaks down mid-fall, well, that’s the origin of many a hilarious YouTube video.
Got a favorite trust fall disaster, camp, corporate retreat, sibling who let you drop? Do share.
Relational trust operates in a similar way. When we fail to communicate or agree on the terms of trust, or we find ourselves re-negotiating the terms of trust while we’re already falling, it’s painful. And not in a hilarious way.
Relationship trust is, of course, more complicated than a trust fall (to put it mildly). The meaning of trust varies across people and across relationships, and expectations can change over time, particularly after a trust fail emerges. To manage the complexity in the face of a trust fail, our emotions come on the scene to help us, offering signals about whether restoring our faith is safe.
If someone dropped you before, it makes sense not to trust them again. Indeed, some research shows that forgiving partners who routinely engage in marital transgressions is associated with more relationship problems, rather than fewer, and a small daily diary study shows that forgiveness is associated with more negative behavior the very next day. Maybe the encouragement to let the feelings go leaves us at more risk of further betrayals of trust.
Your emotions are doing their job.
Our feelings activate as signals that trust has been broken. They’re telling us to protect ourselves because we could get hurt again. That’s useful information. Anger at broken promises? Valid. Hurt over feeling deprioritized? Absolutely. Fear that things won’t change? Makes perfect sense, and often quite useful to use as a behavioral guide.
But when it comes to progress in relationships, we need more than the information provided by our feelings.
Our anger says “this mattered and it was wrong.” But it might also say “keep your guard up” and “you are unlikely to ever be safe.” The hurt says “I need you to see my pain,” but it also says “don’t let them close enough to cause more.” The fear says “be careful,” and it also says “don’t invest in something that might fail again.”
The trouble is, in order to rebuild trust, we have to take a risk. The risk is that things won’t change. But the possibility is that they will. Your feelings might be recommending armor that, on the one hand, protects you from further hurt. But it may also prevent the possibilities that would lead to healing and growth.
Entering back in without any protection at all can leave us too vulnerable. We need a way forward that uses feelings as critical information, while leaving open the possibility to grow a healthier version of our relationship.
Be honest: are you a full lean-back truster, or the type who bends your knees, you know, just in case?
The emotional signal is not the verdict
It helps here to separate two things we tend to conflate. Feelings and forgiveness.
Feelings are largely involuntary signals. They fire whether invited or not.
Forgiveness is different: it’s a choice, often defined as giving up the right to hold onto anger.
The feelings are the smoke detector. Forgiveness is the decision to switch it off (or at least not to hyperfocus on its irritating beeping).
Read this way, the research suggesting that forgiveness can open the door to more transgressions isn’t suggesting that our detectors are misfiring. It’s saying that switching off the smoke detector (or decide to ignore it altogether) without making sure that smoke won’t suffocate us or that there aren’t burning embers to snuff out leaves us too vulnerable.
The answer to what to do when your feelings suggest you’re not safe can’t be “just feel differently,” and it shouldn’t be to exit any building where a smoke detector is going off. It’s to treat the feelings as data about what still needs to change rather than as a verdict on whether change is possible.
That’s a crucial distinction this research points to. Forgiveness paired with tangible behavior change protects relationships. But forgiveness offered as a substitute for behavior change protects the transgression. The hurt feelings in the room are trying to insist we pay attention to that difference. We’d be wise to let them do their job.
So what do we actually do with all this alarm-ringing? Below: how to let a flooded nervous system exit alarm mode without it turning into a storm-off. Paid subscribers also get a crack at the Autism and the Two of Us giveaway, three copies, three winners, drawn end of August.
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