We Trust

Hi LFT 🔥

Welcome to Part IV on building Healthy Adult Attachment.

Finally, we arrive at the essential core of all healthy attachments: Trust

If you think of humanity as a tapestry, love is the fabric, the very essence of who we are and trust is the loom that weaves it all together. Without trust, humanity unravels.

So let’s dive in and explore what trust really is, how it’s built, and why it’s essential to all healthy relationships.

A few Love Futurism Quotations on Trust…

According to the Gottman Institute’s Sound Relationship framework, trust is an essential pillar of all healthy relationships.

Trust is our most essential evolutionary advantage.

Trust is the invisible contract that holds human life together.

Trust allows you to drive through a green light, eat food cooked by a stranger, and fall asleep beside another human being.

Trust is built through a continuous cycle of risk and response.

Trust begins with the risk to be vulnerable, revealing feelings and needs that only another person can meet. It’s the risk to let yourself be seen in moments of uncertainty or struggle, hoping others will respond with empathy and care rather than dismissal or ridicule.

Trust asks:

“Can I depend on you to support me when I need you?”

When the answer is yes (repeatedly and consistently), the nervous system relaxes, connection deepens, and relationships feels safe.

When the answer is no (through things like betrayal, neglect, criticism, aggression, or defensiveness), the nervous system destabilizes and shifts into self-protection.

Dr. John Gottman developed a mathematical model of how trust accumulates or depletes over time within intimate partnerships — what he calls the Trust Metric.

In last week’s newsletter, we discussed bids for connection. In a relationships’ day-to-day interactions, every bid has two potential pathways:

Cumulative Turning Toward ÷ Cumulative All Bids = Overall Trustworthiness

In other words, perceived trustworthiness increases as the ratio of “turning toward” moments rises relative to all opportunities for connection (bids).

Each partner tracks this data subconsciously creating a running balance within an invisible trust account.

Example:

On Monday, your partner makes 10 bids for connection (check out this list of sample bids from my last newsletter)

You turn towards 4 of them. 4/10 = Your Trustworthiness score is .4 or 40%

On Tuesday, your partner makes 10 bids for connection

You turn towards 9 of them. 9/10 = Your Trustworthiness score is .9 or 90%

Are you more trustworthy on Tuesday or Monday?

YES! 90 is a better score than 40. Tuesday you were a champion!!

According to the Gottman Institute’s research on newlyweds, those who divorced within six years turned toward their partner’s bids only 33% of the time. In contrast, couples who were still married six years later turned toward bids 86% of the time.

Gottman’s research parallels findings in Relational Neuroscience, demonstrating how trust is deeply embodied in our biology.

Paul J. Zak et al.’s paper, “The Neurobiology of Trust” (2004), reports that when humans receive signals of trust, oxytocin levels rise, correlating with increased cooperation and bonding behavior.

Similarly, in “The Neurobiology of Relationships,” Mona DeKoven Fishbane (2013) describes how the amygdala triggers the body’s threat responses, fight, flight, freeze, or fawn, when relational safety is compromised. She emphasizes that co-regulation, or partners’ ability to soothe and stabilize one another’s nervous systems, is central to maintaining secure attachment and trust.

A practitioner-oriented article, “Biological Feedback Loops and Relationship Breakdown,” further illustrates that when partners successfully co-regulate, oxytocin and serotonin levels increase, promoting emotional safety and connection. In contrast, chronic failure to co-regulate keeps threat systems activated and gradually erodes trust over time. 

Gottman defines betrayal broadly, not just infidelity, but any act or pattern that prioritizes self over the relationship. Here are some examples

The science of trust is unquestionably clear: Every act of turning away from your partner’s need for connection is a betrayal.

Healing from betrayal and broken trust is reversible. Each new positive interaction, however small, replenishes the trust account. Repair conversations, apologies, transparency, prioritizing the relationship, showing appreciation and empathy are all among the most “high-value deposits”.

So if you want to be trustworthy, act in ways that lead your partner to believe:

I trust that as you reflect on this, you’ll see trust as a core part of the human connection blueprint, and feel inspired to show up in ways that strengthen trust every single day.

Love, Lindsay