How Can I Get My Wife to Trust Me Again?

You blew it. And you know it.

Your wife caught you lying. Maybe it was something small, but it’s been a lot of them and now your wife’s trust is broken.

Maybe it was something big – a major financial secret, an important piece of information she really should have known, or outright infidelity.

How do you rebuild trust in a relationship once it’s gone?

Here are the approaches we’ll discuss to regain trust in your marriage:

1. Take responsibility for your actions.

2. Validate the mistrust.

3. Be honest.

4. Be transparent.

5. Be consistent

6. Don’t rush it.

To rebuild trust, take responsibility for your actions

Whatever you did that broke the trust – you need to own that.

No excuses.

You can’t say, “I know it was wrong but...” You can’t explain why it’s not really that bad.

You definitely can’t say, “At least I didn’t...” or “It’s not like I...” (I’ve seen this where a guy gets caught sexting with another woman and tries to defend himself with “It’s not like I actually slept with her!” That is a true statement; and totally ineffective in fixing the problem.)

When you try to defend yourself, minimize the situation, or offer explanations (excuses), the message your wife gets is that you think it wasn’t that big a deal, or wasn’t really your fault, and bottom line – she can’t feel confident and secure that you won’t do it again.

What if there really is a good reason? You were trying to not stress her out while your fixed up your significant credit card debt so you didn’t tell her; you in all honestly drank too much and feel terrible that you made out with some stranger.

That is information you can provide when she asks you for it. But you can never use that as a way to try to make it seem like not a big deal. If you’re where you are, it’s already a big deal.

Take accountability: Acknowledge that you messed up, and (of course) apologize for it. Show her that you will stand up for it instead of making excuses, and that you’re going to do the work you have to do to regain her trust.

To rebuild trust, validate the mistrust.

Getting irritated, angry, or defensive that your wife is upset with you and doesn’t trust you is guaranteed to keep things as they are.

If you lied, if you hid something from your wife, if you cheated on her, then yeah, she’s not going to be happy about it. And she’s not going to trust you.

This is normal. This makes sense. If a woman comes to me and says her husband has been lying to her over something very serious, but hey, no big deal, I totally trust him anyway, I would want to have a conversation with her about this.

The natural reaction to someone violating your trust is to feel mistrustful.

So validate that feeling your wife is having. That sounds like this:

“I totally get why you feel that way.”

“It makes sense that you don’t trust me right now.”

“I think anybody in your position would be skeptical right now.”

Accepting her feelings as they are show her that you’re not trying to get her to “get over it” or “move on,” which would go against point #1 above, taking responsibility.

To rebuild trust, be honest.

This one is a no-brainer, but it’s important to be mindful of it.

For starters, you need to be honest about the incident/situation in question. If she found out 80% of the truth, you need to make sure she knows 100% of it. (I cannot overemphasize how damaging it is to the relationship for you to tell your wife you’ve told her everything, and then for her to find out there’s actually more to it.)

If you hid 4 maxed-out credit cards and she only found 3, tell her about the fourth one.

If you slept with someone else and she found nudes that were sent, she needs to know that it was more than just the pictures.

If you are still hiding things, you may not be technically lying, but I can assure you that your wife won’t be interested in the dictionary definition when she finds out. No more lies of commission OR lies of omission.

And of course, you need to be honest going forward as well. No white lies. No cover-ups of small things that don’t seem that important. No saying you went to Rick’s house when you went to Rob’s.

If your wife thinks she can’t trust you on the small things, she’ll never trust you on the big things.

But if she sees you being honest where you could have gotten away with a small fib, and if she sees you being honest when it’s uncomfortable for you to do so – that will tell her she can start to trust you again.

To rebuild trust, be transparent.

This is similar to being honest, but it also means that you avoid creating situations where dishonesty could even be possible.

For example, you can turn on location sharing on your phone so that your wife knows where you are at all times. (If you are going places that you don’t want your wife to know, then there is good reason for her not to trust you, isn’t there?)

You can tell your wife where you’re going when you go out with the guys, then send her a photo from there so she knows you were being truthful.

Is she worried that you’re going to the strip club when you said you’d be at Rick’s? Maybe not. But being transparent means setting things up so that such a thought couldn’t get off the ground to begin with. Sending a photo (without her having to ask!) sends a strong message that you intend to be trustworthy going forward.

Being transparent also means giving her all your passwords. She should be able to look at your Instagram whenever she wants, to pick up your phone and get access to your texts, etc. (Once again, if you have stuff on your social media or your devices that your wife would be angry if she saw, then there is a problem of trust here already.)

If you have nothing to hide, then don’t hide anything. If you do have something to hide, then you probably aren’t going to have much success getting your wife to trust you again (and in fact she really shouldn’t, should she?).

To rebuild trust, be consistent

If you are truthful most of the time, you are not going to have a wife who mostly trusts you.

Would you jump out of a plane with a parachute that opens most of the time?

Turning on your location sharing here and there is nice; it won’t accomplish very much if it’s done here and there. If you want to regain your wife’s trust, you want that location sharing on always.

You will have to tell the truth consistently. You will have to take responsibility and avoid excuses regularly. You will have to validate her feelings repeatedly.

A lie here and there makes her wonder where else you are lying. Yes, you might make mistakes along the way. Mistakes are acceptable – as long as you fess up to them promptly.

If you went back to the casino/affair partner/wherever after you said you wouldn’t, you need to tell her that and apologize again. The honesty will build trust, even though your action might take some time to get over.

The alternative, where you don’t tell her, and she finds out on her own, is catastrophic for trust and for the relationship (see point #4 above on transparency).

More than any aspect of your relationship, trust is built with consistent actions – brick by brick by brick – not with grand gestures or sincere promises.

To rebuild trust, don’t rush it.

Trust is only built over time.

The first time you met your wife, you probably didn’t ask to borrow her car. It would be a bizarre thing to ask; she only just met you. You wouldn’t expect that level of trust.

After maybe a few months of knowing each other, it probably would have been no big deal to borrow each other’s car. But that’s not something you could have achieved by showing her your driving record on day one (assuming your driving record is any good).

You may truly be very sorry for the lies you told and the dishonest things you did. A common mistake men in your position make is to try to convince their wives of this with declarations and promises – and then to get angry when their wives don’t believe them in short order.

This is going to take longer than you want.

You will have to be patient (which goes hand in hand with consistent – see point #5). You cannot speed up the process. This is about your wife’s emotional state, not her statistical analysis of whether something bad is likely to happen again.

Feelings can’t be rushed. There are no shortcuts for building trust.

If this is true when you’re starting from zero, it’s all the most so true when you’re starting from the negatives, which is where you may be, depending on the extent of your betrayal.

Final Points: Can I Really Get My Wife to Trust Me Again?

Rebuilding trust is not quick or easy. But it is doable.

And it may be necessary if you’re in a position where you have to save your marriage.

If you have a problem with chronic lying for no good reason, it may be wise to seek individual therapy to figure that out.

If your marriage is in crisis because you cheated in some way, or because you lied about something major, you may need a little more help repairing than a blog post on how to rebuild trust in your marriage.

Couples counseling can be a major part of the rescue effort if you need to recover from something like that.

So yes, work on rebuilding trust with the above guidelines; but don’t skip out on getting help if it’s needed.

Contact us today if you need to save your marriage, recover from infidelity, or otherwise patch things up.