At one of our recent LIFE Marriage Retreats we had the privilege of working with a great couple from a southern state. She is a beautiful woman, poised and charismatic, and owns a successful business. She and her husband had returned to the house from a walk on the beach and in sharing some of their experiences from the walk she mentioned that they had passed a man walking a gentle looking dog. It turned out she had switched to walking on the other side of her husband, well away from the dog because, she said, “All dogs bite.”That really caught my attention and we had fun the remainder of the Retreat applying the belief that ‘all dogs bite’ to various matters of trust in relationships. Her premise was that under the right (or wrong) conditions any dog, no matter the size or breed, can “snap” and bite even a friendly hand, so one must always be careful around them. She admitted that this type of fear and mistrust sometimes spilled over into her human relationships.So do all dogs bite? And are we doomed to be disappointed, at one time or another, by all of our relationships? Well, yes, probably so. After all, we are human and all of us make mistakes. We do or say things that we later regret. Most of us have moments of thoughtlessness or selfishness.But if this potentially painful reality keeps us tied to the trunk of our relationship tree, afraid to risk and climb out, we will never know just how sweet the fruit is that grows at the end of the branch. While trust must, indeed, be earned, never let the fear that “all dogs bite” close us off from the warmth and fulfillment that we deserve in our relationships.If we are occasionally bitten, if our limb is shaken by our partner, remember that we are all human and have probably been the biter and shaker sometimes as well. Some people simply aren’t ready to be trustworthy, but in almost all of our relationships we will, with some patience, kindness, and forgiveness, be able to help one another inch out on that branch a bit at a time where the fruit is sweet and the air is pure. And where not all dogs bite!I am pleased to say that by the end of the Marriage Retreat this woman was well on her way to petting dogs and tasting the goodness of her relationship with her husband.

I have friends and colleagues whom I admire that are engaged in the field of traditional marriage counseling. I respect their work and recognize that they experience many successes in working with troubled relationships.But as we work with couples in our Training Retreat program we note a great many that have worked with a marriage counselor for months or even years, but have never been able to rebuild the trust that leads to healing the relationship, or establish meaningful communication that leads to effective conflict resolution. One of their common complaints is that they spend 45 minutes in a counseling session that is often acrimonious, then leave with a few things to work on; but the moment they step back into their life environment and stresses they quickly revert to old patterns of behavior and thought. When they go to their counseling session the next week they report that it feels like they are simply starting over again.This is not meant as an indictment of traditional marriage counseling. Not all counselors are created equal (just as all marriage retreats are not created equal). And some couples expect big results from counseling even though the couples themselves are not committed to doing the work that would lead to lasting change.But as we assist couples coming out of a disappointing counseling experience we virtually always see them successfully reestablish trust and heal their relationship through the Training Retreat and post-training coaching experience. While it is possible that their counseling experience has contributed to their ultimate success, the Training Retreat format and objectives simply offer some opportunities and potential benefits not provided by most traditional counseling. We will look at some of those in the next posting.

A couple we have recently worked with provides us an example of one way that trust can be damaged in a relationship in an indirect but very powerful way. In this case the husband was generally considerate of his wife and her feelings and did some of the overt things that one would expect from a caring husband, but it was clear that his wife’s trust in him had declined to dangerously low levels over the years.It turned out that this man had settled into a pattern of negative judgment in regards to most people with whom he came in contact, whether colleagues, neighbors, store clerks, or the guy that annoyed him in traffic. He would spout out his frustrations and comment on the “bad, dumb, thoughtless, mean, etc.” people.His wife realized that as she observed this behavior her trust in her husband was suffering. She not only found this type of behavior toward other people to be personally offensive and upsetting, but she also realized that she was beginning to wonder what he REALLY thought about her. How harshly was she being judged in his heart?In the early stages of a relationship we tend to be careful about managing our words and actions, but with time and a growing comfort level whatever rats might inhabit our “cellars” (and we all have some) become visible to our loved ones and, both consciously and unconsciously, the relationship is affected. The good news is that our best qualities also become more apparent and help to strengthen the relationship.We simply cannot fake our way through an intimate relationship. One of the keys to building a strong and trusting marriage is to be continually engaged in building a better us. As our loved ones see our efforts towards them and others, even though we are far from perfect, their trust and even admiration for us will grow, and the relationship will flourish.

As we prepare for another Marriage Retreat (and Training) in San Diego next week, I note that the constant that links every couple we have ever worked with stays true: There has been an erosion of trust in the relationship. Of the pillars that hold up any relationship, particularly a marriage, Trust is the central one, and we can trace most marital maladies to that pillar losing its integrity.We note that with the vast majority of our clients the loss of trust has little or nothing to do with physical infidelity; most have stayed true to that part of their vows. The erosion tends to be more subtle than that, a slow growing cancer made up of small broken promises, the distractions of the world, and a fear that perhaps our partner really can’t help us meet our legitimate Mental emotional physical and spiritual needs.We have a chicken and egg question here. For example, using the 800 pound gorilla of marital communication as an example, do couples quit communicating at a meaningful level because of a breakdown in trust, or did poor communication lead to the erosion of trust? The bottom line is that they are intertwined but our experience working with troubled marriages indicates that it is the subtle decline in trust that first precedes a commensurate decline in communication that flows from the heart and that resolves hindering issues.I feel secure in this analysis because during our Marriage Retreats as we help the couple to rebuild trust in one another (and in themselves) the rebirth of deep and meaningful communication is one of the natural results.So the first question for virtually any couple experiencing difficulty and decline in their relationship is not “How can we communicate better,” or “How can we spend more time together,” but “How can we gradually rebuild trust in the relationship?” The answer to that crucial question will be the difference between long-term success and failure in the relationship.More on developing trust and its beautiful natural byproducts in future postings.