How many times in your life have you paused to wonder, “Can you love someone and not trust them?” only to fail to find the answer? We’re here to unpack some of the reasons behind a lack of trust in relationships and what that might mean for the relationship itself. Trust in a relationship can really elevate the experience for all parties involved and take it to the next level. Sure, one can argue that different forms of love can exist without trust, but it won’t be as fulfilling or rewarding as a relationship that has trust woven into its very fabric.

Trust can be a very important aspect of your relationship, so read on to find out whether your relationship can stand the test of time and undergo hardships without trust. Trust is essential to building an intimate relationship with your partner, and without it, your love most likely won’t be enough to complete the experience of loving someone. Trust lays the foundation of every relationship and allows for love to exist in its purest form, without doubt, or insecurity and with the knowledge that your partner is going to be there for you. Here are some ways of understanding how trust is crucial for love to be fulfilling and to determine the big question: can you love someone and not trust them?

The Building Blocks of Love

Love comes with a lot of smaller elements that it can be broken down into, all of which are essential for the feeling of love to exist between you and your partner. 

Think of it like little building blocks – smaller steps lead the way to a greater, more fulfilling, and purer form of love. This can not only be good for you in terms of allowing you to worry lesser. Lesser stress creates more room in your mind, body, and soul to focus on your health more and to do things that bring you joy and fulfillment instead. Different elements that make up the idea of love are care, affection, intention, and trust. Without any of these smaller blocks, love can lack fulfillment and satisfaction in a number of ways. 

Trust Fosters Intimacy 

If you’re asking yourself whether you can love someone and not trust them, you’ve come to the right place. We’re here to talk about how a love that embodies trust can feel more beneficial and elevate the experience of being in love. If trust is absent in the relationship, establishing intimacy with your partner will be much more difficult. You might start feeling physically, emotionally, intellectually, or even sexually distant from your partner if your relationship lacks trust, and often the way to approach different forms of distance is to begin by building trust in your relationship. Trust your partner to act in a manner that is in your best interest, that they will not upset you, or that they know how to care for you and be supportive. This will lead to creating a stronger bond between you, and your partner will deepen the love you already have for them. Much of this relationship of love and trust boils down to ensuring that you cater to the different types of intimacy with your partner and that they do the same for you.

Overcome the Distant Feeling 

If you and your partner often find yourselves feeling distant or not intimate, whether relating to sexual intimacy or not, one way to address it would be to practice trust exercises with your partner. Speak to a professional, such as a sex therapist or relationship coach, if it cannot be addressed on your own, but do keep an open mind in whichever route you choose to take. This will allow the love and trust to grow between the two of you, and communication is a very crucial aspect of finding love that is satisfying, intimate, and fulfilling. 

Enrich your Relationship with Trust 

One of the most important things to remember when asking yourself whether you can love someone and not trust them is to consider what kind of relationship you’re in. Are you both intimate and comfortable with each other? If so, in what ways do you show your comfort with and care for each other? 

Trust can manifest in different ways; in respecting your partner’s privacy, in being supportive, and learning how to communicate with them about difficulties both of you are facing in the relationship and even in the world outside of it. Without trust, love can weaken, and relationships can feel more draining than refreshing. Trust enriches love and makes relationships worth the effort they take up – it has its own rewards. 

Trust is the First Step

Trust informs almost all aspects of your relationship, including love – and there is much more than just love that is required to foster and nourish a relationship. Trust needs to be established before love can grow; it is the first step towards building a strong and fulfilling relationship. Trusting your partner with your needs, desires, and boundaries is an act of vulnerability that can open you up to a whole new world of intimacy in all its different forms.

Give up some Control 

One of the biggest parts of loving someone is to allow them to make decisions that will impact you inevitably. Love can make lives intertwined and engaged in such exciting, new ways, and the only way to be fully open to experiencing the total intensity of the emotion of love is to give up some of that control you’re probably clinging to.  

It can feel scary and uncomfortable to deep dive into the unknown and relinquish some control over the circumstances, but that’s all love is about! It’s about taking the risk with someone you can trust and knowing in your heart that they will try their best to act in your best interest. 

Part of fostering care and love in a relationship comes from building and establishing trust in the relationship to work off. It’s like building a house with someone – trust acts as the foundation of the house (i.e. your relationship), and it is the foundation upon which the relationship will continue to build and grow. 

Establish that space to give up control of situations with your partner by building trust and communicating to grow.

Trust can lead to Better Sex! 

Believe it or not, trust can play a huge role in the kind of intimacy you share with your partner. It can feel weird to say out loud, but trust does lead to better sex, one of the best ways for how to become more sexually intimate. When you can honestly and openly communicate with your partner about how you like your body touched, what feels good, and what doesn’t feel good, you can draw clear boundaries. This allows enough space in the relationship space for both of you to talk about your feelings more openly, leading to better communication. 

When you establish a good communication channel, you will be able to share your vulnerability, your insecurities, and your desires in a much easier manner than you would have without that open communication. 

This requires a lot of trust in your partner simply because you open up to your partner about deeply personal things you might have never even shared with anyone else before, and sex talk simply requires love and trust.

But that’s the wonderful thing about trust in a relationship – it can only make love feel better and more fulfilling, without too many negative consequences! You let your guard down and let your partner in completely, knowing and trusting them to make the right decisions, stand by you when you need it, be supportive, and give you the space you need as you would do for them.