Trusting Yourself and Others After a Breakup or Divorce

A friend of mine asked me about trusting others after a relationship ends.

And I’ll be honest, most questions about divorce topics I have answers to immediately, but this was one I hadn’t previously considered. Not because it didn’t affect me but because I looked at it from a different perspective.

People are trustworthy

I believe people show who they are and that humans are predictable.

In other words, I have a lot of trust that people act in a way that reveals their inner workings.

I trust that my mom is kind and empathetic.  

I trust that my best friend has incredibly sound judgement.

I trust the acquaintance who always shares other people’s business would probably do the same with anything I tell them.

I trust that nothing will ever be good enough for the neighbor who complains constantly about anything and everything.

Basically, if you’re paying attention, you can know people.

Sometimes you’re not seeing clearly

Call it being in love, call it rose-colored glasses, call it what you want - sometimes we don’t see straight. I tend to not romanticize this blindness because if you’re not seeing red flags, that feels like straight-up dysfunction. And when I say ‘you’ I mean me, as always I’m talking about my own experience of this, and it may or may not resonate for you.

The problem is, some of us (for whatever reason) may at times be more willing to ignore or misinterpret obvious hazardous behaviors if, say, it will allow us to continue a relationship that serves some unresolved need.

I know that got deep really fast, but I’m trying to cut to the chase.

Trust is often an inside job

My approach to resolving this glitch in the system of being terrible at choosing a partner wasn’t about learning how to trust people, it was learning how to trust myself and my judgement.

When you’ve made such huge and impactful decisions that turned out to be, for lack of a better word, ‘incorrect’ you might be hesitant to dive in again. Some people overcorrect and close themselves off from others. I knew that wasn’t how I wanted to live if I could help it.

I also knew I didn’t want to carry the weight of all these hugely protective measures to keep myself safe around other people. I didn’t want to become jaded or a hermit and never trust anyone again. Managing the risk of vulnerability again, for me. meant getting wiser and better developing my senses so I’d be less likely to fall for the same traps.

More accurately it was figuring out:

How do I see, feel, and understand clearly?

I 100% used to be that little monkey emoji with its eyes covered. I knew most of the healing and training I would do needed to involve getting back to some reliable and trustworthy setpoint. This is what this blog is about…yes, finally we’re here at the practical stuff.

Learning How to Trust Yourself After a Breakup or Divorce

Understanding the past to build a better future

One thing about me is that I don’t often look at my decisions as mistakes. I think our choices reflect our priorities during that window of time. And the partner I chose said a lot about where I was emotionally and mentally back then.

When I started therapy, my primary goal was understanding why I chose to be in that relationship. I wanted to know what allowed me to stay in a dynamic.

After 10 sessions, I realized it boiled down to low expectations of others. That’s not a small discovery but I’m trying to keep things brief here.

Anyone who has had a breakthrough knows that a moment of clarity is just that. The real work happens as you discover ways to disrupt what are unhelpful, deeply held patterns and beliefs. The details of how I’ve addressed my own underlying issues aren’t important here, I mostly wanted to share because I feel like understanding the foundational pieces of why you have made past decisions is a big part of moving forward. The trust exercises that follow won’t help much if you’re still playing out old patterns.

Do with that what you will.

In the meantime, while you’re figuring out your unique messy stuff, you can still practice building upon skills you might help encourage healthy relationships.

Rebuilding a healthy and switched-on set of senses and emotions

I want to point out I didn’t sit down one day and make a list of how I was going to reset myself. Well, I’m making that list now for the purposes of this blog…but this was more of a series of different spontaneous and playful exercises I thought to do to strengthen areas where I was deficient.

Maybe focus on one of these a month to get familiar with each one.

Here are four strategies that helped me trust myself again:

1. Recalibrating Emotional Sensitivity

2. Engaging With Life and Noticing Patterns

3. Seeing Things Clearly and Getting the Story Right

4. Seeking Out People Who Feel Joyful and Safe

1. Recalibrating Emotional Sensitivity

By the time I got to divorce I was extremely desensitized to the poor treatment I was subject to. I remember I would sometimes get a ridiculous email related to the legal proceedings and my lawyer and two of my best friends would be completely outraged for me, yet I took it in stride.

I always assumed it was an asset to be so calm and collected all the time but didn’t realize that this delay or absence of anger was troublesome. I didn’t have a reasonable response to things that should easily register as problematic. After all, anger usually shows up and comes to our defense when we know something is unjust or wrong. I didn’t have that radar.

What I did have were friends who had excellent access to their emotions and responses, and I leaned on them a lot during this early period. When I knew I needed to recalibrate I would often look at a situation and make note of what I felt about it. Then I would pose the scenario to my closest friends and watch them react to the same thing. Without hesitation, they would emote such strong feelings of anger or disbelief, it helped me recognize to what degree my own reactions were dampened.

It sounds a little odd, but I was outsourcing this emotional processing to my friends so that I could learn from them and correct my own emotional sensitivities. I still don’t react as quickly as they do (something that I genuinely admire) but I can tell I’m more attentive to moments where I should feel outraged.

2. Engaging With Life and Noticing Patterns

Another part of this experiment I started for myself was spending more time observing the world around me. Call it research or “finding case studies,” but I became fascinated by relationship dynamics—both in real life and on reality TV. We can debate the reality TV part but I’m about to write a whole blog on how many insights you get when you watch a show like 90-Day Fiancé.

I suppose the key to this is observing and then trying to draw some conclusions or make predictions to see how accurate your assessments and mental models are. I’m not afraid to admit that I make judgements about other people when I first meet them. I’m often trying to guess if my instinct is correct or switched on, not because I’m judgmental. However, I never let a first impression get in the way of allowing them to show me who they really are.

The way a person speaks, the language they choose, the way someone carries themselves, interacts with others, can tell you a lot about someone. I’m not suggesting becoming some FBI level profiler. The question can be as simple as, have I met someone like this before and what did they end up being like?

This exercise doesn’t even need to be related to relationship dynamics at all, just people. Notice people and their patterns.

3. Seeing Things Clearly and Getting the Story Right

One of the most undervalued skills when it comes to seeing things for what they are is discernment. Two people can see the same scene play out and have two totally different interpretations of it based on their experience, bias, and understanding of the circumstances surrounding the scene.

For instance, a romantic gesture like a huge bouquet of roses on the first date might seem impressive to one person, but to another it feels generic and part of the regularly scheduled program the guy carries out with anyone. In one instance a person feels special, in the other the person is already skeptical that this guy is basic.

Similarly, if someone buys you a plane ticket to visit them, is it really generous, or are they just avoiding the hassle of travel for themselves? These details matter, and they help you see people—and situations—for what they truly are. Yes, I took these examples directly from those serial dating influencers on Tiktok.

4. Seeking Out People Who Feel Joyful and Safe

I’ve learned that a big part of breaking my old patterns is to strictly surround myself with people who bring joy and safety into my life. This doesn’t mean avoiding people with flaws—we all have them—but it does mean setting boundaries with those who make you feel “unsafe,” even in small ways.

For me, a big indicator of someone’s trustworthiness is how they treat themselves and others, even their so-called “enemies.” Relationships are about connection, and those who feel secure and joyful in their own lives are more likely to create safe spaces for others.

Make note about what that feels like, imprint that feeling of safety and peace that your closest confidants bring to you and you’ll be less likely to settle for anything less than that.

Trust takes time

Rebuilding trust—whether with yourself or others—isn’t an overnight process. It takes time, self-reflection, and a willingness to observe and engage with the world around you.

Yes, it’s possible (maybe inevitable) that you’ll make mistakes in the future but hopefully they won’t be the same ones.

One of the greatest gifts you can give to yourself is doing what it takes to stay open to the world around you. Learning to see and sense people and situations really clearly might just get you there.