I love reading and being alone. For me, it is the best combination to capture new knowledge and explore new ideas to share with others to improve the lives of others.
the relationship was one of the most difficult issues in life for me. It took me years to understand and apply what I learned from the readings and valuable conversations I had with my great friends.
You are reading: Best books on trust in relationships
I decided to share these five books because I got a lot of questions about what my favorite relationship books are that got me through tough hurdles.
These books were personally recommended by my friends who have years of experience in relationships and who have very healthy and happy marriages.
They are my personal secret advisors and now they are also yours to discover.
Wherever you are in your relationship, these books will guide you through the challenges you face and the questions you have that no one can answer.
Happy reading!
1. when the past is present: healing the emotional wounds that sabotage our relationships – david richo
This book helped me a lot in understanding how being stuck in the past can destroy my present relationships. Though it sounds easy (and we know it’s not) it’s quite doable.
I’m proof of that. Having been through a lot of bad relationships, I decided to put a pause on that part of my life. I decided to study why some can hold on to wonderful, healthy relationships while others struggle.
being emotionally healthy is having the ability to free ourselves, free ourselves from our past. Regardless of how painful it may be, we must not allow it to dictate our future happiness.
This book will teach you to explore your deeply repressed and untold drama, the one that keeps repeating the same tropes of days gone by, clouding your view of today’s realities and tomorrow’s possibilities. painfully at first, then healingly, when the past is present it reveals hidden parts of who you are and who you have always been, just to make you aware of what you currently need to do.
the premise is simple and relatable:
“We all have a tendency to transfer powerful feelings, needs, expectations and beliefs from childhood or previous relationships to people in our daily lives, whether they are our intimate partners, friends or acquaintances.”
It happens every time your partner reminds you of someone you knew who hurt you.
It’s also when you decide to fight with your partner because he or she is repeating the same old patterns that caused you to break up with your high school sweetheart.
It could be a mere trifle, something very small and unimportant from your childhood that is etched in your memory: the way your boyfriend shrugs his shoulders when you’re trying to express your feelings, or that little unconscious nod that you get. makes you hate your girlfriend for no apparent reason.
This strange but very natural phenomenon, known in psychology under the Freudian term “transference,” is what hinders our mindfulness and keeps us terribly frozen in the past. the transference tricks us into projecting our own judgments, fears, and desires onto a person without guilt.
As remnants of our past relationships, these feelings and beliefs remain an unconscious part of our being that generates attraction and excitement or generates revulsion and disappointment when triggered by our partners. they are the wounds that must be healed, the baggage that must be shaken off.
“our life is a theme and then variations that never stray from the original melody”.
but this transference, as natural as it may be, prevents us from seeing our partners for the people they really are. instead, it looks at them and finds those elements with which we are already familiar, forcing us to see little more than our own wants and dislikes. It is a look without clarity or authenticity.
to be aware of your transference is to see another human being without the lenses of your own story, without obstructions or tropes embedded in your personal drama.
In short, this book will teach you when to let go of your past, accept and forgive what happened to you, and that’s when you can start moving towards who you want to be and attract the right person into your life.
2. deciding factors: when to work on a relationship and when to walk away – dr. Marshal Bethany
I remembered I had millions of questions rushing through my head when I didn’t know what to do in my relationships. Should I leave him? If I do, would it be a mistake? But the one question that I didn’t ask myself was “will it make me happy?”.
Knowing when to fight and when to run away in relationships will go a long way in helping you not get stuck with someone you know for sure you won’t be happy with. this was what saved me, I knew I wanted out and I clearly knew why.
rita, my best friend, recommended me deal breakers. for me, it was a guide to understand that a relationship is a kind of deal that should not be broken.
this is how dr. Bethany Marshall sees it, and how we should see it too.
her book “deal breakers: when to work in a relation and when to walk away” speaks to all women who are caught between two options. Although it aims to reveal its emotionally ill men, it is still a much-needed guide that can be applied to both genders and same-sex relationships.
if every relationship is a deal, and it is, then every relationship depends on those few non-negotiable terms that, if broken, undermine attractiveness, passion, romance, and even love. We call them dealbreakers, and we often mistake them for minor disagreements or annoying habits that it’s normal to have.
but a deciding factor is something different.
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according to dr. Marshall, it’s your partner’s tendency to vilify, devalue, or destroy something you hold precious. As a symptom of a damaging personality trait or a deeper split in a relationship, a deal breaker is apparent early on; it’s rarely something that pops up in the heat of the moment.
A decisive factor is the “tip of the misery iceberg”.
is behavior that damages a relationship and cannot be changed, a dispute that keeps revealing inconsolable differences in two people’s personalities, or anything else that has no potential for positive change and undermines the very conditions that make it possible. love, appreciate and respect.
a decisive factor is a line that cannot and must not be crossed, no matter what.
dealers will help you recognize yours and teach you how to distinguish them from the mundane struggles every relationship goes through. It will tell you what is worth fighting for and when it is time to leave. will ask you to examine the people you choose and break the patterns you repeat.
reading it made me realize that some people never change. never falling into radical feminism, she encouraged me to appreciate my needs more and stand up for what is important to me. “deal breakers” taught me that I don’t have to put up with everything, even in the name of love.
if you need to confront your confusion, this book is for you.
if you don’t know where to draw the line, this book is for you.
like dr. Marshall brilliantly puts it: “Loss can be negotiated and reputation can be repaired. but life can never be revived. so make sure you live it with the right person.”
3. the five love languages: the secret to love that lasts – gary d chapman
This book was recommended by my colleague and good friend Monica. She told me about how hard her relationship was with her husband at the beginning because of their differences.
She couldn’t afford to live with her husband before marriage, so as she said, they didn’t speak the same love language. I can totally resonate with that idea while she was living with my then-boyfriend.
This book is worth passing on to your children to read because they too will face the same challenges.
This bestseller is considered a bible for people in relationships, although I prefer to call it a dictionary of commonly misunderstood love terms. words are funny that way: depending on the unique mindset and intimate needs of each person who speaks them, a single word can have multiple meanings.
some words we never say. there are emotions that cannot be expressed with speech, but only through touch. others express themselves in a silent language of deep glances or fiery movements. sometimes you think “I love you”, but you say it with a homemade ravioli, a guitar riff or a nervous smile.
in dr. In Chapman’s respectable opinion, there is more than one way to express and experience love. receiving gifts, quality time, words of affirmation, acts of service (devotion), and physical contact are the five love languages, each spoken with a highly individualistic idiolect of a particular person.
Also, we all develop a primary and a secondary love language.
so yes, the linguistic combinations of love languages are inexhaustible, and it is a great wonder that we can understand each other. fortunately for all of us, dr. Chapman’s theory offers a crash course in another person’s language, as well as the means to translate the languages we use.
I say, fortunately, because language barriers lead not only to frequent lover fights, but also to deeper rifts within a relationship that are not easily repaired. It’s as frustrating as reading James Joyce and wanting to like it, and as damaging as talking to someone and refusing to listen.
Do you know how your boyfriend pouts after washing the dishes without you recognizing the grandeur of such a sacrifice? well, it’s because he’s expressing his devotion through acts of service, a vocabulary that you yourself don’t recognize as a language of love. for you, it’s simply a household duty.
You’re talking in quality time, an idiom he translates as “let’s watch football together.”
but when you realize that in their vocabulary the mundane act of washing dishes means exactly what reciting verses from petrarch’s “canzoniere” means in your book, and that is “I love you”, common parlance becomes find , and can be understood without a single cheesy word.
and that’s what “the five love languages: the secret of love that lasts” will teach you to do.
Along with a quiz to determine a person’s love language, you’ll find tips for observing how other human beings express their love, devotion, and respect. At the end of the day, isn’t that all we need? A cheat sheet for unraveling that heady mystery we call “speaking without words”?
It is what opens hidden dimensions of love and life.
4. Couple Skills: Making Your Relationship Work – Matthew McKay Ph.D. and patrick fanning
Couple Skills: Making Your Relationship Work came to me through a conversation with one of my great friends. When I turned to her for practical advice on how to resolve a delicate and ongoing conflict in a healthy and definitive way, she gave me a thick book with excruciatingly dull covers and told me: “Here. It’s a repair manual”.
and indeed, it was.
There is no better way to describe a self-help book that so comprehensively addresses the issues most couples face on a daily basis. If “The Five Love Languages” is a dictionary of love terms, then Relationship Skills is an encyclopedia of relationship struggles. In my opinion, it is a transcribed couples therapy.
Do you experience interruptions in communication? no problem, there’s a whole chapter dedicated to fixing that.
Can’t cope with everyday problems? this book will teach you skills to get over that mountain too.
has he accused you of not accepting his emotions without resorting to judgment? meet your personal acceptance and commitment therapist.
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All three authors are experts in mental health, especially when it comes to couples and family therapy, so don’t confuse this book with another self-help title. is a diagnostic guide that reveals trade secrets.
Do you know that reading is popularly perceived as a solitary activity? well, the only catch here is that this is not a book you can read alone. more precisely, it is not a book that will help fix your relationship if you are the only one committed to it. no, this one requires mutual participation and cross referencing.
dr. Mckay himself explains it as a workbook, an intuitive reading process that requires you to approach it with a pen and the will to act. “you will have to engage,” as three co-authors instruct, “do the exercises, keep logs and diaries, try a new behavior, risk new responses with your partner.”
sound like a big commitment?
is what each relationship is.
before you ask, yes, you can read it on a beach with a margarita in hand. Relationship Skills is a book that has a lot to offer single people, and the fact that you’re not currently involved doesn’t at all mean you should put it on the shelf. in fact, that’s exactly why you should read it.
Not only will it help you decide what’s important to you in a relationship, but it’ll also teach you how to put these skills to work before committing to someone else. Instead of waiting for it to become a repair manual, read it now as a primer on how to fix things before they break.
and remember: if it feels hard or painful, it just means it’s healing. what is presented as an instruction to read this book is the best relationship lesson you can learn. after this, he can be a personal advisor to you and your loved ones if you are looking for a healthy relationship.
5. i love you but i don’t trust you – look kirshenbaum
Trust used to be my biggest problem, even though I’m happily married to my husband.
Before my husband, my ex cheated on me many times. he completely took away my confidence. I couldn’t get over it nor did I know how to rebuild it with my boyfriend at the time.
This book was my savior and closed the painful chapter of my relationship, a part of my life.
We’ve already established that relationships are deals, and a breach of trust is exactly that: a violation of a verbal or unspoken agreement between two people. For some, trust is a non-negotiable term; when it breaks, it is a decisive factor that announces the end of commitment, respect and mutual affection.
if that’s you, that’s fine.
For others, the willingness to change in the name of love implies that broken trust can and should be repaired. I Love You But I Don’t Trust You is written for those who believe in repairing trust, to guide them through the stages in which trust is strengthened when the rebuilding process is allowed to take place.
trusting your deepest and most intimate feelings to another person is not possible if that person does not make you feel safe and protected. That’s why rebuilding is crucial to healthy relationships.
but look kirshenbaum doesn’t jump to conclusions, nor does he insist on rebuilding trust when trust can’t be rebuilt. in an effort to find a justifiable reason behind the deception, he simply examines the nature of the dishonesty itself. could it be avoided? Was it for good intentions? how much did it hurt?
Both trust and betrayal are palettes of many colors.
we can even go back to dr. chapman’s love languages and saying that his white lie is his partner’s black lie. trust is not a relative concept, but a person’s willingness to turn a blind eye to minor distortions of the truth is highly subjective. it is such a delicate and nuanced matter that it requires reliable guidance.
A single lie shouldn’t be able to destroy an entire relationship. on the other hand, what if that lie is so big and far-reaching that it is now etched forever into the foundation of the life you have built as a couple? Should the person responsible be punished? should the other party suffer for finding out too?
Looking for lies in a relationship is like opening a box to find out if Schrödinger’s cat is dead or alive, but turning a blind eye is simply untrue. All of this is to say that Kirshenbaum’s book deals with some really tricky subjects, yet still manages to find practical answers to questions that plague us all.
Your “I love you but I don’t trust you” conclusion will probably be different than mine. being a great believer in second chances on the one hand, and a strong advocate for my own rights on the other, i loved kirshenbaum’s book for its ability to make the line between good and evil at least a little more clear.
Together, these books form a pentalogy of questions and answers that no couple is immune to.
“when the past is present” allows you to close a chapter before opening the next.
In “Dealbreaker”, dr. Marshall tells you when to end an emotionally draining story.
after that, “the five love languages” will teach you how to write a better one.
as a repair manual, “couple skills” will help you fix it if it starts to suck.
finally, “I love you but I don’t trust you” will dispel all your doubts.
Think of them as five stages of the relationship: one for emotional closure, one for moving on, one for starting over, one for practice that makes perfect, and one for maintaining trust.
Hopefully, you won’t need a sixth.
Unless, of course, it’s a happily ever after story.
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