The Mental Emotional Health Blog

In relationships, people want to be able to trust and generally prefer to avoid anger. In trust situations for couples, demonstrating and holding trust can be tricky when emotions are up. But there are times that a person will actually damage trust by using the excuse of avoiding anger.

Example: Person A finds a credit card receipt in Person B’s car. The receipt is for a hotel in the city where A & B live together. A fears the worst, that B met someone at the hotel. When A asks B about the receipt, B replies, “Oh, that. It’s my co-worker’s receipt from the other day.” A doubts B’s story, especially since A’s name is the one on the receipt. So A waits for B to tell A what was really going on. At this point, trust is already damaged of course. After some more concerned questions from A, B tells the truth. B admits that the friend used the credit card as a favor since the friend forgot to bring a credit card and had just run out of checks. B didn’t use the hotel for anything improper. When A asks B why B lied, the response is, “I didn’t want you to get mad”, or “I thought you would get mad”.

In this case, Person B was innocent of the worst, and basically just made a financial decision without informing or consulting the other. Person A did not know that at first, but could tell something was being hid and lied about. Deceit and dishonesty are much more harmful to trust than anger over a questionable financial decision. Anger can come and go relatively quickly compared to the time it takes to rebuild trust that was lost.