If your partner displays these 10 behaviors, they don’t fully trust you

We’d all like to think that our partner trusts us. After all, without trust, a relationship is on the rocks and will struggle to survive.

If you’re reading this article, you already know exactly how important trust is for a healthy relationship, so let’s cut to the chase.

Here are the behaviors that suggest that your partner doesn’t fully trust you.

1) Worrying when you’re not together

If your partner constantly worries about you when you’re not together, there’s a good chance that they don’t trust you.

However, there’s also a chance that they just care a lot about you and they worry about your ability to cope.

For example, I often worry about my partner when we’re not together, but not because I don’t trust her. I just know that she struggles with her mental health.

And so the important thing here is to figure out what they’re worrying about and the reasons behind it. If they’re worried about who you’re spending your time with, that’s not quite as wholesome as if they’re just worried for your safety.

2) Constant questioning

This is another one where it really depends what your partner is asking you.

In other words, if they’re asking you whether you’re okay, it’s probably not a problem. If they’re asking you who you’re hanging out with, what you’re wearing, and where you’re planning to go next, it’s a pretty sure sign they don’t trust you.

As with some of the other points that we’re going to take a look at, much of this comes down to context.

But if you listen to the questions they ask and pay attention to the way they ask them along with their tone of voice, you’ll be able to tell whether they trust you or not.

3) Monitoring your phone

Unlike those first two points, this one isn’t ambiguous. It’s the reddest of red flags.

If your partner keeps snooping on your phone, reading your texts and direct messages, it’s not even that they don’t fully trust you – they don’t trust you at all.

In fact, it’s likely that the trust is so far gone that you’re not going to be able to bring it back.

Of course, it’s not always a red flag if they just have access to your phone. In fact, it can be healthy for you to be that open with your partner, as long as they’re the same with you. My partner and I use each other’s phones when it’s convenient, but we’d never dream of snooping around.

4) Jealousy

If your partner gets jealous easily, there’s a good chance it’s based on mistrust.

This is especially true if they get jealous of the other people that you spend time with. I know one person who sabotaged his own relationship by getting super jealous because his girlfriend worked with a mostly male team.

He made her pick between him and her job. Yeah, that backfired.

Jealousy is never a good sign in a relationship, but there are different kinds of jealousy for you to think about. As well as this mistrustful jealousy where people don’t trust their partner to stay faithful, there are other types of jealousy such as professional jealousy, where people are jealous of their partner’s professional success.

5) Secrecy

The thing to remember here is that there’s a big difference between privacy and secrecy.

Privacy means allowing your partner to use the bathroom without insisting on standing in there with them. Secrecy means trying to hide the fact that you use the bathroom in the first place.

This is a basic example, but it’s enough to show you why secrecy is a bad idea, especially when you get to more sensitive subjects like who they’re meeting up with or who they’re talking to.

If your partner is keeping secrets from you, you have to ask yourself why.

6) Trying to catch you out in lies

If your partner doesn’t trust you, they’ll start out with the assumption that you’re lying.

They’ll then do everything they can to prove their theory right, like a scientist who’s turned to the dark side and is faking research to support their pet theory instead of just following the evidence.

They have so little trust for you that they’d rather falsely accuse you of lying than believe you.

The good news for you, assuming that you’re not actually lying, is that they’re not going to be able to catch you out. It’s also going to be super obvious what they’re trying to do.

7) Demanding proof

This one often comes off the back of your partner trying to catch you out in a lie.

In other words, they’ll accuse you of lying, you’ll tell them that you’re telling the truth, and then they’ll demand that you prove it. Sometimes, that proof is easy to come by; at other times, it isn’t.

Either way, the simple fact that your partner is demanding proof should be enough to show you that they don’t trust you. At that point, it doesn’t really matter whether you provide them with proof or not.

If they don’t trust you, they’ll probably claim that your proof is faked anyway.

8) Ignoring your boundaries

This is a behavioral trait that partners who don’t fully trust you share with partners who are emotionally manipulative.

Boundaries are important. They allow us to make it clear what we are and aren’t willing to do. They’re even more important in a relationship because respecting someone’s boundaries is one of the most fundamental ways for you to support someone.

And so if you ask your partner not to call you when you’re on a night out with your friends but they keep on calling you anyway, it’s time for you to have a word with them. They’re clearly showing through their actions that they don’t trust you.

9) Excessive criticism

Criticism is never fun, but sometimes it’s necessary for us to become better people.

Speaking personally, I actually value criticism from my partner more than I value criticism from anyone else because she knows me the best and so she also knows what I want to achieve in my life.

Because of that, I know that when she gives me constructive criticism, there’s no malice behind it.

But there’s a difference between a little constructive feedback here and there and the kind of constant criticism that seems to be designed purely to wear you into the ground. If your partner is going for the latter kind of criticism, it’s because they want you to change.

In this instance, they want you to change from someone they don’t trust into someone they do.

10) Paranoia

This last one is the most obvious sign of all that your partner doesn’t trust you.

The idea is that they’re constantly paranoid that you’re going to leave them, that you’re cheating on them, or that you loved your ex more than you love them. The specifics don’t really matter.

The problem with paranoia is that it’s insidious.

Even if you repeatedly reassure your partner that there’s no cause for it, it’s unlikely to go away. In fact, it’s more likely to just get worse, negatively affecting their behavior along the way.

It’s like a cancer growing in your relationship. I just wish I could point you in the direction of a cure.

Conclusion

Now that you know what behaviors you’ll want to look out for if you’re worried that your partner doesn’t fully trust you, you can start trying to spot them.

Remember, though, that you can still continue to build trust over time, and so if your partner doesn’t fully trust you now, it’s something you can work on. But to work on it, you need to know that it’s a problem in the first place.

It’s up to you to decide whether you value your relationship enough to put the work in