Trust in a relationship: predictability, dependability and faith

Your partner says they will pick you up at seven, and they arrive at seven. That is one kind of trust. Another is knowing that if you lost your job tomorrow, they would stay. Psychologists treat these as different layers, and the second one takes longer to build.

Three layers of trust

In 1985 John Rempel, John Holmes and Mark Zanna described trust in close relationships as having three parts. Predictability is knowing what your partner will do, based on how they have behaved before. Dependability goes further: you see your partner as a person who can be relied on, especially when it matters. Faith looks ahead. It is the confidence that your partner will care for you in the future, in situations neither of you can foresee yet.

Rempel and his colleagues saw these as stages that build on one another over time. In their study of couples, faith was the part most closely linked to feelings of love and happiness in the relationship.

How trust grows

In 1989 Holmes and Rempel argued that trust grows most in moments when a partner could have put their own interests first and chose the relationship instead. Kindness that costs nothing tells you less. A partner who supports you through a hard month, or keeps a promise that became inconvenient, gives you evidence you can rely on later.

This also explains why trust can drop fast. One clear betrayal can outweigh years of predictable behaviour, because it shows how the person acts when the stakes are high.

What our test asks

Our relationship trust test has 10 statements that we wrote ourselves, based on Rempel's model, so it is a self-reflection tool, not a validated questionnaire. You answer with your current partner in mind, or your most recent close relationship, on a five-point scale from strongly disagree to strongly agree.

The statements touch all three layers. "I believe my partner keeps their promises" is about predictability, "Our past crises showed me that I can depend on them" about dependability, and "Even when we argue, I am not afraid the relationship will end because of it" about faith. Three statements describe distrust, for example "When they do not reply for a few hours, I start suspecting the worst". These are scored in reverse. You get one overall trust score, and the test does not split it into the three layers.

Reading your score

A high score means you feel safe with your partner and spend little energy checking on them. A low score has more than one possible cause. Your partner may have given you real reasons for doubt. Or earlier relationships may have taught you to expect the worst, and you bring the same worry into a relationship that has not earned it. The score alone cannot tell these apart, but you often can, if you look at what your partner has actually done.

If a low score comes with constant checking, fear of your partner or a sense of being controlled, talking to a psychologist can help you sort out what belongs to the relationship and what belongs to your own history.

The attachment style test and the post on how attachment style affects your relationships cover the second kind of cause. If suspicion is the main issue, try the jealousy test.