How a Sex Therapist Accidentally Became a Human Trust Expert
Guess who's a human trust expert? Unintentionally, this gal.
When I started my career as a marriage and family therapist, I knew one thing for certain: I wanted to talk about sex. Sex was my passion. I wanted to help people understand their sexuality, improve their intimate relationships, and have conversations about topics that most people were afraid to discuss.
What I didn't realize was that becoming a sex therapist would eventually make me an expert in something much bigger: human trust.
As I began working with couples, I noticed that underneath almost every relationship problem was a question about trust. How do I trust that my partner will change? How do I trust that our sex life will improve? How do I trust someone who has hurt me? How do I trust myself to stay in this relationship when I don't know what the future holds?
Two of the most common problems I treat are desire discrepancy and infidelity. And let me tell you, working through either one requires enormous amounts of trust.
When one partner wants sex more frequently than the other, both people may feel vulnerable. One may fear rejection while the other fears pressure or obligation. Both need to trust that their needs matter and that they can navigate their differences together.
Infidelity takes these questions to an entirely different level. After a betrayal, people often lose trust in their partner, their relationship, and even themselves. They question their judgment, their decisions, and their ability to recognize whether someone is trustworthy.
And this is where my oddly mathematical brain entered the picture.
The Trust Equation
When I wrote Helping Couples Overcome Infidelity: A Therapist's Manual, I developed an equation to simplify how couples rebuild trust.
Sounds simple, doesn't it? But this little equation became one of the most useful tools in my work.
Say represents our words, agreements, and shared expectations.
Do represents our actions and our willingness to follow through.
Time represents the repeated experiences necessary for trust to develop.
I originally created this equation because I noticed something interesting about couples recovering from infidelity. The person who had betrayed the relationship would often begin doing everything imaginable to make things better. They bought flowers, cleaned the house, offered affection, planned dates, and tried desperately to demonstrate that they cared.
But it was almost like shooting bullets in the dark.
They were taking action without necessarily understanding which actions would help rebuild trust. And when those efforts didn't work, they became frustrated, resentful, or defensive.
The problem wasn't always a lack of effort. Sometimes it was a lack of agreement.
Before we could rebuild trust, we needed to get both people on the same page about what rebuilding trust actually looked like.
(Check out my book on infidelity here.)
From the Bedroom to the Boardroom
Over the years, I kept teaching this equation. I used it with couples recovering from infidelity, couples struggling with sexual intimacy, and people navigating complicated relationship agreements.
Eventually, I began applying the same principles to business.
And guess what? The human nervous system doesn't magically change when you walk into an office.
Business leaders struggle with trust just like romantic partners do. Employees wonder whether leadership will follow through on promises. Business partners question whether they can depend on each other. Teams become frustrated when expectations change without explanation.
In relationships, we create agreements about communication, intimacy, money, parenting, and how we handle conflict.
In business, we create contracts, policies, procedures, job descriptions, and organizational systems.
Different rooms. Same human problems.
And that's when I began to recognize that my work wasn't simply about helping couples rebuild trust after infidelity. I was teaching people how human trust works.
Three Types of Human Trust
As my work evolved, I began organizing trust into three important dimensions.
Trust in Self: Can I trust myself to learn, make decisions, navigate uncertainty, and recover when things go wrong?
Trust in Others: Can I trust that another person's words and actions will align consistently over time?
Trust in Process: Can I trust that we have a reliable way to navigate problems, evaluate what's working, and make adjustments when circumstances change?
These three dimensions work together, but they aren't interchangeable.
I can trust myself without trusting another person. I can trust someone else's intentions without trusting their ability to follow through. And sometimes, when trust in ourselves and each other is badly damaged, the only thing we can initially trust is a process.
I've seen that happen repeatedly in infidelity treatment.
Couples walk into my office with no idea whether their relationship will survive. They may not trust themselves or each other. But they can agree to attend therapy once a week for three months.
That predictable process gives them somewhere to begin.
They don't have to know how the story ends. They only have to agree to keep showing up and doing the work.
Trust Isn't Built on Certainty
One of the biggest lessons I've learned is that trust isn't built by guaranteeing an outcome. It's built through how we navigate uncertainty.
You cannot guarantee that your marriage will last forever, or that your business will succeed, or that someone you love will never hurt you.
What you can do is:
learn to trust yourself,
develop trustworthy relationships, and
create processes that help you navigate the unpredictable parts of being human.
And the beautiful thing is that trust isn't an all-or-nothing experience. It's something we can intentionally strengthen.
I never set out to become a human trust expert. I just wanted to talk about sex.
But after years of helping people navigate betrayal, vulnerability, intimacy, communication, and change, I discovered something much bigger.
Whether we're in the bedroom, the boardroom, or anywhere in between, we're all trying to answer the same question: How do we learn to trust when life offers no guarantees?
And that, my friends, is the work I've accidentally spent my career learning how to teach.
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