Building Trust Slowly: How Consistency Changes Relationships
Consistency Can Change Relationships
Photo Credit: Jacob Wackerhausen via iStockPhoto.com
By: Jamila Gomez
There’s a kind of loneliness that doesn’t come from being alone. It comes from learning early that you can’t count on people. When you’ve spent years being the one who overextends, overgives, and overexplains just to feel connected, consistency doesn’t land as comfort. It lands as confusion. And when someone finally shows up with steadiness, your first instinct isn’t gratitude — it’s suspicion. Because a part of you is waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Trusting consistent people is its own kind of healing, and it’s not glamorous. It’s slow, uncomfortable work. And for many of us, especially Black women who’ve been conditioned to carry everything alone, it feels like putting your heart in someone else’s hands without a guarantee they’ll hold it well.
When someone actually shows up — calls when they say they will, follows through, remembers what matters to you — it hits a part of you that still believes reliability is a luxury. You don’t relax into it. You brace for the moment they reveal themselves to be just like the others. Consistency feels foreign because chaos is familiar, and familiar often feels safer than good. So your body fights the very thing your spirit has been asking for.
You may find yourself testing their intentions without meaning to. Pulling back to see if they’ll notice. Going quiet to see if they’ll reach in. Pretending you don’t care as much as you do because caring has cost you in the past. None of these behaviors make you broken. They make you human. And they tell the truth about what you’ve had to survive.
The real work isn’t learning how to trust someone else. It’s learning how to trust your own discernment. Most of us don’t actually fear being abandoned; we fear choosing wrong again. We fear missing the signs. We fear believing in someone who ends up confirming every wound we’ve worked hard to rise from. So we protect ourselves by never fully letting anyone in.
But here’s the shift: consistency is not a trick. It’s a data point. One moment of care doesn’t mean someone is safe, but a pattern of steady behavior over time deserves to be acknowledged. You don’t have to hand over your entire heart just because someone is kind. You also don’t have to guard your entire heart just because someone from your past failed you. There’s middle ground, and it’s where healthy connection lives.
Learning to trust people who show up is a process of letting your body unlearn the idea that closeness equals danger. It’s noticing when someone does exactly what they said they would and letting yourself soften a little — not all at once, just enough to breathe. It’s letting consistency speak louder than your fear. And it’s reminding yourself that discernment isn’t the same as hypervigilance. One protects you. The other exhausts you.
The truth is, some people really do show up. Not perfectly, not dramatically, but with a steady kind of presence that doesn’t need applause. And you don’t have to earn it. You don’t have to shrink yourself to keep it. You don’t have to pretend you’re unbothered by inconsistency just to make the relationship feel balanced. When someone is committed to showing up, they make room for your truth, not just your strengths.
Little by little, consistency teaches you that you’re not asking for too much. That you’re not too complicated to love. That you can be held without performing. And that connection doesn’t have to hurt to be real. Trust doesn’t grow in a single moment — it grows in the quiet evidence of someone choosing to stay, again and again.
And while you may not be ready to fully relax into that yet, you’re allowed to let it matter. Even if it’s unfamiliar. Even if it scares you. Even if a part of you wonders whether you deserve it.
Because the real answer is: you always did. You just needed someone consistent enough to remind you.
YOU MAY ALSO BE INTERESTED IN:
