Trust Assessment

It tells you about your current experience of the relationship, not a clinical finding about their character. Low scores surface which dimensions of trustworthiness feel strained from your perspective — that is genuinely useful information — but the scores are shaped by your interpretive lens, your prior experiences, and recent events as much as by their behavior. The assessment is a starting point for reflection and conversation, not an indictment.

Research on trust repair is broadly optimistic with important caveats. Trust breaches tied to integrity or honesty are harder to rebuild than breaches of reliability or competence. Meaningful repair generally requires the breaching party to acknowledge the specific harm, take consistent corrective action over time, and not rush the timeline of the person who was hurt. Partial trust rebuild — where some dimensions recover while others remain strained — is common and still leaves the relationship functional.

That depends on the relationship's current safety and the goal you have in mind. Sharing results in a curious rather than accusatory frame — 'these are my perceptions; I'd like to understand yours' — tends to open productive dialogue. Presenting scores as proof of the other person's deficiency typically escalates defensiveness. The report is most useful as a shared starting point rather than evidence in an argument.

Yes. The five dimensions apply across relationship types. The Vulnerability Safety dimension may be less activated in professional contexts where the relationship is inherently boundaried — that is expected and worth noting when you interpret low scores there. The Reliability and Consistency dimensions are often where workplace trust most visibly breaks down.

That is important information too. Self-report instruments capture the experiences you can consciously articulate at this moment. Sometimes discomfort in a relationship is driven by patterns that feel hard to name or that contradict your conscious ratings — particularly around Vulnerability Safety and Consistency, which are the hardest to self-assess accurately. If the scores feel disconnected from your lived experience, consider discussing that gap with a therapist who specializes in relationship dynamics.

After a significant event — a breach, a repair attempt, a major life change for either person — or every 6–12 months as a check-in in a long-term relationship. Retaking during an acute conflict is generally not informative: temporary distress inflates perceived untrustworthiness across all dimensions. Wait until both people are in a regulated state.

Partly. The Confidentiality dimension measures your felt sense of how safe your private information is with this person — which is related to gossip behavior but broader. It also captures whether they use what you have shared against you in arguments, whether they disclose your situation to mutual contacts without permission, and whether they treat sensitive topics with appropriate discretion. High gossipers about others often also score low on Confidentiality in close relationships.

Consistently, yes — and that divergence is itself valuable data. Differences in Reliability scores often reflect different threshold expectations (what counts as following through). Differences in Vulnerability Safety often reflect different personal histories with emotional safety. When both partners complete the assessment independently and then compare, the gaps in their perception frequently point directly to the underlying misunderstanding driving tension.