Trust...We've all heard various forms of advice on it. That it should be earned not given. Once broken, never repaired. Trust only half of what you see and even less of what you hear. There are all kinds of advice on how do we trust someone. There's not a whole lot of advice out there on how to build trust. Which if you think about it seems kind of lopsided. If we all seem to want to know how to trust, why don't we all want to know how to earn trust? Is it inherent on how to earn trust? What are the things that we expect when we trust someone? Trust is equated with honesty. Truthfulness. Maintaining one's confidence. We expect people to keep their big mouths shut when we tell them something in confidence, particularly if we "trust" them. Faithfulness. We expect our partners in relationships to be faithful. A cheating spouse is often said to be "breaking trust". We also expect someone we trust to be able to understand our faults. We tell someone that we "trust" more about ourselves and we expect them to respect that only some people get to know those things about us. We expect people we trust to "have our backs". We expect those that we trust to stand up in our defense when we cannot defend ourselves. Trust is a very complicated word, yet we seem to be more worried about who we should trust rather than what we do to be trustworthy.
There cannot be trust without being trustworthy. I would simply argue if you read self help books and magazine articles about how to choose better people, ones worthy of your trust, then it's time to look in a mirror. What is the reflection in the mirror? Victim? Empowered? Grossly self centered? In spite of what some self help books would tell us, trust is about us. We give our trust willingly and when we are surprised by someone who breaks it it is not about them. Seriously. It's about ourselves. I love to bring up my ex-husband and our relationship at times in examples. He cheated on me while I was pregnant, he rubbed my nose in it, et cetera. Yet, those self help books have one thing correct. It was my choice but not at the level they think. I was a doormat. If he said "jump", I responded with "how high, which direction and how much hangtime"? I became the doormat because I was trying to make up for his lack of trustworthiness with my own excess trustworthiness. I've watched it over and over. Someone who is completely untrustworthy somehow enthrall complete devotion out of the trustworthy. Heck in all honesty, I've watched the less than trustworthy try desperately to make grossly untrustworthy more trustworthy by trying to be some version of trustworthier. Phew. Yes, that's a mouthful. So first and foremost, accept that you will always be trustworthy to some. You may or may not be trustworthy to others. You're not keeping everyone's secrets. There are some people that you could care less what secrets they are hiding. There are some people that being trustworthy for them, to them, would be a lot of work for you, because frankly you don't deem them worthy. Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying if they for some reason dump one of their deepest, darkest secrets on you that you should run out and breach that trust--that would make you an *sshole. But, I am saying that we have to acknowledge not that other people break our trust or are not as trustworthy to us as others are but that to recognize that...We have to recognize that there are some people that we could care less about earning or having their trust. Thus, we acknowledge the opposite. There are some people that could care less about earning or having our trust.
But then, come back to why do we not focus on what makes us trustworthy? What makes us good people? Women are often the ones that are much easier to see who they do or don't trust. We tend to always have one or two other women that we trust. We're obvious about it. But just like the movie "Mean Girls", often those are not people that we trust either. Men, I've been told often are more selective. It's not so much selectivity as they tend to still sit and shoot the bull with guys that they don't trust. One of my best friends is a guy that I grew up with. He told me once that another guy was a good friend, but he wouldn't trust the guy with a girlfriend or wife. Seems ridiculous? Not if you think about it. I have a really good friend who I trusted over the years with everything. Then one day, a friend of hers who had said something a few weeks earlier that was inappropriate came running up to me, claiming that she had never said what she said and that I was mistaken. The witnesses to her transgression were sitting there also and of course one of them came to my "defense" that it had been exactly what she had said. The conversation that followed was whether my friend should have mentioned it to this other friend of hers. Maybe, maybe not. Since I knew I had mentioned it only to have confirmation that it wasn't meant the way it had been said, the friend of mine simply could've been trying to create reassurance by telling this other friend of hers. Yet, since I had specified that I did not wish her to say anything, she had broken some amount of my trust. Does that mean that I don't trust her at all? Well, no. Like my guy friend told me years ago, I'll trust her with some information, but regard that certain information will not have the same respect from her. Telling her certain things will mean that the confidence invested may or may not be maintained.
Is it my fault for telling her? Yes and no. Once someone breaks some form of trust, then it is wasteful to assume that they will not break that trust again. Yet, we absolutely have no way of being absolutely sure that trust is not misplaced until someone breaks it in the first place. Yet, there's no point in cutting off one's nose in spite of one's face. It may be that the person is trustworthy in almost every capacity excepting that one. I used to say that my ex could be a great guy and would give the shirt off his back to a complete stranger in need. All true. But if you're his wife, well, good luck with that. His trustworthiness ends as soon as certain things are in play. That trustworthiness doesn't affect in any way, shape or form his trust worth to his male friends. Interesting? I think so. When it comes to this friend that told another friend of hers what I asked her not to? Well, it's simple. There's some things that I can trust her with and other things that I'm better keeping to myself.
So does that mean that we should just accept that some people, or maybe even no people, are going to be as trustworthy as we would like? No. Absolutely not. I have friends that I would trust with my deepest thoughts, my darkest hours and everything about me. That's really what we are usually talking about when we talk about trust. We want someone who will be honest with us, tell us, keep our confidence, jump up in our defense when needed, have our back through thick and thin, and be not just the last but the never say anything bad about us. That is what we expect, what we have come to expect, when we say trust. We ourselves must be that also though, and if we are honest, we know that we will only do that for certain people. Some of us may or may not be quicker to run our mouths in a non-trustworthy way about another person, even people that we might call friends. But none of us can honestly say that we are the epitome of trustworthy with every single person we know. That would require us to tell them as much as we would tell the people that we trust most. We would not. They would not. Trust is not given. It is not earned. Trust is part of what develops in between people at varying levels. Some people we trust a lot. Some we would trust with our lives. Some we would not trust as far as we could pick them up and throw them. But that trust level should be commiserate with the trust level, the trust worth, that they provide us.
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