Trust. The word itself conjures up mixed emotions. We feel grateful for those we can trust through thick and thin. We feel anger and hurt when we think of those who’ve taken advantage of our trust. We feel proud for the positions in life that our own trustworthiness has bought us. And we feel guilt and sorrow for the relationship mistakes that have cost us trust. We all find ourselves at various levels of trust in each of our relationships.
I wish trust were easy. Like you either trust them or you don’t. You’re either trusted or you’re not. But it’s not that easy.
Somewhere in the middle of trust and no trust is the muddled up trust. The place where one day your heart is so full of trust and the next day it’s overflowing with doubt and suspicion. That place where you think you’ve finally won their trust only to realize they still accuse you of imagined offense.
And this muddled stage of trust rips at the heart. We want to trust; we really do. We humans are hard wired to live life based on trust. But it’s just that sometimes the defense mechanisms in our mind refuse to let our heart rest in trust. And the war of the mind is a tricky one. It’s hard to know which thoughts are the good guys and which are the bad guys.
We can’t keep the suspicions from popping up. And once they’re there, it’s like playing private investigator to determine whether it’s a suspicion to act upon or to reject. It’s the uncertainty that eats at the heart.
If the suspicion is true, you realize you’re once again naive and taken advantage of. You feel like an idiot. The pain goes deeper than it did the first time. You’re ready to curl up in a corner and cry your heart out while simultaneously forming a battle plan so the person can never hurt you again.
But if the suspicion is unfounded, you feel guilty. After all the hard work of the other person to gain back your trust, you pay them back with doubt. You stab them over and over again with the reminder of their offense.
Some relationships are distant enough that you can just leave it in this state and just not see the person anymore. Some relationships will just always be in the “I can never trust them” state. But sometimes it’s family. You see them day in and day out and you love them with all your being and you just want to trust them and be trusted.
And that’s where trust gets tough.
