The Simplicity of Trust

Like many women, I have a purse that I lug around with me. I never spend much money on purses, so it changes from time to time. Almost always, it's black, big, and full of stuff. I need to clean my purse out as we speak. Probably won't happen for a while.

My roommate won't get into my purse. Even if I ask him to get something out of it, he will bring the purse to me and hand it to me instead of opening it himself. He sees purses as a forbidden ground where the owner has complete privacy. I like this about him. It's one of the many things.

I bring this up as a way to talk about trust. People think trust is a really complicated thing, but it's not. The topic came up on FB and I wrote the following.
"You should never have to prove to someone that you are trustworthy. Either they trust you or they don't. If they trust you, then they truly trust you. You can have friends, a job, a phone, a Facebook account, secrets . . . and they still trust you. If they don't trust you, then nothing you do will ever change that. They will always be suspicious. It will always cause problems."

It's really as simple as that.  Either you are trusted . . . or you're not.  If someone trusts you, they will continue to trust you until you actively do something to end that. "Actively" doing something doesn't mean "having friends" or "having my own email account." No, actively means "I took all the money out of the account and didn't tell you" or "I broke the agreement we had concerning the state of our relationship." That is actively doing something. The first two are just things some people might be suspicious about.

If you don't trust someone, don't have a relationship with them.  Because if you don't trust them, you never will. Even if they jump through every hoop ever, you will always harbor some doubt.  Relationships can't be built on doubt.  And if someone doesn't trust you, again, don't try to have a relationship with them. They will never trust you and if you've not done anything to warrant that mistrust, eventually, you're going to get tired of it.

There are usually some warning signs too. If you date someone and they say, "I don't trust people of your gender," finish out the date, but realize this should be the last one.  They don't trust your gender. You are NOT going to be the special snowflake that changes this.

I know I'm speaking in a lot of finalities here, but for a good reason.  Being around people you trust is SO important. The only thing that equals the comfort of knowing you can trust the people around you is knowing they trust you as well. Knowing you will be believed when you say things. Knowing if someone works on your computer, they're not going to violate your privacy. Knowing that if you have a problem, your problem will be believed.

This doesn't mean no lies will ever pass between you. Everyone lies. But trusting someone isn't about thinking they will be honest every second of the day. It's knowing they will be honest about the big things.  It's knowing they'll trust YOU about the big things.