I am conducting experiments with Trust. Or rather, it is conducting experiments with me.
What I cannot believe is how women who don’t trust their men marry themas quickly as they can, as if that’s some sort of guarantee that behaviors will change after the vows. Do they really believe that? I’m guessing not, given the women who constantly seek out written proof of their brand new husbands’ sexual liaisons with other women (big hint: check their sexting, darlings, and the number of cock shots they’ve MMS’ed). I am completely baffled that a woman can find evidence that her fiance’ has been actively lying to her, marry him, and then spend the rest of her life going over the evidence and tightening the leash on him and walking that tightrope between trying to prove he wasn’t lying when, in her heart, she already knows. The trust, if it was ever there, is gone and isn’t likely to return.
Once trust is truly broken, it’ s a rare thing to unbreak it.
Trust is something I’ve struggled with from time to time. I want to whisper that I’ve found someone I trust, but I’m nervous about saying it out loud as if somehow I’ll jinx myself. I recognize the sweetness of trust–that it’s not something that tethers but rather, something that frees. If I can trust someone, then I am not spending my nights in obsessive worrying. If I can trust someone to do his best to be gentle with my feelings and to be truthful with me, then the doors are wide open for me and I can soar without fear that I’ll return and find him gone without a word or waiting to knock me to my feet. I’m prized and cared for and while I can feel freedom in that, then he has the same freedom to be independent and seek new experiences without any damage to him or to me or the two of us in alignment. I am holding my breath and stretching my wings in wonderment at this idea of trust, real trust.
I know that we cannot always live up to our promises to not hurt someone we care for–it’s inevitable that we’ll act in some way unintended or say something that has a different meaning to someone else or discover something startling about ourselves that wounds the other. (Gods know, I’ve done that and have kicked myself for the hurt it caused.) We can try our best to make sure we’re trusted, though for some–like the men who married the women I mentioned earlier–making sure we’re trusted is not the same as living in a trust-worthy manner. For some, it’s manipulating, lying, and hiding to make sure a tentative trust is there. If it’s that tentative, it’s usually not something worth building a long-term relationship on, but it’s not my relationship so it shouldn’t affect me.
I’ve found myself being able to trust someone, though yes, he’s shaken my trust in him accidently a time or two, mostly because of words or actions that had far different meaning to him than to me. Those kinds of things took a few days to work through. If misundertandings have to happen, though, at least it has been a matter of him trying to protect me, of being a good steward of my heart, and of having the highest integrity in his actions with me. Those kinds of things, I can find my way back from, and the temporary turbulence may even strengthen the foundation of friendship and caring, regardless of where the relationship goes from here. Firmer ground of trust is so much better is you want the freedom that can be found in that kind of closeness and compassion.
But this I do know: Unlike the aforementioned women I’ve observed marrying to force a tenuous security, I would never marry a man I cannot trust completely or one I had any doubts about whatsoever. If you have doubts on your wedding day, then trust will never be better than that day and you’ll spend the rest of your “til death do us part” waiting not for him to prove you wrong about his untrustworthiness, but to prove you right.
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